{"id":492,"date":"2011-02-20T07:15:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-20T07:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tdspeirs.com\/2011\/02\/20\/once-upon-an-unoriginal-title\/"},"modified":"2020-12-23T21:51:51","modified_gmt":"2020-12-23T21:51:51","slug":"once-upon-an-unoriginal-title-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tdspeirs.com\/oldblog\/2011\/02\/20\/once-upon-an-unoriginal-title-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Once Upon an Unoriginal Title"},"content":{"rendered":"
I spent the last three days at BYU\u2019s \u201cLife, the Universe, and Everything\u201d (LTUE) symposium about writing. It went well \u2013 panelists addressed topics ranging from the writer\u2019s life and health to the process of submitting and publicizing one\u2019s 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\u2019s this Web address: http:\/\/ltue.org\/Deep_Thoughts.html<\/a>).<\/o:p><\/div>\n
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But it\u2019s my first post, and I really have no idea what a “blogger” is supposed to write about for that first one.<\/o:p><\/div>\n
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So I\u2019ll mention the books I\u2019m currently reading. Now don\u2019t get me wrong, but I\u2019m definitely aware that I\u2019m reading a few too many at a time right now. But oh well.<\/o:p><\/div>\n
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I\u2019m a little more than \u00bd through James Dashner\u2019s \u201cThe Thirteenth Reality: The Journal of Curious Letters.\u201d By the way, he was LTUE\u2019s 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 \u201creal world\u201d but also on how it completely overturns some clich\u00e9s of children\u2019s fantasy (spoilerish alert: the main character recruits his father!)<\/o:p><\/div>\n
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I\u2019m also reading Terry Pratchett\u2019s \u201cSourcery.\u201d 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 \u2013 the simple manner in which quirky kookiness does not replace a serious story but adds to it instead. Amazing.<\/o:p><\/div>\n
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One week ago to the day I finished rereading Stephen King\u2019s \u201cThe Eyes of the Dragon.\u201d That, of course, is also a great book (aren\u2019t I sounding a little redundant on the excellent books I\u2019m reading?). \u201cThe Eyes of the Dragon\u201d renewed my interest in reading \u201cThe Dark Tower\u201d series, so I picked the first book back up and am reading that right now as well. I\u2019m familiar with the premise of the story because I read the first book a little over five years ago.<\/o:p><\/div>\n
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Let\u2019s see\u2026what 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\u2019t say I\u2019m in the middle of reading all of them, but I definitely feel like I\u2019m reading a lot more books than I am \u2013 the reason, of course, being that I\u2019ve 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.<\/o:p><\/div>\n
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Oh, I did nearly forget one other book I\u2019m reading. A year ago I restarted Robert Jordan\u2019s Wheel of Time series. Suffice it to say, I\u2019m a slow reader when it comes to his books \u2013 not because I dislike them; just that I\u2019m a *very* slow reader of epic fantasy. Yep, I\u2019m only about 75% through the second one (\u201cThe Great Hunt\u201d). But I have the goal to read the entire series eventually, so I\u2019ve been trying to finish book 2 again.<\/o:p><\/div>\n
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Between talking of the LTUE symposium and books, perhaps you\u2019ve figured me out. I\u2019m an author. I write children\u2019s fantasy (I hope I\u2019ve punctuated that genre correctly). I\u2019ve wanted to blog for a few years now but haven\u2019t 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\u2019t have to be as \u201cperfect\u201d as a book must be, so I can be a little more myself (by putting parentheses with info. all the time like I\u2019m doing right now).<\/o:p><\/div>\n
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So if I\u2019m a children\u2019s fantasy author, what do I mean? Well, I\u2019ve recently completed the first draft of a book I would like to make my debut novel. I won\u2019t explain it much right now because LTUE has gotten me a little \u201cworried\u201d 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\u2019ve begun the first rewrite of the book even more recently, and I plan it to be the first book in what I\u2019ve labeled a \u201ctrilogy of trilogies.\u201d 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\u2019m 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.<\/o:p><\/div>\n
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Oh, I\u2019ve got a goal to write 500,000 words in one year\u2019s time, and I\u2019m well on my way to surpassing that goal with \u201cflying\u201d colors. I put the flying part in quotes because it\u2019s hardly how we usually use that saying. In my case, it\u2019s more like I\u2019m simply twentyish days ahead of schedule. Not bad, but then you take into account what I\u2019ve written. Yes, a lot of the writing is my novel I wrote and am rewriting. But the rewriting process has me kind of\u2026bogged down?<\/o:p><\/div>\n
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I\u2019ll 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\u2019s mostly worked until this point because I had some *major* information dumping (*very* bad for a novel \u2013 info. dumping is not just looked down on but considered quite boring as well). Well, I\u2019m beginning to move into the part of my story that actually ends the info. dumping. I\u2019m kind of stuck because I don\u2019t feel like literally \u201cre\u201dwriting the other scenes \u2013 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\u2019m debating what to do based on input from different authors I\u2019ve \u201cheard from\u201d or consulted (I think the only one I\u2019ve actually talked to about rewriting was James Dashner \u2013 and that was while he signed books, so\u2026I got some helpful input from him, but obviously we didn\u2019t get to talk in depth about it).<\/o:p><\/div>\n
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This first post seems to have turned out fine. If you weren\u2019t 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\u2019t be so long \u2013 I may need word count, but not only should it be more towards actual novel-writing as people who read blogs probably don\u2019t want to read something each post that is 1,370 words or more.<\/o:p><\/div>\n
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So here\u2019s to hoping I become better at blogging than James Dashner at LTUE was credited with Tweeting!<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/o:p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spent the last three days at BYU\u2019s \u201cLife, the Universe, and Everything\u201d (LTUE) symposium about writing. It went well \u2013 panelists addressed topics ranging from the writer\u2019s life and health to the process of submitting and publicizing one\u2019s work all the way even to taxes. I could recap it all, but I know a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-492","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"category-update-on-life","8":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tdspeirs.com\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tdspeirs.com\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tdspeirs.com\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tdspeirs.com\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tdspeirs.com\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tdspeirs.com\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tdspeirs.com\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tdspeirs.com\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tdspeirs.com\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}