I spent the last three days at BYU’s “Life, the Universe, and Everything” (LTUE) symposium about writing. It went well – panelists addressed topics ranging from the writer’s life and health to the process of submitting and publicizing one’s work all the way even to taxes. I could recap it all, but I know a publication is printed each year with some of what takes place in the symposium (I believe it’s this Web address: http://ltue.org/Deep_Thoughts.html).
But it’s my first post, and I really have no idea what a “blogger” is supposed to write about for that first one.
So I’ll mention the books I’m currently reading. Now don’t get me wrong, but I’m definitely aware that I’m reading a few too many at a time right now. But oh well.
I’m a little more than ½ through James Dashner’s “The Thirteenth Reality: The Journal of Curious Letters.” By the way, he was LTUE’s guest of honor this year for writing. The Journal of Curious Letters is a great book with clean writing. I have been surprised a few times by not only how much it remains in the “real world” but also on how it completely overturns some clichés of children’s fantasy (spoilerish alert: the main character recruits his father!)
I’m also reading Terry Pratchett’s “Sourcery.” Once more, Terry Pratchett has really caught my attention with his incredible meshing of wacky humor in a world that takes it seriously. I love his books for that – the simple manner in which quirky kookiness does not replace a serious story but adds to it instead. Amazing.
One week ago to the day I finished rereading Stephen King’s “The Eyes of the Dragon.” That, of course, is also a great book (aren’t I sounding a little redundant on the excellent books I’m reading?). “The Eyes of the Dragon” renewed my interest in reading “The Dark Tower” series, so I picked the first book back up and am reading that right now as well. I’m familiar with the premise of the story because I read the first book a little over five years ago.
Let’s see…what other amazing books am I in the middle of? Well, I took a quick glance to my right and I see a huge stack of books from the LTUE conference/symposium. I guess I can’t say I’m in the middle of reading all of them, but I definitely feel like I’m reading a lot more books than I am – the reason, of course, being that I’ve completed a few books over the last couple weeks and am somewhere in the middle of numerous short story collections. So my reading does not suffer.
Oh, I did nearly forget one other book I’m reading. A year ago I restarted Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. Suffice it to say, I’m a slow reader when it comes to his books – not because I dislike them; just that I’m a *very* slow reader of epic fantasy. Yep, I’m only about 75% through the second one (“The Great Hunt”). But I have the goal to read the entire series eventually, so I’ve been trying to finish book 2 again.
Between talking of the LTUE symposium and books, perhaps you’ve figured me out. I’m an author. I write children’s fantasy (I hope I’ve punctuated that genre correctly). I’ve wanted to blog for a few years now but haven’t been able to settle on something to blog about. That changed this week at LTUE when I remembered that James Dashner has a blog. So why not blog about the writing world and how it pertains to me? And a blog doesn’t have to be as “perfect” as a book must be, so I can be a little more myself (by putting parentheses with info. all the time like I’m doing right now).
So if I’m a children’s fantasy author, what do I mean? Well, I’ve recently completed the first draft of a book I would like to make my debut novel. I won’t explain it much right now because LTUE has gotten me a little “worried” about what an author should and should not do (you know, like there are quasi-rules for how Facebook accounts *should* be a little more professional than they often are). But anyway, I’ve begun the first rewrite of the book even more recently, and I plan it to be the first book in what I’ve labeled a “trilogy of trilogies.” Yes, nine books. Ambitious, it sounds. But in reality, the number of books sounds much more reasonable when you realize that each book (according to my calculations) would be around or a little over 200 pages. I’m not writing Harry Potter-sized novels, but nor am I just writing something short (but fun to read) like the Boxcar Children or A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Oh, I’ve got a goal to write 500,000 words in one year’s time, and I’m well on my way to surpassing that goal with “flying” colors. I put the flying part in quotes because it’s hardly how we usually use that saying. In my case, it’s more like I’m simply twentyish days ahead of schedule. Not bad, but then you take into account what I’ve written. Yes, a lot of the writing is my novel I wrote and am rewriting. But the rewriting process has me kind of…bogged down?
I’ll explain. Up to this point, my rewriting process has been this: I read over the first draft for a little while and then I sit in front of my computer and rewrite that section according to what I thought about and how I felt it should be changed. That’s mostly worked until this point because I had some *major* information dumping (*very* bad for a novel – info. dumping is not just looked down on but considered quite boring as well). Well, I’m beginning to move into the part of my story that actually ends the info. dumping. I’m kind of stuck because I don’t feel like literally “re”writing the other scenes – but rather *hardcore* revising and editing them. On the other hand, I feel that the writing would definitely become tighter as the result of completely rewriting. So I’m debating what to do based on input from different authors I’ve “heard from” or consulted (I think the only one I’ve actually talked to about rewriting was James Dashner – and that was while he signed books, so…I got some helpful input from him, but obviously we didn’t get to talk in depth about it).
This first post seems to have turned out fine. If you weren’t certain, I definitely was shooting to get in my daily word count goal mostly through this post as well, but most the rest of my posts shouldn’t be so long – I may need word count, but not only should it be more towards actual novel-writing as people who read blogs probably don’t want to read something each post that is 1,370 words or more.