Nethermore

I’ve been a very, very bad author. Someone should just preempt my July 31st deadline and peg me with fruit right now because this has been a terrible week for working on my book.

I was doing fine until Thursday rolled around. I moseyed into the doctor’s office that morning with a friend whom I had asked to drive me there. Anyway, despite my having brought my uber-used Mobile Pro with me, I couldn’t write a word on it. I was too nervous, too petrified of what was going on.

I was given strict instructions to sleep for the rest of the day and that I shouldn’t be on the computer at all. I spent the evening wishing I was allowed to write. I almost broke the rule. Then I realized that the doctor had said nothing about watching TV–too bad my roommates took that when they moved out. I would have watched Final Fantasy: Advent Children on the laptop, but alas, I had foregone borrowing it from a coworker.

Most of the writing I did on Friday was in the doctor’s office or during a concert. Because the writing is on the Mobile Pro, which has no way that I know of to count words, I have no idea how much I’ve written and I’m not adding it to the progress bar until I can get a handle on that particular chapter.

Just as a side note, I wrote during the opening act to Debra Fotheringham at her concert on Friday. No way was I going to write during Debra’s songs and miss the music. Go take a listen at her myspace page. In an age of knock-off pop bands and bleached hair, Debra is neither derivative nor does she bleach her hair. Plus, she’s got an jazz-angel voice that will keep you entranced. Another very good reasons to listen.

Moving consumed the rest of Friday evening and most of Saturday. I don’t enjoy this sort of thing. Moving reminds me of all the stuff I’ve accumulated, it takes time, and it keeps me away from writing. Fortunately I have some very good friends who showed up to help out. If they had websites at all, I’d give you links to them. Instead, here’s a link to what some of my friends like to do more than anything in the world, with the exception of preparing to throw fruit at me.

Went to Salt Lake Saturday evening for the reception of an old roommate of mine, who unfortunately doesn’t have his own website, but if he did you could find it here. I’ve been listening to the Hunt for Red October when I’m in the car, and I’m halfway done as of last night. I love the way Clancy can bring the plot of a story together and paint the picture of a world most of us have never seen. I’m sure the process is very much akin to writing fantasy novels. I’d love to see what Clancy could come up with in that genre! Plus he mentions the Idaho Naval Reactor, where my dad used to work.

It’s been a mad mad mad mad weekend. I’m stoked to be getting back on track with the writing goals. But I’m not getting down about not meeting them this last week. It’s all been practice up to this point. Now that it’s May, it’s time to pull out the big guns and get some stuff done.

–Stewart!

You’ve seen Men in Black. A big alien cockroach comes down to earth and hides in the body of a delivery driver. Problem is that the body of the delivery driver is way too small for the alien, so the alien has a tough time keeping the skin on as a disguise. The driver is just about ready to burst with big old mean alien bug all over the place.

My brother and I were talking a few nights ago, and we came to the conclusion that the alien from Men in Black is my book, and I’m the delivery driver. I’ve had this stupid bug hiding inside me, growing and growing, until now it’s far too big for my skin. And so I’m trying to write as fast as possible before I explode and have to clean novel guts up off the kitchen floor.

I think I’ve figured out that this is how a novel has to be written for me. I have to work out a good portion of the characters and plot beforehand, but the details of the world come out as I write. It leaves surprises for me and makes me excited to get to writing on my manuscript again.

Too often writers fall into the trap of trying to plan out everything in their novels. That’s my tendency. I want to know the steps the characters take to resolve mysteries or their own character arcs. I want to know the beliefs of the different fantasy religions in the world. I want to know the languages that the people speak. Because I come from a background in Visual Arts, I also like to know what colors people wear and how the styles of architecture developed. Pretty soon I’ve got a mess of notes and no way to connect them together. I’ve heard it called World-Building Disease, or Tolkien’s Disease. And I know I have it.

So I’ve got to do a little of that stuff, but there comes a point when it’s time to just write, and everything that isn’t developed I’ll make up on the fly and fix it later when the book’s done if the spontaneous creations don’t fit in with the world view. If I don’t do it this way, the book will never get finished.

The whole World-Building thing is overblown anyway. Who cares how the architecture in your world developed if it’s not a detail that’s integral to the story? If you want to read pure world-building books, you don’t pick up a novel. Most people want history or travel or sociology nonfiction books for that sort of thing. You pick up a novel for the characters and for the story.

So when you’re building your world, develop the concepts that are directly related to the story and characters you want to tell. When an artist paints a picture, a lot of times the frame that goes around the picture hides the edges of the painting. The artist knows this and compensates by painting just a little more around the edges than what will be seen. It gives the impression that if the frame wasn’t there, then the landscape of the painting might go on, revealing more interesting sights.

This is what must be done in novel creation. You paint the important details—those that show up in the frame—and then you hint that the world is much, much larger than what you’re showing us. This cuts down on world creation time too. Let’s face it, you don’t have decades like Tolkien did to build the world of your story. If you want to be writing for a living, you’ve got to be writing at least one book a year, maybe even two. You don’t have the time to “sand the underside of the drawer,” to borrow a term from Pixar. You’re an impressionist painter, you hint at what’s there using broad strokes rather than painting the picture so detailed that there’s nothing left to the imagination. But I’m digressing.

Having a rough idea of an outline allows for spontaneity that can be standardized throughout the text after you’ve finished the rough draft. But not everybody is comfortable working that way. It’s somewhere in between the way Stephen King writes and the method of the meticulous outliners.

Deep world building and meticulous outlines may work for other people. That’s how I was working at first, but it was paralyzing me. I kept thinking that I couldn’t mess up, so it had to be all planned out.

News flash: It’s all right to mess up and write some crap. That’s what a first draft is for. The idea is to finish the book and use revisions to sweep up the crap later.

I wish I had figured this out earlier. Then maybe I’d have been able to write more books between then and now.

–Stewart!

I had too much to eat for dinner last night and had strange dreams because of it.

Overeating is a rare occassion for me, but I certainly did that yesterday. After writing group we went to eat at Tucano’s, a Brazilian-themed restaurant that prides itself on offering meat straight from the spit and delivered to your table. All-you-can-eat.

I noticed that I was mentioned over on areleejensen’s LiveJournal recently.

Isaac is a skinny fellow with glasses and a somewhat impressive desire to turn writer. I don’t know how good he really is - he read snippets from rough drafts he’s written, but that was just before he tossed them on the fire. It was never enough for me to make a substantial judgment. He’s very dedicated, though… and that’s scary for people like me who want abstractly to be published but don’t work as hard as they should.

I blogged about the same campfire a few days ago. She also talks about my roommate Matthias.

Matthias was tall, dark, and had a rich European style. He stood by the fire in his silver collared shirt, pressed slacks, and expensive italian leather shoes with a hand on his hip and his thin pink lips pursed thoughtfully. I almost laughed out loud at the glorious cliche he presented as he explained in his rolling voice why he liked Vienna better than Paris. He’s the mysterious foreign exchange student… he looked like the type who would keep some Italian tucked beneath his tongue in Romantic emergencies… always ready to steal a shy glance at your legs when you cross them and your skirt creeps up.

Areleejensen sure has a knack for description. Now Matthias is a great guy, but I personally don’t think he’s as mysterious as this paragraph makes him out to be. But hey, he’s European, so we Americans like to romanticize that aspect.

Maybe I should start talking with an accent.

“Stewart!”

I started submitting stories to magazines when I was fourteen years old. So the subject of what name to publish under always lurked in my mind. You know, just in case one of those stories got published.

Let’s face it, Stewart is a fairly common name, and it seems to be a good name to be writing science fiction and fantasy under, because the Stewarts have more than their share of the book shelf. I can think of at least three, and there are probably more. George R. Stewart wrote Earth Abides. Sean Stewart is a very good writer and has won the World Fantasy Award a couple of times. Ian Stewart writes hard science fiction.

When I get published people will mix me up with Ian at least–probably because of the hair. Even when people know my name, I still get called “Ian” or “Alex.” And when they do get my name right, many of them spell it wrong. As a little kid, I never could figure out how I could get a mediocre grade in spelling when my gradeschool teacher couldn’t even spell my name right on the report card. It seemed so hypocritical.

So I think it’s natural that I’ve considered writing under a pen name. I’ve had the opportunity to take writing classes from some of my favorite science fiction and fantasy authors. Dave Wolverton suggested I write under the name “Isaac Knight.” Scott Card thought it silly that I would want to use any name but my own. And Brandon Sanderson’s response was simply, “Stewart!” said in a Scottish accent.

And that’s what sealed it. Rather than appear to reject my heritage (this is probably what it would seem like to my extended family) I would embrace it and magnify it. This is what will distinguish me from the other Stewarts. I will be the Stewart that says, “Stewart!”

Thus the Scotsman.

In the next few weeks I’ll add the Tartan and then the kilt. Maybe we’ll get a Claymore in here somewhere.

Until tomorrow then: “Virescit Vulnere Virtus!”

I think I’ve figured out what’s wrong with me, and it’s not my hair, or my glasses, or my laugh (although some people might disagree). I’ve been hanging out at the wrong places! I need to spend more time at campfires and little hole-in-the-wall diners where local bands play. Then maybe I can find people that I really get along with; you know, people who sit around the fire and discuss the merits of chewing gum and pass around the weird can of Raspberry Cream Dr. Pepper and don’t care if my mouth touches it before I pass it to the next person in line.

My friend Curt lives in a small house by the edge of an orchard that borders on the traintracks. Last night the back yard smelled like spring blossoms, grass, and burning fruitwood. We grilled burgers, chicken, and chewed the biggest bag of gum I’ve ever seen. I brought a Rubbermaid trash basket full of papers to burn since my paper shredder is on the fritz (and probably tearing apart my sheets at home as we speak).

As we crumpled the paper up and threw it in the fire, I was struck with how odd the papers were. Some were old bills and statements, but a good majority of them were old drafts of stories I’d written. Okay . . . not so weird. But a there were also all this little bits of paper and receipts upon which I’d written little snippets of ideas that I’d later typed for my novel Nethermore. And then there were the maps and the drawings. Haha. The contents of that little Rubbermade trashcan screamed, “Fantasy Author.”

I met a lot of great people last night and visited their websites when I got home.

Vanillapuddle is the sketch journal of Becca, who is a student in English around these parts. She’s quite the artist. She draws these really appealing stick figures and has a keen sense of design in the simplest of lines. It’s like reading Hemingway’s beautiful direct style translated to drawings. These pictures read so well. In one glance you get the emotion the artist is driving at. That’s something most “modern” art just can’t do for me. Art’s about communication, not confusion, and Vanillapuddle understands that.

Colby Stead is a local singer/songwriter. I can’t get all his songs to play on his website, but I especially like the contemplative nature of his song lyrics.

In other news, the status bar on Nethermore is updated. I’ve finished Chapter One and have moved on to Chapter Two. I’m at 8000 words, and the novel is progressing.

Will do more writing tonight and will update the bar tomorrow.

You’ll notice the nifty little status bar that my genius brother has coded up for me. He’s added this feature to the website to help me keep track of my writing goals. He’s got some pretty neat tools on his website.

And now I can actually use the status bar since I actually did some writing last night. I left the phone at home, and I averaged just over a thousand words an hour, so it was a pretty decent night. I feel like I’m actually moving toward writing a book! Just have to do this 78 more times before the end of July.

So I’ve got a little momentum going. Now I just need to keep it up. I like the whole goal setting thing; it keeps me focused on finishing the book and not so much on “Is this a good word choice right here?” I don’t worry about it. I just write. I’ll figure out word choices later when I come back for revision. This is exactly what I need to keep me going on this sort of thing. And of course, I don’t want to be the target of rotten produce on August 1st.

Thanks for tuning in!

Ooh boy, last night Nethermore was this close to being canned for a time indefinite–and yes, if that ever happens, you can still throw fruit at me.

I sent a six-page document detailing the magic system in Nethermore to a writer friend of mine whose opinion I trust and whose writing I admire. The object of this was to get some feedback so that I could press ahead on the novel and avoid some pitfalls that his 17+ novels of experience had shown him. We had quite the discussion, and it was very insightful and helpful.

Some of the things I learned:

1) Books that sit too long in your head before being written tend to take on a life of their own as ideas get interwoven and everything becomes way too complex. The solution to this problem is focus and streamline the story, if possible, or just write the silly thing and get it out of your system. On future books, it’s better to not let the idea sit so long in the fridge that it starts to own the fridge.

2) When starting a book it’s best to have one unique idea for the following: each viewpoint character, the world, the magic, and the conflict. If you get too many unique ideas going on in each of those categories, then the book may get too complex for readers to follow. Clarity and character are the keys to accessible stories. In Nethermore I was making things too complex, sometimes unnecessarily so.

3) Themed magic systems. My magic system had no real focus. Once I was able to articulate what I wanted my main character to be able to do, then the magic system fell into place. After that, it was easy to think up powers that my character needed in order to fulfill his job. The connection between the magic and Nethermore became a whole lot clearer, and the magic itself became more internally consistent.

4) Characters in conflict make the most interesting characters. Make the conflict personal. For example, if you have a character who wants to stop a village from being destroyed because he hates it when people take over villages, then that’s all fine and good. But the main character should be a member of the village that’s about to get destroyed. The conflict for her is personal.

We talked about a lot of other things, and I took a few notes, but in the end, despite some rearranging and changing of the magic system, I left feeling motivating to continue writing.

So Nethermore is still being written, with some changes made to the magic system. And I’m still going to finish this monster by the end of July.

Oh, by the way, here’s today’s cool pic. What’s with this? Do they just happen to have Fluffy chained in their front yard to keep out attackers? Or did this lady climb the fence at the zoo and this is just the Before picture of a Before and After set?

There is no Spring in Utah unless you count the first five days of April when the blossoms come out. Of course, by the end of Spring week it’s gotten so hot that the blossoms fall off, the leaves are out, and it’s already summer and hitting 80 degrees. The next day it drops below freezing and snows. Mother Nature can never make up her mind this time of year. It’s either Winter or it’s Summer, but never Spring. Oh well. My ranting will probably get me nowhere with Mother Nature. She probably doesn’t even read my blog.

Some people have decided to take advantage of my pledge to allow rotten fruit to be thrown at me if I don’t meet my goals. Evidently I was unclear on exactly what I have to do in order to avoid becoming the target of projectile pears, etc. If I don’t write the book by the end of July, then you can have your slingshots and your major-league throwing arms ready to cream me with as much rotten fruit as you want. Clear enough?

House cleaning: The scotsman’s gone. Sorry for those who missed him. He’ll be back again soon, when I figure out how to work these silly themes. Remember, I’m supposed to be writing a book, not trying to understand the internet.

Began writing on the book last night. On a mediocre day I can do 800 words an hour. That means that I’ll need at least three hours a day to meet my goal. Wow. I’m committing a big chunk of time for this thing. But a year ago I was spending every spare moment finishing the basement, so I can do that again, this time for the book.

The time for procrastination has ended! (Is there ever really any time for procrastination? Well, I guess James Bond villains are great procrastinators when it comes to killing a captured Bond.)

I’m starting my new schedule to finish Nethermore by the end of July. Now, it’s an aggressive schedule, and I understand that, but I’m putting these stepping stone goals out for everyone to see so that I’ll feel the pressure of trying to meet them. I’ve discovered that if I don’t have pressure and deadlines, then I don’t work as well.

I’m venturing a guess that the book is going to run around 200,000 words. Now, where I haven’t written very many books (one, to be exact), and I haven’t figured out what my natural novel length is, there’s a good chance that I might finish the book and still not have reached the 200,000 word mark. I do have a good enough feel for the story to know that it won’t be any fewer than 100,000 words. But for goal purposes, I’m guessing 200,000.

This means: 15,000 words a week. 2500 words a day, six days a week. 800 words an hour (based on a 20 hours a week). I recognize that this is an aggressive schedule. And I’m committing to it. If I don’t do this, you can call me liar and throw rotten fruit at me. I’ve got to get aggressive or else my dreams of publication can be flushed down the proverbial toilet.

This equals to roughly 80 days of writing. If this works, then I’m going to institute this as the way I write every book: a burst of manic speed followed by a month of revising.

I figure that I have about 20 hours a week that I can devote to writing the book. And there are certain things I’ll have to do make sure that I hit those 20 hours, otherwise I’ll end up wasting my time in piddly pursuits, and July will come, the harvest will have ended, and my book will still not have been written.

In order to make the most of my 20 hours, these are the rules I must follow when writing:

1) I must treat it like a second job that I have to show up to. When someone asks me to do something during my writing time, I can say, “Sorry, I have to work.”

2) I must work at night, away from home, with the phone off. I have trouble waking up really early if I don’t have an external thing waiting on me (work, another person, the monsters under my bed demanding to be fed). I work best at night, and since I like being with people, I have to write in a place away from where people can contact me.

3) Internet access must be turned off on the computer while I write. Otherwise I will find something else to interest me and wind up on a tangent. Which reminds me, did I tell you about my new favorite website? My brother Dan sent it to me earlier today. Check out their pumapard link too!

4) I have to write in what I call a nonlinear style. A lot of people do it this way. It just leaves room for me to forget details that I inevitably will forget in plot, character, setting and whatever. It’s okay if it doesn’t make complete sense the first time around, as long as I can come back through on the second draft and add those things back in. The first draft is for blazing through, telling the story as best I can. Second draft is for fixing things. If I accept that it’s all going to be a mess at first, then it’s more likely that I’ll actually get the thing written.

There will be frequent updates on this site. I’m hoping to get a word tracker at the top of this thing within a week or two. And I’d also like to get little stickers to put on the online calendar. Each day with a sticker represents a day that I did some writing on Nethermore. But I’m not holding my breath just yet on all these little features. Remember, the point of this website is to help me finish my book not for me to make the website all pretty and stuff. At least not yet.

Foods I will never eat unless they are free:

1) Raspberry yogurt. I like the taste of this stuff, but if it’s got those little black seeds and it’s going to get all through my teeth, then I won’t pay for it.

2) Dark chocolate. Sorry guys, I like milk chocolate a whole lot more. But most chocolate is good enough that if it’s free, I’ll eat it.

3) Pickle-flavored potato chips. If I buy a bag of these, I’ll like the first few bites and then I won’t eat the rest. Leave the buying to my brother.

4) 1% and skim milk. One of my friends calls this “lipid water.” I only drink it if I need milk for cereal or cookies or cake and there’s nothing else available. As for drinking it straight, I’d be lost in the desert and dying of thirst.

5) Captain Crunch. What’s fun about eating little colored balls of pumice? Might as well eat fruit-flavored shurikens™. Much worse is Captain Crunch with lipid water. But hey . . . if it’s free, who’s complaining?

6) Sugar Peeps. You know, the yellow puffs of sugar that you get on Easter? I’ll eat these if they’re free, but only one or two.

Foods I won’t eat, even if they’re free:

1) Diet Root Beer. Or any kind of diet soda for that matter. Just don’t like the carbonated-Chlorox aftertaste.

2) Spice Drops. I hate these things because they masquerade as the tasty kind of gumdrops. Sometimes you can’t tell which kind you’re getting until you wind up home tasting the things. Nothing makes me feel stupider than when I am deceived by food. (Or when I write sentences that are not grammatically correct.) Stay tuned for the Spice Drops Cookbook.

These lists are not comprehensive. I’m interested in knowing what things fall into these categories for you?