Steven R. Stewart

Oooh! It's Christmooohs!

2011-12-22T13:07:00.013-06:00

If you don't know what Christmooohs* is about, you will. YOU WILL. It's taking over, and you can help. Post your own OOOOH! face all over the place, and let's put the "OH" back in "ChristmooOHs."

Now snap that shizz and share it on my facebook!

*For continuity purposes, it should be noted "Christmooohs" has three O's, unless it is being lengthened for pure OOOOH! purposes. Christmooohs is pronounced like "krist-most" minus the last T. Krist-mohs. Now say it like an excited bro, the way you would say "Rock Chalk!" or maybe "To the windooow, to the WALL!" Variations may include "kriss-moss" and "kriss-moos," but "krist-mohs" is standard. Don't be that guy. Get it right. Or Santooohs will give you a lump of coal.

Quick Update

2011-11-03T16:48:00.006-05:00

A lot has been going on with me. I've sold a story to Red Penny Papers. I've completed my novel. I attended the World Fantasy Convention in San Diego and had my mind proper-blown. More on all this later when things calm down. For now, here's an interview on Annie Bellet's blog with yours truly: Neo-Pro Interviews: Steven R. Stewart

The Great God Pan

2011-06-27T22:52:00.012-05:00

It has been too long since I posted. I'm hard at work on my book, so some of the peripheral things (like this blog, sorry to say) have gone on the back burner. A few interesting things have happened since my last post, though, and I wanted to share those with you:

First, my "Labadie Mansion" post was featured by Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, something that caught me completely by surprise and pleased me immensely. (I'm not even eligible to join SFWA, yet! You can see the entry on their website here.) It's probably one of the reasons I didn't update for a while--I didn't want to have to top my previous post. Eventually, I just decided I could either sit on my hands and enjoy the Labadie post forever (my sense of satisfaction growing more distant with every day that passed), or I could get on with my life and my blog, which is what I am doing now.

Second, my story "Fool" appeared in Brain Harvest in late April, and I was super excited to share it with people. (Its theme is strikingly similar to the song I'll be talking about later in this post) Read it if you haven't already; it's short and free.

Third, I'll be headed to World Fantasy Convention on October 26th, so if you're attending, shoot me an email. Maybe we can get a beer or something. Also, I'll be doing a little bit of agent hunting--my book will be complete by then--so if anyone knows somebody good ("good" being an important word), I would love to meet them.

Lastly, I had the opportunity to visit Joplin, Missouri a week after the tornado there. I took along my brother Paul to take photographs, and we spent the better part of a day walking around and talking to people. I had planned to write a blog entry on it the evening we got back, but the scope of the events were too huge, too immediate for me to feel like I had anything worth saying. That entry is still percolating in the back of my mind, and I think I will write and post it sometime soon.

The rest of this entry is a repost of a note I wrote on Facebook when my brothers and I release our album last year. Here is the song itself. I've always believed that a song with a story behind it is doubly powerful, and the effect of knowing the intent behind a work trumps any downside. So here they are, with complete transparency, my thoughts on "Great God Pan":

---

First of all, let's just get this out of the way. The title of this song is not "Great God Plan," as some people have mistakenly thought. While I'm not opposed to God having plan (I do wish he would share it with me), this song is definitely not about that. The title is actually inspired by the 1890's horror classic "The Great God Pan." In the story, two men perform brain surgery on a woman in hopes of opening her eyes to the spiritual realm, with the following result:

Suddenly, as they watched, they heard a long-drawn sigh, and suddenly did the colour that had vanished return to the girl's cheeks, and suddenly her eyes opened. ... They shone with an awful light, looking far away, and a great wonder fell upon her face, and her hands stretched out as if to touch what was invisible; but in an instant the wonder faded, and gave place to the most awful terror. The muscles of her face were hideously convulsed, she shook from head to foot; the soul seemed struggling and shuddering within the house of flesh. It was a horrible sight ... as she fell shrieking to the floor.
Three days later Raymond took Clarke to Mary's bedside. She was lying wide-awake, rolling her head from side to side, and grinning vacantly.
"Yes," said the doctor, still quite cool, "it is a great pity; ... However, it could not be helped; and, after all, she has seen the Great God Pan."
--Arthur Machen's "The Great God Pan" 1890

When the woman's eyes were opened, she came to face to face with what lurked behind the curtain. In the world of the story, what poor Mary found behind our visible reality was, well, nothing good. Similar to H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, the spiritual realm (and in fact, the whole universe) of Machen's story is a hostile place full of nightmarish pagan beings. The universe is not the work of a loving creator, but rather a place of deep, unknowable evil.

In our darkest moments, life can feel like this.

On October of 2006, my wife woke me in the middle of the night with a strangled scream. She was having a seizure, her first, and in the darkness of the room, it looked like she was fighting an invisible being. Like the character in the Machen story, "The muscles of her face were hideously convulsed, she shook from head to foot." I was terrified, but somehow managed to switch on the light and keep her from choking on her tongue. I watched as she stopped breathing, and didn't breathe again for ten seconds. They felt like ten years. I cried and said the kind of movie lines you would expect: "No, no, no, Lynna. Lynna, please God, stay with me."

She survived that night; so did I. Then, 24 hours later to the minute (I kid you not--hearing this would trip my bullcrap reflex too if I hadn't witnessed it myself), she had another one, identical to the first. In the moments during the seizures, I understood why they are often mistaken for demonic possession. It is the most horrible thing to witness, and I hope none of you reading this ever have to go through it. It took me weeks to recover. I didn't even want to sleep in the same room with her, so I would sit up at night and watch over her, jumping every time her breathing changed. (And all this only months after going through a miscarriage.) During those days and weeks, it felt like something evil and hateful inhabited every shadow, every corner. It felt like we were living in a hostile universe.

Sometime later, Lynna almost drowned in the Atlantic Ocean. We were swimming in the Outer Banks in North Carolina, and coolly (stupidly) ignored the wooden warning signs posted every hundred yards or so on the beach. The waves were huge, dark, and rough, but it wasn't every day we got the opportunity to visit the ocean, and we really wanted to swim. Lynna wanted to swim out past where the waves were breaking. She told me she was fine, that she could manage on her own, but being the worrier that I am, I stayed close.

I remember how the mood changed. One moment I was asking her if she was okay, to which she nodded and said, "I'm fine." It seemed like only seconds later, the waves were smashing us both in the face, and Lynna's eyes were as big as saucers. We tried to swim back, but the undertow was carrying us further and further out. I remember when Lynna got enough air once to gasp, "Steve!" I told her not to panic, but I'm not even sure she heard me. I'm not sure I heard myself. I told her to grab onto my shirt (fat guys swim in a shirt; it's in the code), and somehow I got us back to shore. I knelt in the sand, shaking, and thought, "She's pregnant with our baby. I almost lost them both." To this day, Lynna gets very uncomfortable watching rough waves in TV shows and movies. (That's How to Develop a Phobia 101, people.) Again, the universe had felt like a murderous, indifferent place.

Fast-forward and Lynna is lying on a hospital bed, 13 hours into labor. She is in an enormous amount of pain in spite of the epidural, straining, looking at the ceiling with eyes that are not really seeing anything. Every time she has a contraction, the baby's heartbeat slows to a crawl. More than once, the nurse runs into the room when the "beep, beep, beep" all but disappears. I'm standing by the bedside, holding Lynna's hand, not able to do anything. I might lose my unborn daughter. I might lose them both. And all I can do is hold her hand.

That's all we can do, sometimes, when the world looks its darkest. Thick and thin, hostile or benevolent universe, everything aside, I was not letting go of Lynna's hand.

Then a miracle happened: my daughter came into the world. Our two became three. And although Lynna was still in pain, I realized I was seeing something beautiful. If what I had witnessed during the seizures was "The Great God Pan," the dark, hostile face of the universe, then now I was seeing nothing short of "The Great God" himself, the benevolent, merciful, generous being that had given me life, given me Lynna, and given me a brand new daughter. I was seeing things as they were meant to be. And I realized the "Great God Pan" I had feared was actually something quite simple: difficulty.

There is no escaping difficulty. One day, each of us will die. We will lose our parents and our siblings (or watch our siblings lose us). Dreams will go unfulfilled. Pain will wash over us in a way that will threaten to drown us. All we can do in those moments is hold on and be brave. Love without reason, without context. Love because you love, and hold hands, and when it is finally time, let go. Let go and be grateful. In the words of the Avett Brothers, give your body back to the earth and not complain.

In short (brevity doesn't come easy to me, you might have noticed), "Great God Pan" is a song about standing strong in the face of loss, or in moments where loss seems inevitable. There will be beautiful, "good" moments that vastly outweigh the horror you feel in the difficult times. Be strong. Survive, together. I guess that's what I wanted to say with this song.

You can read Arthur Machen's story, "The Great God Pan" in its entirety here.

---

Thanks for bearing with this very long post. After giving it a second read, I would have to say it is preachier than I had remembered, but it's still a good snapshot of that period in my life. I've been wanting to share it for a while, and I'm glad I finally have.

Labadie Mansion

2011-03-24T04:13:00.028-05:00

At a stoplight on our way out of town, my brother Paul says, "I hope we don't get mauled by a beaver." He hesitates in the middle of the word, uncertain whether he wants to say "bear" or "beaver." Beaver it is, and his stilted pronunciation gets us both laughing. The light turns green. I take my foot off the brake and allow the last of Bartlesville --Arby's, a furniture store, mom and pop cafes--to roll past us and disappear.

Our destination is Labadie Mansion, a derelict house that neither of us have ever seen, and the site of numerous accounts of ghostly activity. According to "sources," the house is hidden by trees, with no visible road going to or from the grounds. It's notoriously difficult to find, unless you know where to look, and even then you can miss it. We have a set of coordinates that will get us to a nearby graveyard, a few stolen notes from Google Maps scribbled in sharpie on a piece of graph paper, and a photo that will point us in the right direction, if we can first find the spot where the photo was taken. I've been to the graveyard once before, but neither I nor my friend Rusty could track down the mansion on that first trip. Hopefully, this photo--just a bridge, a tree-covered hill, and the words "Labadie Mansion" with an arrow pointing into the dense woods--will be the key that unlocks the way.

As we drive through Oklahoma's back roads, past lakes and fields and skeleton trees, I give Paul a quick overview of the legends surrounding Labadie Mansion. "It's a whole thing. Multiple murder. Slaves. Infidelity. Curses. It all changes depending on who you ask." "Any of it true?" he asks. I tell him I doubt it. A few of the names match up, but that's all. The stories that ring most true to me involve the family dying of disease, one member at a time, sometimes only days apart--a tragedy, but not a ghost story.

When we get to the graveyard, I find myself strangely disappointed. On my previous visit, the graveyard felt ominous and exciting, but in the light of day, it feels bare, easy to find, and completely without atmosphere. I walk among the gravestones, looking at the names and dates, thinking how easy it would be to take down these few hard facts and concoct a new legend to add to the Labadie mythos. Many people cling to accounts of paranormal activity, often saying something like, "I've known Carl for twenty-five years, and if he says he saw something, I believe him." But as a writer, I completely understand the compulsive need to occasionally (it's time to be honest, ironically) make shit up, and when you look at things that way, it's not hard to understand why people tell stories of ghosts and abductions and the jersey devil. When you look for something hard enough and really believe you'll find it, you tend to find it (or something that affirms your belief in it). And when you're not comfortable saying "Hey, I just thought something up! Ain't it cool?" it's easy to let creative ideas drift over into reality in hopes of finding a home. That's mostly why I'm disappointed. If I feel something on this trip (honestly, down-in-my-bones feel something) then maybe it's all real. Maybe it's okay to believe the way I used to.

We decide to head for the mansion, hoping to have more luck there. We find the bridge in the picture and spot the hill more easily than I expected. The photo makes all the difference. Rusty and I walked in a completely different direction on our previous visit. I park the car, and we cross a barbed wire fence--"Touch it to see if it's electric." "You touch it." "No, you touch it."--into a field full of horses. When I say "full of horses," I mean this is the most horses I've ever seen in one place. There must be a couple hundred of them, ribs showing, coats every shade of earth, square-faced, long-maned, and skittish. As we pass along the edge of the field, dozens stop dead in their tracks and watch us. Forget being mauled by beavers, the horses become my real concern. A few turn and run away, manes flowing, their hoof beats out of sync with their steps, the sound like gunshots and hammer strikes, dulled and delayed by distance. We watch in awe. "I never see horses run anymore," Paul says. "They're all too tame. They just stand there." I rarely see horses at all anymore, I think to myself. It seems like a shame. (The weather and the call to adventure have me in a damn-the-indoors mood.)

We're forced to cross rivers three times, and each time it is a beaver dam that makes it possible. They look all brittle sticks and rotten logs, but Paul and I discover the main component in a beaver dam is mud, packed down tight like clay. We walk across three separate times--two men, 300 lbs. each--and scarcely get the soles of our feet wet. Suddenly, I feel bad for talking bad about beavers. The rest of the walk is pure work, up-hill through thorns that grab at our pants, over rocks that threaten to trip us up. We come over a rise to find another dip in the terrain. "We have to cross another river," Paul says. "Are you kidding me?" I say. "Yeah, I am," he says. "Look. It's a road." Sure enough, it is a road, overgrown with grass until not a single stone or patch of dirt is visible. It is smooth, flat (preferable to thorns and rocks) and circles gently around the hill. We follow it.

The mansion rises out of the reaching fingers of the trees, looming like a giant in our path. At first, it is just a black shape with sky-colored holes for windows, but as we round the corner, the beginnings of sunset bathe the walls orange and we get our first glimpse into Labadie Mansion's former glory. We walk forward, aware of each step crunching in the dry grass. Beside me, Paul begins snapping pictures. The stillness of the place is heavy, and the stark sterility of the house surprises and disappoints me. No wood remains. The roof and floors are gone, and only the sturdy shell of rough bricks and mortar still stands. No wandering from room-to-room if there are no rooms left.

As we move closer, I see lichen growing on the walls that is so vivid in color I at first mistake it for paint. I have never seen anything like it, and I desperately wish I had a black light. Around back, we discover the semi-collapsed stables that presumably once held horses. Someone has spray-painted "Turn Back or Die" on one of the walls. We don't turn back, and we don't die. Later, in the yard, we find a dead cat (at least I think it's a cat; it could be anything) floating in an open well of some kind. The smell doesn't reach far, but as I approach, it almost doubles me over. Paul snaps a picture, and I turn the corner. Not what I came to see.

With our sweep of the area complete, we walk back to the mansion and lean in the windows, hands resting on the cool stone. I still don't feel anything remotely spooky. "All the accounts say the hauntings start when you step inside," I tell Paul. "Makes sense," he says. We enter through a door, stepping into the ruined parlor, the floor and fireplace overgrown with saplings. To my surprise, I feel something. I don't feel cold or get the sense that I am being watched; I don't hear voices or footsteps; I don't smell food from the kitchen, or soap, or blood. What I feel is wonder and--this more than anything--sadness.

I imagine what the house looked like new: three fireplaces, a kitchen, a stove, hot water for the bath, three or four quaint little upstairs bedrooms. I imagine the family crossing the threshold for the first time, feeling proud, feeling excited about the life they are about to begin beneath it's now missing roof. I stare at the large fireplace in the parlor, and I can clearly picture a family coming in from the cold, pulling off their wet socks and putting their feet up to get warm. I stand in the back door to the kitchen and wonder how many times a mother stood in this same spot, calling her family in for supper hot off the stove. I wonder how many baths were drawn in the now cracked, rusted-out tub. I stare in awe at a thirty foot tree growing in the middle of where the parlor had once been. Around the base of the tree, half-grown into the wood, is the metal remains of a piano, the pegs that held the strings clearly visible. I imagine the house filled with music as little girls and boys clinked and clunked their way through their mother's piano books. I picture life inside this old house, and suddenly I feel something else: I feel angry.

You can scarcely step inside Labadie Mansion without stepping on beer cans and broken bottles. Trash litters the fireplaces and spray paint streaks the walls. "Why would people do this?" I ask. Paul just shakes his head. It's not just the disregard for the remains of the house that bother me, but the whole legacy of the family that once lived here and what that legacy has become. They lost their lives, each other, then decades of blizzards and fires and spring storms took the remains of their home, and now, thoughtlessly, gossip has taken their story away from them as well. As I stand in the shell of the house, the sun setting behind the trees, I find myself wishing I could somehow give these people back their story. I think what you are reading is my attempt to do that.

Paul and I turn our backs and walk away from Labadie Mansion. Paul stops a few times to snap a picture or two, and I plod forward, thinking about human nature, about our tendency for destruction and disrespect. Regard and understanding, I realize, are much harder things, things that take incredible intention, and as I watch the old house disappear behind the hill, I realize regard can be a heavy thing to carry.

I text Rusty on the way back to the car, telling him that we finally did it, we found Labadie Mansion. A moment later, my phone chimes back. "Was it haunted?" he asks. "I've felt more vibes in my bathroom," I reply. "Of course," he says. I smile and text him back. "I could make something up if you like."

Photos by Paul Stewart

Two Sales and the Slippery Future

2011-03-16T14:34:00.006-05:00

It's been a while, folks. I'm always amazed to look back on my blog entries and see how plans and priorities have changed. Things I put so much stock in have since been denied, angered, bargained, depressed, and finally accepted away. For example:

My carefully-crafted Writers of the Future story didn't get so much as an honorable mention, and I'm still not sure why. I thought the story did some bold things, touched on some very human issues, and had a little action and sexiness as a bonus. But ultimately, it got the cold, impersonal shoulder of rejection. Woe. Granted, there are about a billion people competing in that contest, and sometimes, running with a good crowd isn't enough (many of my Codex buddies either got honorable mentions or ended up as finalists and semi-finalists, which makes me want to high-five them and curl up and die all at the same time). The simple truth is this: my story didn't work for the judge that read it (justification), so what can I do? I just hope I can find a home for the story elsewhere, which, at that length, is kind of unlikely. I'll probably end up cutting it down somewhat drastically before I can look forward to a sale.

Not long after my WotF heartbreak, I sold a story to Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, a huge sale for a beginner like me. I had submitted it a few months before, and news of its acceptance arrived just in time to drag me out of the dumps. There was a long series of changes and edits which were painful and educational by turns. The end result was almost surreal: my story (MINE) appearing in one of my hero's magazine. (I'm referring to Orson Scott Card, of course, but Ed is my hero too, in a more personal, less "I wrote Ender's Game" kind of way.) They hired an artist and everything. I can't tell you how awesome it all felt, so I won't even--wait, yes I can:

It felt like I had been saying I was a writer my whole life, and suddenly, somebody agreed with me. It felt like the beginning of a dream come true.

(Saying something cheery like the above always makes my mind bark at me, "Don't get too comfortable, Fancy Pants. You've got an almost ridiculously long way to go. If you knew how long, you'd probably quit." To which I always reply, "Then I'm glad I don't know.")

You can read the story I sold here, or buy the issue for kindle here. If you read it during edits, you need to read it again. It's a different animal. And here is the essay I did for the IGMS blog, which I have been told is "intimate" and "interesting" and (once) "scientifically suspect." (This last is only kinda true. See this.)

In other news, Brain Harvest bought one of my flash stories this week. I've been a fan of that magazine for years, and when I finally wrote a story for a Codex contest that got first in its round (out of 25ish professional writers, so not too shabby), Brain Harvest was the first magazine to come to mind. A while back, they were forced to drop down to semi-pro rates because of budget stuff, but I still consider this a big sale for me. I can remember two years ago, sending stories to Brain Harvest, and collecting kind, insightful, but firm rejection letters. The fact that I sold a story as-written to that same magazine (my first choice) meant a lot. It was hard proof that I had grown. Sometimes that's hard to see, and when you can see it, it's the thing that keeps you (or ME, if we're avoiding second-person) going.

That story is called "Fool," and it's slotted for April 24th. Be there or be a dead moth.

Lastly (I can't finish a novel, but damned if my blog posts aren't endless), I've been thinking about how to use this blog, and I've decided to post a few essays I've written about songs, dreams, family, etc (not as boring as they sound, people, and I promise not to dig as far back as my regrettable Xanga days). I've also considered doing a week-by-week journal as I work to finish my first novel, in the hopes that somebody going through a similar ordeal might find my account useful. And you guys must (MUST) see what my brother Tim is doing in the art world. All that coming up.

Let's see what tomorrow brings.

[Edited to add:]

My buddy Ken Kao just informed me my story in IGMS got a hot-and-cold review at Locus.

Bouncing On

2010-10-08T18:00:00.003-05:00

Apparently it takes two months to stop "bouncing off the walls." Really though, it only took a few days for reality to grab me by the ear and shove my face against the grindstone again. Once you've done something, you enjoy it initially, then you begin to see how it's not a big deal, and you aim for the next thing. It's been a busy couple of months. I've critiqued, written, edited and dreamed more in the last sixty-some days than I have in all the other days since returning from OSC's boot camp. I have stories with a few editors right now and one with Writers of the Future that I'm hoping will get some attention. I entered the Codex Halloween Contest with a piece I wrote in three days, and so far I'm not doing too bad considering.

In short, my confidence, work ethic, and skill is growing (as well as my volume of work). I probably won't update this blog for a while until I have more to report. I think at this stage it's best to work more, talk less.

Oh, yeah. I meant to say something about the story I sold. It's called "Mark and Shelly's," it's only 750 words long, and I sold it for well above pro rates, which was very important to me for my first sale. Strangely enough, I wrote this story before boot camp, and it's one of the few stories I've actually done a second draft of. You can read the story (as well as my comment on it) for free on Daily Science Fiction's website. Reviews seemed favorable. The story probably won't see print until they start releasing year-end anthologies.

Catch you on the flip-side.

Whoa!

2010-08-03T14:58:00.001-05:00

I just sold my first story!

(More on this later. When I'm done bouncing off the walls.)

Poof Shelved

2010-06-09T01:36:00.006-05:00

So do you want the good news or the bad news? I'll give you both: Poof is on hold for a while, but I'm going to write something fun and short instead.

For this blog entry, I've compiled several of my posts from Codex (a semi-pro writers' forum) and Facebook. It's a jumbled mess, but it will be nice to have all the information here in one place to help explain to anyone who is curious why Poof has been shelved. Without further ado:

I just spent the last 3-4 months religiously outlining what I thought was going to be a 60,000 word YA novel. During the outlining process, I realized that maybe that word count was optimistic. With 85 scenes or so, maybe 80,000 words was more realistic. Surely 1,000 words or so per scene would be plenty.

Well after day six of the actual writing, the book was 13,000 words long, and I had only covered FIVE AND A HALF of the scenes. At that rate, the book would have weighed in at a sickening 195,000 words, 3.25 times as long as I had projected.

It seems to me, there are some things I did very well while outlining. Each of the 85 scenes is pulling double (or triple, or quadruple) duty as far as advancing the story and setting up what comes next. Often, I didn't construct a scene by saying "What would be neat?" but by saying "What do I need to set up? What will advance the story? How can I illustrate this important concept?" Sometimes, it was all of the above. And always, there was a list for each scene called Exposition/Objectives. As the outline currently is, each scene must exist or its core components would have to be spread out to other scenes, inevitably lengthening them. This is good sign, because we know I'm not inventing useless scenes. But it's also bad, because it makes the thing extremely difficult to cut.

But I can also see some things I did very badly. I don't think the story is too long because I'm over-writing, or because I have scenes that don't pull their weight. (At least, I don't think so. There are probably a few things here and there. I ain't perfect.) Ultimately, this story is too long because I'm inexperienced, and I created too much content. The scene-by-scene was 30k in notes--overwriting or not, you're writing a brick. I think the mythical concept of "THE BOOK" looming in my mind blinded me and made me anxious to build, build, and build some more. I've never finished a novel before, and I had no feeling of how long my story should be. I'm learning that lesson now. It's a painful, expensive lesson, but I'm learning it. There's that, if nothing else.

It seems to me, the only way to cut this story down to a single novel would be to rip out entire threads and characters, slashing whole acts from the book. I've given this a shot, and in my opinion, it killed it. (The person I shared it with felt the same.) Cutting it into 3-4 books is a lot more plausible. But I'm hesitant to do that for a few reasons. For one, I'm not sure about the publishing applications. Can a first time novelist sell a trilogy out of the gate? And probably more importantly, I'm not sure I should try to write a trilogy when I've never written a stand-alone book. It feels like running before you walk.

My plan, as of right now, is to put this novel on the shelf for the future. I'm proud of the story, and it will be nice to know something this fleshed-out is waiting in queue for a rainy day. Later in my career, if an editor or agent asks me if I have something, I'll be like HECK YES I DO. But for now, I think I'll try my hand at something more manageable and appropriate for a first-timer. I'm looking forward to getting started and taking this hard-won lesson out for a test drive on the new book [Still untitled--more info later].

Overall, this has been a really hard thing. I had three days or so where the first thing I would feel waking up was regret and frustration. I couldn't believe that my wonderful project that I'd poured everything into had actually derailed. I had really thought this was the one. But disappointment and struggle comes with the territory. Writing is what I want to do with my life. And for anyone making that claim, there is a certain amount of pressure to sell something. It's not the nurturing, zen-garden environment I would like to have for budding projects, but it's what I've got. The hardest part for me is watching my friends deflate when they hear the long-heralded novel of olde isn't happening for a while. And db fans REALLY won't be happy to hear about the delay...after all, I had to quit that project to do this project. But what can I do, you know? I just have to suck it up, pretend there's no pressure, and make stuff up. Sometimes, it's enough to make a guy wish he was a "secret writer."

All that said, I'm excited about the new project, and I can't wait to share it with everyone. And take heart; Poof and db may yet see the light of day as finished projects.

There we go. I hope that wasn't too bipolar for you. I wrote different parts of this post at different times, in different moods, discussing different things, so I hope it makes sense. Think of it less like a real blog post and more like the Bible. The info is in there, but it's up to you to make sense of it. I'm sorry to let any of you down who were excited about the book. Hopefully, you will enjoy the new project just as much.

As I said several times to several people, if I was going to quit, I'd have done it already. This is a pretty major speed bump, but it's no big thing in the grand scheme of things. And on an unrelated note, if you actually made it this far down the page, pat yourself on the back. Nobody reads this much text at one time on the internet. You're a rare breed. Cheers.

Ground Game

2010-05-27T14:27:00.003-05:00

It has been a while, folks. I've been deliberately avoiding updating this blog, because I didn't want to bore you all with logistics and because I wanted to concentrate on working instead of talking about my work. Hopefully some day I'll get super media savvy and start an effective blogging routine, but for now let's worry about getting published.

You'll all be happy to know that Poof is outlined. That sucker is blocked out. It took me all of February, March and April to do it. The scene-by-scene (the document I'll be working from as I draft the novel) is 30,000 words by itself, and there is at least that many pages in the other design documents. Let me give a shout out to the Snowflake Method. Granted, I butchered it, but it gave me a much-needed guide and helped me to slow down and trust the process in a way I never had. I'd say my invention game (the making up of junk) is better than ever, while my performance game (the actual writing) is steadily improving with experience. (I've been watching a lot of MMA in the last 6 months, and it's been really fun to watch how guys specialize in one aspect of their game or hone in on a weakness to improve on it. It has really colored the way I look at my writing.)

Big thanks to my old roleplaying/story buddy, Rusty Raymo, for the long talks and for tons of help flushing out some really vicious story blockages. (Ew?) You're one hell of a rubber wall, my friend. Thanks for putting up with my whiny mid-session freak-outs. "Is this boring?" "No, Steve. Shut up. Work." "Oh. Okay." Could I have done this without you? I wish I could say yes (because I'm a glory-grubbing, stubborn narcissist), but who knows? I certainly never got this far before you came along and carried some of the mental burden. So cheers. :)

In other news, I just finished a story for an anthology and I'm very happy with it. It's the first time I can remember going from zero to finished story where the story turned out pretty much exactly like I wanted. It's like hitting a bulls eye. Feels good! And the feedback I'm getting is overwhelmingly positive. I've even had some people cry. You have no idea how good that feels (unless you do).

On Sunday, I'll be making my first big push writing Poof. It's incredibly exciting and stressful time for me, but I'm eating it up. My new little girl Juliet got here a week ago tonight, and tomorrow she's leaving me for a few weeks to go up to tour the in-laws world in Wyoming. I'll be alone in the house for 2-3 weeks. I will miss my girls, probably some nights so badly that I can't sleep, but this is such amazing timing. What a way to start a book!

I had a lot of other cool stuff to talk about on here, but I can't remember it all. A blog post can only get so long before people start to feel like they're looking up the slope of a mountain. But it's been a wild few months. I got to see Greg Laswell in concert. That rocked. Go see him, he's still on tour.

Peace!

Shh!

2010-01-28T17:31:00.002-06:00

Don't tell anyone. If I say this too loud it might go away. But I'm focusing. I'm shutting out the noise and I'm outlining Poof. Our little secret, okay?

Wazzup? This.

2009-10-18T19:59:00.009-05:00

Okay, so I'm afraid to write Poof. But I will. After all this:

I just updated my webcomic for the first time in three months, and I'll be doing bi-weekly updates from here on out, until the baby or the novel, whichever comes first. GEEZ, I hope it's the novel.

I'm also working on a script for a comic book issue, drawn by my brother Tim (who is crazy good). The comic is called Brothers Benedict, and I'm very excited about it. When it gets done, I'm hoping to pitch it to a comic book publisher. Fingers crossed.

After that script is complete, I'll be finishing up my little novella, Halloween Knight, which started as a Codex Halloween Contest entry and just ended up being too long.

Then I am going to hammer out a little story that my wife came up with. This one should be almost instantly salable, unless I farg it up.

Then POOF! Poof.

So that's what I'm up to. Gotta run. Peace. :)

Pluggin'

2009-09-27T21:33:00.002-05:00

Well, it's been a while. Lots of things have happened since I last updated. I got all my hours cut at work (SUCKY) and my wife is pregnant (AWESOME, but scary). I've been hard at trying to work. You can quote me on that. Make t-shirts.

The plan is still Poof by May (not April...pushed it back a month). Lately, though, I've been working on a short story that I'm looking forward to showing to some of you. It's superbly weird, but not a bad little story. And by "little" I of course mean that the finished story will a nice, unsalable 15,000 words. Go figure. It's been nice, though, to reconnect with the truth about writing. Yeah, 1,000 words a day gives you a young adult novel in two months (if you don't take weekends), but you still have to WRITE every one of those 1,000 words. And that can be hard. "What do you mean I have to make stuff up and it has to not suck?!"

The one thing I'm learning is that you just have to do it. You just do. And you shouldn't think so much that it kills your productivity. I believe "She Who Lies in Secret" is my best story, and that's just silly, because I wrote that story SO FAST compared to the others. The lesson there? Just write. Go on instinct. Do what you do. When the learning is done, trust that it stuck and just tear out and take names. Don't think yourself into a coma. So that's my big epiphany in the month and a half or so since Boot Camp.

Another thing I learned is that the people who succeed are the people who are too busy writing to spend a bunch of time reading message boards and doing critiques. Some is good. Some is necessary, but I'm determined to keep the main thing, the main thing. See you soon.

Peace.

Life As(s) Usual

2009-08-25T00:20:00.003-05:00

Just a quick note to let you all in on what's been going on the past few days and weeks since I returned from Boot Camp.

Already, it is easy to get the feeling that Boot Camp never happened. "What do you MEAN I met Orson Scott Card? What do you mean I did that camp thing I wanted to do and it's over now?" But the knowledge is still here. Parts of it have really stuck. My attitude on writing is different. My attitude on STORY is different. And I don't think that's going to revert just because I'm home and comfortable.

Well, almost comfortable.

It seems due to budget cuts and logistical junk that my hours at work have been vaporized. And I loved my job. Getting paid to walk around in the dark and think and listen to audio books? I even had time to write between patrols. Best job ever in some ways. But alas, all good things must come to an end. So here I beez. Looks like I can add job hunting to my To-Do List.

I've sketched out a schedule for Poof, my YA novel that's in the works. The schedule basically has me writing the novel in three months. Yikes. But that's 1000 words a day with weekends off. Should be easy breezy if I do my work in the outlining stage. I've slotted two months for that. And a month or two for downtime and test readings and final edits and pre-querying and such, once the novel itself is finished. It's a fairly loose schedule, one that I know I am capable of. But it also ends up with me and a completed book by April.

I've learned a lot since my last "novel attempt." One of the things I've learned is, writing a book is something that can be done quickly. I wrote a 12,000 word story is just a few hours at work over the course of about 2 weeks. That's over a sixth of this novel's length. DOABLE. If I bust me arse and focus. Also, I know now that a novel is not a once-in-a-lifetime achievement into which you have to squeeze every last observation you have ever had about the human experience. Tried to do that with Silas Crane. "Sweet! That's going in my book!" is a phrase that can quickly over-burden and kill your story. Trust me.

Beyond the novel stuff, I've got a story to write for a Codex halloween contest. And I need to shoot some stories out into the world for publication. I've only got one or two out there right now. For shame.

Anyway, I'll keep checking in as things develop.

Working Out the Kinks

2009-08-13T02:24:00.005-05:00

I just read through my previous posts. Wow. Was I really that big an arrogant prick only a few days ago? I guess I was. Apologies to anyone who has had to swallow my crap about being "as good" (whatever that means) as the other writers. So much talk about people wanting to prove themselves, and I was the chiefest of sinners all along. Oh, well. At least I've realized how silly some of my perceptions were at the time. The GOOD part about those posts is that they preserve the enthusiasm I felt that week. I'm glad to be able to revisit that when I'm feeling burnt out and uncreative.

I've been having a lot of negative feelings about writing since I got back. I wish I could be the kind of person who just lets the past be and moves forward, but unfortunately, I always have to rehash old events to discover what meaning they might have in the present. Once each event is named, I can shelve it and move forward. But not before. So here we go:

Before boot camp, my writing schedule was very loose. I wrote stories as they came to me. I had the vague hope of publication in some hypothetical magazine somewhere, sometime, and a distant idea that "one day" I would attempt an impossible, distant, unattainable Novel. I didn't write for a particular audience, and I usually didn't have the story hammered out in advance.

In short, boot camp SQUASHED my old way of doing things. There is no place for the kind of aimless wandering I was doing in the life of a writer who hopes to make writing their career. (It's late, am I making sense?) And now, I have seen my own mistakes picked apart. I've seen other people's mistakes picked apart. Over and over, the problem was not language. It wasn't nifty ideas. It was STORY INVENTION. I never realized how unwilling I was to spend the time to thoroughly hash out a story and it's implications. Orson Scott Card said something in passing that I really latched onto. He referred to writing as "creating an intellectual property."

WOAH. I had NEVER thought of it that way. I had always had this vague idea that you just wrote, and if you were lucky, you sold the words you wrote. The idea that in writing you are building something almost tangible in its detail hadn't crossed my mind. Sure, I paid lip-service to the idea that writing was a "craft" just like carpentry or masonry, but I didn't have a clear idea of what that actually meant. The sad truth is, if I had put the time and practical, accessible story detail into my stories that I put into my stupid Dnd campaigns, I would have been published already. WHAT. A. WASTE.

So if I sound like a whiny, little brat who can't make up his mind about how to view this whole writing business, just chock it up to growing pains. Once I've written some stuff and had the chance to try my hand applying all this new knowledge and perspective, I'll mellow out. For now, I'm trying my hand at invention. I'm putting forth an honest effort to "craft" a story that I won't have to use the language equivalent of the "blur tool" on just to make it look good. I'm trying to be the biggest, most cynical bastard you can imagine, while still enjoying the "making stuff up" part like I did when I was a kid.

Oh, and I made a new rule for myself. "No more books on writing until I've finished a novel-length work." This is a big step. It's easy to be afraid that you don't know enough, and start reading "writin' books" as a procrastination aid. You get a lot of good advice and precisely ZERO writing done. If I want instruction, I'll read good fiction for pleasure. You learn more instinctively from a good book than you do from a half-dozen writing books. So enough. Here's another good one: "Stop nit-picking the language. Period." Also good advice. Just write, neither needlessly verbose nor needlessly sparce. Just write. If you have a good story, it will turn out alright.

Holy crap, I think that's actually true. Back to work, then.

Back Home Again

2009-08-11T15:29:00.001-05:00

Now that I'm home it's harder to make myself do things again. It's like this place is made of molasses, and I have to really work hard and chug against the stickiness of being comfortable. The last few days have been relaxing, though, and I feel ready to tackle the challenges of my YA novel.

Looking back on boot camp, these are the things that have stuck with me:

Sadly, I have a deep sense of regret at having not performed as well as I know I can. The story I turned in was not very good. It had potential, yes, and it was memorable, but otherwise it was kind of a pile. When Mr. Card told us to write fast and not to dwell too much on quality, I took that as license to relax and just let it flow. You should never just "let it flow." You end up with a poorly thought-out story. But, it's true, I did learn a lot more from my bad story than I would have from a good one. BUT, future boot campers take note: YOU WILL be judged by the quality of the story you turn in, whether it is a fair indicator of your writing prowess or not. Everyone will categorize you by what they see in your work. So work hard, and when you're out of steam, keep working hard. I wish I would have.

That small disappointment aside, I learned SO much about what makes a story great. I thought I had a decent grasp on storytelling and writing, and vaguely thought that anything I could improve on was just detail and would come with experience. I was WRONG. I learned things (about POV, invention, and exposition--specifically how much information to tell) that I might never have learned otherwise. Boot camp has jumped my understanding forward by years. Now, it is just a matter of applying what I learned. That will take practice, but practice will be more productive now that I have a clear goal in mind.

And then there's the people. I liked every last one of the boot campers, and enjoyed their eccentricities and perspectives. I look forward to seeing what they do with what they learned. Except Jessica, who is a huge cheater--how dare she know what she's doing. ;)

I'll be checking in later this week to update ya'll on the progress of inventing and outlining the book. Peace.

Day Six: Uncle Orson's Literary Boot Camp (Farewell)

2009-08-08T22:45:00.003-05:00

I really need to get to sleep. I'll write a longer blog post about the final day tomorrow. Topics will be as follows:

How much I hate Jessica for selling her overnight story outright. How tired I was of reading and critiquing. How many of us are going to go home and write novels based on what Mr. Card told us.

Coming soon.

Here are some pictures of the camp on my facebook. Right HERE. There you go. More tomorrow. Again, sorry for the short post. I've been enjoying talking with my boot camp buddies for the last time in person, maybe ever, instead of writing.

More boot camp thoughts and stories to come.

Day Five: Uncle Orson's Literary Boot Camp (More Critiquing)

2009-08-07T23:00:00.004-05:00

Today has been another hard day. It's been critiques all day long. Story after story, reading, letting people talk, reading, letting people talk. It's great in one way, because we've all reached the point where certain subjects and observations (some that hadn't even occurred to me before this week) have become so elementary that they are groan-worthy if mentioned. Even Mr. Card has gotten a little impatient with revisiting some of the same things over and over. The group developed a few bad habits and patterns yesterday, and today, Scott kinda set us straight. He was doing something that had to be done, and he wasn't a jerk, but he was firm. "Don't talk if you have nothing to add" was basically the point of it. But it was kind of one of those "Teacher is on edge, so be good" kind of moments.

We're all tired. Today, it seemed like feelings got hurt a little easier. Some of the insecurity was back. The defensiveness, the preoccupation with praise, etc. I felt it too. The desire to explain, to defend my story or my ability, was really strong and I had to fight to keep things in perspective. All in all, today was less nourishing "spiritually," but the value was still there. It was more about pushing through, doing the work. Endurance, perception, discipline. Equally useful, but not as "fun." But even in the less friendly, happy, yay-boot-camp attitude, Scott's critique's and suggestions were right on.

The encouraging part today was just how much better at seeing problems I am. Point of view, invention, exposition: HUGE. And I wasn't nearly so good at recognizing this stuff before. And I'm a lot more focused on my career as a writer. The urgency is almost unbearable (if it weren't for the fatigue, I'd be writing every chance I got, on breaks, lunch, etc). I look at my perspective before, and I was just throwing my time away to whoever would take it. "Collaborate with me, please, just acknowledge that I'm a writer. PLEASE." I should have been writing. Rusty, Tim, Couch, David, and db readers: this does not mean I'm abandoning all my projects, but it does mean writing career-advancing material is first. FIRST. After Lynna and Lex, there is the writing. It's how it has to be. I haven't been acting like this is what I really want to do, and I haven't been acting like I believe I can do it.

ENOUGH. DICKING. AROUND.

Like I said, today I've kinda felt like a grape in a press. I feel really serious and tense, but it's useful. I just don't have any fun stories for you, really. Except, let's do this:

Here is the beginning to a story I started up here and abandoned for reasons of difficulty and length. If you really need more to read after this blog, check it out HERE.

It's worth pointing out that I wrote this BEFORE all the learning, so it won't be much (if any) better than my previous stuff. Beyond that, I'm sorry I can't be bubbly. I'm running out of steam. It's exhausting to be confronted with mistakes over and over and over and to just WANT them to be right (in others' work and in my own). I know how editors feel now and how Orson Scott Card must feel. And it isn't a good feeling. But that, the fact that I'm at that point, that it hurts...that's good. :)

Gotta go. Gotta read five stories before I can sleep.

Day Four: Uncle Orson's Literary Boot Camp (Critiques)

2009-08-07T02:30:00.004-05:00

This day has been awesome, but I'll say that right now, at 3:17 a.m. as I begin this post, I am at a low. I'm exhausted and I miss my family terribly.

This morning I almost slept through class. It started at 10:30 and I woke up at 10:20. Cutting things a little close, but that's okay. I was the very first story we critiqued, and they ripped me a new one. I'll talk more about that later when I'm not so dead. Let's just say, I take criticism of my work well, but it was hard to sit there silently and just let people dissect you. At the end of my critique, when everyone else had gone around, Orson Scott Card took my clumsy story and showed me how it could be a beautifully fun young adult novel. I think I will write it.

Oh, and Orson Scott Card told me to "turn in my penis." It's a long story, one I'll catch you up on later as well.

Mr. Card and his wife took us all out to an awesome little Italian place in town. I sat right across from him at a table with only four people, and we discussed everything from his fiction to religion to politics. I actually got to the point where I was completely at ease. It's amazing. I feel like we know each other to a certain extent. It was fun to realize that. He really is just a guy, but he remains one of the most creative and talented men I've ever met. His comments on our stories CONSTANTLY blow me away. There's a reason he's teaching this class.

Oh, and his license plate says, "ENDER." I discovered that too. Made me smile.

So, apparently a bunch of the other boot campers were trying to figure out who wrote "Early Birds" because it was their favorite. That makes me happy. I wish my actual workshop story had been that well written and received. But today kind of beat the grabby-ness for attention out of everybody. We're too tired to pose. I'm too tired to do anything. Heh. I have to read about eight 5000-8000 word stories tomorrow during lunch breaks. Never going to happen. My reading speed is CRIPPLING me. This is the low point: reading all these stories and realizing that I'm just getting through them slower than other people. It's a limitation I need to fix or learn to live with, but right now I'm not sure how I will get through tomorrow. It's pretty discouraging, but the WRITING aspect is really good. And the LEARNING is going great. I'm just learning my weaknesses, and it stings.

Anyway, I'm not sure if anything above was coherent, but I'm off to bed.

Peace.

Day Three: Uncle Orson's Literary Boot Camp (Writin' Day)

2009-08-05T23:21:00.003-05:00

This is gonna be short, people. I'm fading fast.

Today, I started work on my story, got 3,000 words in (about twelve pages) before I decided that I didn't like it. I pulled the ripcord and started over with a totally different idea. I wrote another 2,700 words, which became the completed story we will be critiquing tomorrow. (All of us have stories. Mine is one of seventeen.) The first 3,000 words took me roughly seven hours, while the last 2,700 took me just over two. Improvement? Yes. Oh, yeah. And the story is better too. Not blast-you-across-the-room good, but good. I'm glad I had the guts to make the decision I made. WAY better stuff. But you guys can read my crap at some point too. It's not unamusing.

The big thing is, though, I wrote almost 6,000 words today. At 250 words a page, that's 24 pages. And that's a lot for fiction. If I remember right, Stephen King aims for 5,000 words in a day. Of course, those are his NORMAL wednesdays. But it was a lot for me. It stretched me. I'm better for it. I'm also typing with my eyes closed right now. I'm probably going to open them and find that my hands have been in the wrong place the whole time. Nope. Sweet.

Aside from the writing, there's little to report. (Mr. Card was not around today.) I keep meeting cool people. Artists who work on movies, doing everything from matte paintings to concept art. Account managers who aren't boring. Massage therapists whose talents I wasn't lucky enough to enjoy. A guy who SERIOUSLY looks exactly like a young Bruce Campbell. Oh, and Ken showed me some awesome parkour videos. Again, I peed. He's probably going to post db on a big parkour forum. Oh and Ed, the editor for IGMS, asked to see "She Who Lies in Secret." He warned me it's not a guarantee or anything, but it's worth a shot. So I'll be sending that off when I get home.

Beyond that, I've got nothing. Still having a great time. Still learning. Everybody has mellowed out. We aren't so concerned with proving to each other that we're the real thing anymore. We've accepted ourselves and each other a little more completely. And it's good. The level of "please think I'm cool" displayed on the first day would have killed me if I'd had to experience a week of it. Oh, and Ken showed me that my wrist pain probably has a lot to do with neck and back issues. So I'll be seeing a chiropractor as soon as I can. A good one, if I can manage it. The paragraphs in this post no longer have unified themes. No need to indent to say good-bye, I suppose. Good-bye.

Day Two: Uncle Orson's Writing Class (Radness Abundant)

2009-08-04T23:16:00.004-05:00

I neglected to mention that yesterday, I ended up in a river. Our assignment was to go out, explore, see the world, and glean some story ideas from the experience. I told my partner, "You know. I'm going to go jump in there." So I did. Did I gain anything? Meh. A little story idea. Not the one I'm going to use. Still, I got soaking wet in all my clothes (an old classic revisited) and I thought that was worth mentioning.

We were also assigned to interview someone and make a story out of something that came up in conversation. I was walking around downtown Lexington, scanning for potential victims when I saw it: a cozy, little shop that sold Celtic stuff. I practically ran through the door (the sign said they were about to close). The result was a half-hour conversation with an Irish woman, her Welsh Corgi, and her Scottish husband. She commented on my name and treated me like one of her own kind. It was awesome. And I'm writing my story based on this. (VERY loosely based on this. I promise you won't recognize it.)

The night went on. Junk happened. I worked until 3:00 a.m.

Now we actually come to today: I skipped breakfast. Not worth it, I was too tired. I went straight to class in a t-shirt and flip-flops. Pretty soon, we were discussing the story cards we had written the night before. My group was really jazzed about mine. People treated me differently after hearing my idea. Handshakes and high fives and stunned silences abounded. Granted, these are supportive people, but even translating it to a normal, sane response-level, I could tell my story wasn't poop. Which was good.

But now I will tell you something completely subjective and arrogant and totally unprovable: I don't think there is anyone here who is a flat-out better writer than I am (with the obvious exception). There are some really good writers, but I never feel outgunned. I never feel talked down to or ignored. I feel, in some ways for the first time, like I am exactly where I am supposed to be, at exactly the right time. Or maybe I'm just having so much fun, it's easy to be positive and confident. But please, don't get the impression that I am saying there isn't a huge bucket-load of talent here. There is. I just feel like I belong...uh...inside the bucket. Too.

Self-congratulation ended. Moving on.

I met a really cool Taiwanese guy named Kenneth Kao. I guess it would be more accurate to say his PARENTS are Taiwanese; he was born in the states. Kenneth has family who are mafia on one side and missionaries on the other. He is younger than me, but he's already a chiropractor with his own practice. Also (drawn bad readers will know why) I COMPLETELY geeked out when I learned he was a co-founder of a parkour gym in Colorado. He has been a consultant for movies on the subject. And he is a practicing pakourererer. Er. He actually does the stuff, I guess is what I'm trying to get across here. I will, and I mean WILL, be calling this guy after the conference to talk about parkour. In the words of Paul, I peed.

I've met so many cool people. One woman built submarines for ten years and is now a consultant, helping the military improve technology for locating enemy subs. Multi-Static, or some such. She had to stop me from asking questions because, no kidding, the answers to my questions were classified. What the crap?! Another guy, Brock, is an airline pilot and a Mormon (I've run into several--they look like the rest of us). He was in my reading card group (so was Kenneth) and we've had a great time talking and cracking jokes. Brock is always the first one to laugh at anything. His sense of humor doesn't have a warm-up period. Blam, there it is, every time.

After supper tonight, Orson Scott Card did a (I kid you not) FIVE hour Q&A session. I asked as many questions as I could with becoming "that guy." I asked him about "Shadows in Flight" which, sadly, he hasn't started yet. We also got to talk about Gloriously Bright from Xenocide. I've ALWAYS wanted to discuss that story and talk about his religion. And we did. It was incredibly cool. Things I had wondered for years, I just asked the man. And I have possibly delayed future Orson Scott Card titles by recommending Civilization: Revolution to him. He has been playing Civilization 2, and swears he won't play the new one because it will destroy him, but we'll see. By the end of the Q&A, there were only like ten people left and we were all so tired that Scott got very personal and real with all of us, about what life is like being famous(ish), about his family, about writers' depressive personalities, about every little freaking detail of his books (any that we asked about; he won't talk about his fiction otherwise) from what the Formics look like to what a mess it is trying to get a book adapted in Hollywood. It was something I will absolutely, never, ever forget.

By the end of the day tomorrow, my story has to be finished. My next blog entry will likely be VERY short, because I will be a dead man. But I'm going to try to approach this story very casually, to just tell it and get it down (much the way I wrote "She Who Lies in Secret"). It probably will not be my best story, but I like it pretty well and it will be indicative enough of my bad habits to be worth critiquing. And that's what its for. Any of you expecting me to come home with a masterpiece will have to settle for just a story. But I'll try to make it fun to read.

Oh, and one last thing: I got a TON of stuff signed by him. It was geeky, but he didn't act weird about it. I actually have the first copy he ever signed of "Recruiting Valentine." He even wrote "1st ever signed" on it. Pardon me, but that is total radness. And David, your book has been signed. Come get it sometime.

That's all folks. I'll see you all later at the end of my life. I mean, tomorrow.

Day One: Uncle Orson's Writing Class (Brainsplosion)

2009-08-04T00:16:00.004-05:00

Today I met Orson Scott Card, and it's crazy, he's just a guy. That's the first impression anyway. You don't have to listen to him for very long before you realize that you are in the presence of one of the greatest minds you will ever encounter. As for what he's like, "Scott" is very funny and warm. He is amusingly self-deprecating. He is patient and lets people talk, but he owns the room. He never has to tell you to be quiet. When he needs you to be, somehow you just are. And he can be totally brutal. He doesn't tip-toe around the mistakes you make. He stomps them like cockroaches. And that's good. It makes his compliments mean something.

Speaking of which (you guys will love this):

Scott said that there were so many good entries this year, he could have held two boot camps. The competition was really stiff. The fact that I made it means more than I thought. Also, after listening to him systematically DESTROY both first-person and present-tense during our length discussion of viewpoint, I couldn't help but laugh. My entry had been BOTH. And it was about ZOMBIES! When we read through the boot camp entries in class, Scott's first comment was "Did you notice there was some first-person, present-tense in there? But what did you think? Not a bad story, eh?" And he looked right at me. (At least I like to think he did. There was only one other first-person, present-tense story, and I liked mine better.)

I asked him later why I was allowed in, even though my entry went against his "rule." He said, "Because I wanted to know what happened. Sometimes first-person present-tense can work, and this worked." It's not like he told me I was the next Bradbury or anything, but he looked me in the eye and treated me like a writer. How did that feel to me personally, deep down in my little writer's marrow? Nothing short of historic.

First day of class = WORTH EVERY PENNY.

We did a thousand ideas session that ended up being about a woman who scuba dives in sewage. We ran out of time before we could nail down all the reasons, but we came up with some crazy stuff as a group. I liked my idea, but it got swallowed up in a billion others and eventually smothered to death.

Anyway, I better wrap this up. I'm still working on my assignment that has to be done by 9 a.m. I have to come up with FIVE complete stories summaries. Not ideas or hooks. Full. Summaries. Stories with a beginning and an ending. It's harder than it sounds, especially if you don't want them to suck. I've got four so far. It's a madhouse in my brain right now: Divorce ceremonies. Killer snowballs. Wild gods who have been too long without masters. A man in a suit and tie standing in a river. My imagination is running some funky tracks, but I think that's good.

But I gotta go. Assignment. Sleep. Get butt kicked some more.

Good times.

(One final thing I am learning: ENDURANCE. I have LONG since passed the point where I would usually think I was too tired and quit. It's nice to know those limitations are false.)

Day Zero: Arrival

2009-08-02T20:07:00.003-05:00

Today, I learned that the area around Tulsa looks like a giant circuit board from the air. The plane was apparently on lone from The Shire, and I had to practically crawl to get in the thing. Thankfully, they sat me next to a kid, so there was no fighting over elbow room. The next flight I wasn't so lucky. The plane was large, but so was the man sitting next to me. I did the only thing I could and made friends with him, appealed to his sense of brotherhood and fatness. Our conversation was enjoyable. It kept my mind off of the uncomfortable seat, and the knowledge that Lynna and Lex were falling farther and farther behind me.

The day started at 5 a.m. Yuck. I went in to tell Lex good-bye and cried when she snuggled up to me. The trip to the airport was surreal. Telling Lynna good-bye was surreal. Before I knew it, the plane had landed in Dallas/Fort Worth and I only had minutes to find my plane. And the airport was HUGE. I tried to remember what I could of the train system in final fantasy IX (it's about the same, actually), and amazingly ended up in the right place in a timely fashion. Good thing too. The plane left early, while my previous flight had been late. Could've been a disaster.

So we're back to the big guy sitting next to me on the 737. We talked about Fight Club and the Dark Tower series. When we landed, I met up with fellow bootcamper Kevin Whaley. Kevin is a soft-spoken dermatologist with a background in chemical engineering. He writes techno-thrillers. I admitted I didn't know what that was. He said, "Crichton." I said, "Oh." And then we shared a cab to Jessica's house.

Jessica is almost mythically small, but she talks and moves as if the rest of the world is in slow motion. She's a career academic. Something about the history of mathematics. Arabic numberals. I asked her if she had ever read XKCD. She said she hadn't and for the second time that day, I wept. (Not really, but it is a real shame.)

Jessica drove Kevin and I to the town of Buena Vista, Virginia where the conference is being held. (Ew, passive voice.) The conversation on the trip was interesting. It revealed to me just how different writers can be from each other. Kevin asked us some very goal-oriented questions, about what each of us plan to do in our careers. He also wondered what common elements all the best-sellers have in common. (My answer was clarity and accessability.) We all swapped stories about our younger years, school, family, you name it. It was good to realize that my fellows (and my competition) are just people. I have to admit, though, to feeling like an outsider here. Everyone is so...polished. I'm like a peasant trying to play noble. But I think my swordplay will match up nicely with theirs, when it comes to that. (Writing, I mean. I'm not actually going to stab anyone. That I know of.)

The campus is beautiful. More than I imagined. The main building oozes history. Paintings, grandfather clocks, chandeliers, ballrooms, large wooden staircases...it's freaking Hogwarts. I finally met Kathleen Bellamy, Orson Scott Card's assistant. She was as friendly and helpful in life as in her emails. Kevin and Jessica and I wandered around a bit. We eventually ran into Anna Jordan from Colorado. Anna is a tall, matter-of-fact character with a touch of Dakota in her voice. She's the heiress to a stockyard business and has just one main story she wants to tell, a series of fantasy novels that actually sound pretty interesting. Anna randomly go into the van with us while we drove around downtown Buena Vista and Lexington.

Now I'm about to go to bed. It's only nine, but I'm freaking beat. And I've got to be up by 7:30 for breakfast. All in all, this has already been a huge learning experience, and a positive one. I'll say this though: there is a preoccupation with wealth and fame that I don't buy into, but all in all, things are going good. I know I should end this post with a bang, but I'm tired. So I'm going to bed.

Bang.

Five Hours and Counting

2009-08-01T23:48:00.003-05:00

I have to be up in five hours. My bags are packed. I didn't take much. A blanket Mom made me. Some comic books. Ben Folds in the mp3 player. Should be a good flight. There is so much in my brain right now. I wish I had time to spill it all. Instead, I'll keep it in my head and use it for fuel.

See you tomorrow night, same time, same place.

Launch

2009-07-27T02:23:00.012-05:00

It's an unofficial rule that an aspiring writer needs a blog. It's also an unofficial rule that posting stories online, even to your personal blog, can hurt their chances for publication. Hmm. So what's the blog for again?

I have my reasons. In a week and a few hours, I'll be many miles and dollars away from good ol' Oklahoma at Uncle Orson's Writing Class and Literary Boot Camp. For those of you who don't know, Orson Scott Card is the author of many bestselling speculative fiction novels, including Ender's Game, which is probably my favorite book. I remember saying to my wife, "If I could write prose like anybody, it would be Orson Scott Card." Well, in a week and a few hours, I will be sitting in the man's classroom. And this whole surreal shin-dig gets even better:

The two-day Writing Class is open to anyone. Only fifteen writers get to stay for Literary Boot Camp, which lasts an additional four days. These fifteen writers have to be college-age or older and serious about professional-level work. And it's by application only. It goes like this: You send in the first page of a short story, Mr. Card reads it, and either denies your application or...not.

Me? I'm one of the fifteen. And it kinda feels like a big deal. And it should. I've been writing in a vacuum my whole life. I've never even met a professional fiction author, let alone one of my heroes like Orson Scott Card. (I've had dreams where I met the man, for crap's sake!) Since high school, I've attempted novels, written bad stories, read books, written more stories, read more books, and, in the last year or so, I've begun collecting rejection letters. And they're really piling up. Sixteen so far, and more on the way. That might look pretty bleak to some of you, but to me it looks like battle damage. It looks like a writer's early career. It looks like trying. And with my first jump outside the fishbowl just a week away, I'm getting excited.

And so we come back to the blog. In a vague way, this blog is a flag in the sand. This is the start of something new. It's possible that I'll come back from this class having learned very little. It's more likely I'll return and look at writing very differently. But I'm not going to come back as someone else. It will still be me who sits at the keyboard and makes stuff up. Like Neil Gaiman said, "It's only you." It's only me. So here's to working hard, finishing things, getting them read, and starting new things, over and over again, until I wake up one day and realize that, yes, I did what that 25 year-old so long ago hoped. I didn't quit, I grew, and I succeeded.

I'll keep posting as this whole thing unfolds. Let's find out what happens together, shall we?