Jenn's World

Back from Hawaii! Now off to Oregon. I'll tell about the Maui trip another time. I have some really cool pictures of this garden that had insane plants. Like, stuff you'd expect to see on Mars if it had water. Sea turtles were everywhere and SCUBA diving rocks and three different kinds of dolphins rocked the side of our PWF tour boat. Oh, and white chocolate macadamia pancakes with coconut syrrup? TO DIE FOR. I miss fresh pineapple.

Well, I guess that was my trip. Read one of the most horrible pieces of fiction I have in awhile. It was supposed to be a black comedy, if black comedy is defined by stupid suburbenites whining but never doing anything about their crappy lives and jumping into bed with anything that moves. Oh, and their kindergartner boy has his eye shot out in a school shooting at the end. Are you laughing yet?

I'll be back in two weeks, after an old friend's wedding. I'm going to try and see lots of people I haven't seen since high school, which will be for the win.

Skin Farm is about 80 pages from reaching the 80,000 word mark now.

WRITING PROMPT #16

Title: Place
Genre: Any
Type: Setting

So many of the great books have at least a side-trip to fun foreign locations. In classic fantasy setting-based travelougues, journeying strange places and meeting strange people is all you do. Gotta love the weird alien planets, too. I've been pouting because I can't find my copy of Dune, the epitemy of a great setting.

Unfortunately, a lot of the epic settings of the present just don't feel very epic to me. Maybe because I'm a jaded reader and I've seen it all done. Blah blah forest blah blah blah space suit. You know what I want to read? A fantasy novel set in Afganistan! There's probably one out there, but I haven't read it yet.

But that's just me. Most people want to read books about places they would actually like to visit. So if you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be? Why there? If it has to do with social connections, it doesn't count. Pick somewhere where you don't know anybody. Pick what you think sounds really cool about that setting and expand it, incorporate it into your world. Now write about your exotic fantasy-land vacation. Go wild. Talk about stuff that will never ever come up in the novel, because your character is a million miles away, but this tourist will see it.

Avatar was a success largely because it had a cool setting that was beautiful to look at. Can you replicate the same emotions? The same feeling of strangeness? Or will you try and evoke a different emotion, terror or awe?

Ugh, I meant to write that book review today, I really did, but I've been sick all day.

I passed my Scuba certification with flying colors. Whether it was the dramamine, the decongestant, the ginger, divine intervention, or bloody-headed stubbornness, I didn't struggle with vertigo or sea-sickness.

However, now I have water stuck in my inner ear with the result that I am very dizzy and can't take three steps without falling on my face. It's weird because I feel like the water is so deep, it's trying to leak out of my sinuses. I don't know if it actually is or not, but it feels like its gushing around the inside of my face. Not pleasant.

In the meantime, I'll probably write a book review on Monday instead of a writing prompt. Because I really do want to point out two interesting books.

But that'll probably be my last post for awhile, because I'm off to Maui in six days.

Busy, busy, busy!

I know I haven't been getting to the blog lately, but I haven't been getting around to much of anything, honest. I've been taking intensive SCUBA diving lessons that run 6 hours a night (plus an hour commute) and keep me up long past my bed time.

The weird thing? I thought I was going to be claustrophobic and hate it, but by the end of the lessons, I seriously love it. I love swimming around in the bottom of the pool, seeing everything and never having to come up for air. It's so peaceful and beautiful. And I love watching other people. Especially the men and women in my class who've been married for awhile. Underwater, everything is magnified. Every gesture seems tender and romantic, even if it's not.

It's a whole new world, and I love it.

In the mean time, I have a goal to finish a first draft of Skin Farm by the time we leave for Maui (late June) but I don't think that's going to happen since I've been hovering around the halfway point for some time now. But I had a revelation today that fixes the problems I was worried about, so yay!

I also have a goal set up to revise the first thirty pages of God's Play by the time we go down to Maui. I think it can make it even more awesome. But completing new book is top priority over revising old, at least for now. I don't want to lose the Skin Farm mojo.

I'm really disappointed I didn't get to go to Children's Book Day at the Provo library. Rick Walton was there. He was in my mother's critique group. I used to sit by their knees when I was a wee thing, listening, and sometimes bringing my own children's stories into read. I had a story about a little girl who has an invisible monster at her side who keeps eating cookies and she gets blamed for it. In the end, she learns to love the monster for who he is, not scold him for who he isn't. It was cute and quite good-- I have an entire box devoted to the stuff I wrote when I was twelve, including my first novel. Which was about a girl with magical powers. Go figure. One day, when I'm a rich and famous author, I'll publish it.

Writing dream from last night: I'm at CONduit, the sci-fi/fan writing con at Salt Lake. There's a workshop that I think is on the writing. Actually, when I get there, I find out it's INTERPRETIVE DANCE. We're going to be acting out a summary of the first part of our novel in front of a panel of Utah writers, which includes Brandon Sanderson.

I get up, wondering how the heck I'm going to explain the world of Skin Farm through dance. When I ask, Brandon says it's okay to read parts. So I figure, I have a killer first page, I'll start with that...and then I look down and find that I've dropped the pages, they're all out of order, and I'm starting in the middle. Then one of the members of my writing group (Stephen) tells me he's sorted everything and hands me a stack of papers. But when I start reading, I realize: THIS IS NOT MY BOOK. Not only that, but our old inkjet printer has smeared the ink around so I can't read anything in the first paragraph. I start reading anyway, and end up mumbling all the words but "starfish" and "arena" before my time expires and I have to sit down.

The worst thing is, through this all, Sanderson watches me with this expression of total patience and sympathy. It made me want to cry. He starts giving a critique about "hackeneyed dialogue" and I wake up. Thank goddess.

Keep in mind that I slept through the dream I'd had right before about my uncle fighting off a werewolf and failing. So apparently, being asked to do interpretive dances representing my work in front of a panel of authors is a worse fate than being eaten alive.

Brandon Sanderson is in my dreams because I finished Warbreaker two days ago. Very awesome. I love authors who incorporate humor into their work, since it's something I struggle with. I would have liked it to focus more on the class differences between the Pahn-whatev and the Hallandren, but everyone knows I'm more interested in building cultures than plots. I think that's my main problem. I get so excited about cultures and characters (ooh, they worship earthworms!) that I forget about everything else.

I wonder what's up with him and female perspectives, anyway? His only book where the main character is male (other than WoT) is Alcatraz. Or am I missing one?

BOOK I'M READING NOW: Green, by Jay Lake