Update, NaNoWriMo, And Bragging About Wordcount

Posted by Unrepentant Escapist

October 28, 2012 -- 2:25 p.m.

Well, it's been awhile since I posted. Life has been hectic. My laptop got bathed in soup and I ended up in Seattle for a family emergency. Otherwise, things are going pretty well. The school I was going to decided to discontinue the grad program I quit, so I'm definitely not going back. Which means I have to decide to do new things. If I'm going to try for another grad degree, I'm going to try to find one that lets me move slowly. The bottom line is that writing is my first love. Any program that asks me to spend 50-60 hours doing something else is just going to make me miserable. I'm not sure how many part-time statistics masters degrees are available, but since I need to do some undergrad work to brush up my math skills, I'm not going to worry about that right now.

Unfortunately, Utah doesn't consider me a resident because I never bothered to get my vote registered. I know I should have for the local voting even if the bigger elections go straight R, but the local decisions Provo's city council and mayor have made depress me so much. Not only the actions they've made, but the willingness to make actions without considering their costs. When they decided to build a rec center, they only consulted biased sources. Nowhere in any of their presentations did you see comparisons to other local rec centers. No figures on how much the Orem one ended up costing and how much it would be used. From my calculations, it would have been cheaper to buy everyone in Provo passes to the Orem center for the next ten years or so than to build one in Provo. Or buy them a Gold's Gym pass. The local gyms were afraid that the rec center would cut into their business--which it will--and so the Provo city council promised that they wouldn't have things that would compete with the gym. So what does that leave the rec center with, other than an over-sized swimming pool? The marketing was also really shady. "Your taxes won't rise!" No, but they won't drop either. And to build the center, they demolished both the city's teen and senior centers, which, from the plans, they intend to include inside the senior center as one room. (Teenagers + old people. Best combo ever!) I didn't hear any comments from the administrators of the teen center in the process about how their stuff would be positively/negatively affected by the change.

Maybe the whole thing will turn out to be a big success instead of another iProvo. But even if it is a good idea, the process was really crappy. It points to the quality of the Daily Herald, Provo's newspaper, that the reporters never questioned any of the data. My grandfather was particularly incensed because the city council claimed 80 percent of Provo residents would use it at least once a week (based on a mail survey *SMACK!*) but the plans included a parking lot that wouldn't accommodate nearly that many people. That suggested to him that the Provo city council knew their numbers were absolute bunk but presented them as fact anyway.

Oh well, I shouldn't be fighting old battles. Especially since the battles are old enough that I might be misremembering the facts. (Huh--spell-checker doesn't consider misremember a word? Who programmed this thing?)

All my family crises seem to be mostly averted. The first draft of the two-year behemoth I was calling "Wyrmborn" is almost finished. The name of the book is "White War" for now, which is a much better title. Over August-October, I've broken out of my rut and written some 62,000 words. Not too shabby at all. At this rate, I should finish draft 1 by the end of November. I've signed up for nanowrimo under the user name 'Vegetathalas' (don't ask, it's a long boring story.) to help me in my quest. Not sure how long the book is total, since I've discovered the secret to productivity is to store my chapters in different documents so I don't go back and endlessly rewrite stuff. This means it's going to be quite a pain to put everything together. But that means I should have a draft I can bear to show people out by January. Yay!

After that, my tentative plan is to give Skin Farm one final revision and then start writing grouping/querying it. I know the YA post-apocalyptic market is pretty oversaturated, but I like Skin Farm enough that I can't bear to let it sit in a trunk without even trying to get it out there. I wish I had understood more about writing plot and my own personal writing process when I started that thing. I could have had it done ages ago.

After that, it's time to start on a new book. I've plotted out a YA superhero book about a girl mechanic who suddenly gains the power to control vehicle engines, but I'm sort of reluctant to write it because I know nothing about cars and it would mean a lot of research and finding someone with mechanic-y know-how to alpha read and point out all my mistakes. Either that, or I could go back to my first book and re-write it as a YA fantasy with a stronger plot, keeping the same characters but giving them clearer motivations, making the magic system more understandable, and starting out with one main conflict instead of the, like, thousands I introduced. Basically, simplifying. Also, making the Empire more hateful and the rebellion more effective. Or I could write something entirely new. I could even try my hand at short fiction.

We'll see what I feel like after I get the other two books in order. It's always possible that I'll have a book contract by then and so I'll need to start writing sequels. (Hey, a girl can hope!)

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Adventures in Seattle

Posted by Unrepentant Escapist

June 29, 2011 -- 2:16 p.m.

Updates from the hermit.

Seattle is lovely this time of year, but full of pollen. I keep a spittoon nearby for the purposes of expactoration. Makes me feel like Gaston, or Mulan. What is it with Disney men and spitting, anyway? We had a cherry pit spitting contest back in Montana as part of Polson's cherry festival. And yet, surprisingly, spitting was not considered the height of masculine virility.

My family went to eat Chinese food to celebrate my younger brother's acceptance into UW/my other younger brother's first third of his summer law internship/my acceptance into grad school. As traditional, we ordered the weirdest things we could find on the menu. (At a previous Chinese restaurant, this led to my discovery and addiction to moss soup, which is very good). This meant 'pig ears' and something literally called 'Blood and Guts Stew' for my brother. The cook came out of the kitchen and asked him if he liked it. When he said he did, she went away shaking her head at the crazy Caucasian. We needed her to interpret what the different meats were. I thought the whole thing tasted vile and the intestines felt far too jiggly going my throat. But my brother gobbled down all the wobbly blood cubes (thickened with corn starch, maybe?) and wished there were more. I'll stick with my eggplant, thank you very much. It was quite good.

Pig ears are...well, pretty much like you'd expect. Very chewy. Like nibbling on someone's ear, only you're eating it. (Insert generic Mike Tyson joke here. *Baddabing!*)

Skin Farm is at 70,000 words and counting. It'll probably clock in around 90k. I did a good push but then wrote myself into a corner, but I think I've got a way to write myself out again. I got signed up for writers workshops at Worldcon. I need a new perspective, I can't quite decide whether my first chapter is too exposition heavy or not and I've tainted my writing group. The workshop looks at 8,000 words, so I spent time editing the first three chapters (AGAIN. I swear I've got the things memorized by now!).

I'm still toying with the idea of self-/e-publishing the book. I'm definitely feeling dubious. It seems to me that the best strategy is to wait until you have a sufficient collection to post several books at once and then hold sales trying to entire readers to get the whole series. I've been researching how authors with similar books have been doing, and the answer is pretty hit or miss. The ebook market seems to currently deal with a certain narrow demographic that I suspect will widen over time. One potential problem is categorization. Skin Farm has a young protagonist, but it seems like every other book in Y.A. is a romance first, a science fiction book second. So people looking to read books with male protagonists and limited smooching (Think James Dashner's Maze Runner) might not be shopping in that category. I might have better luck labeling it adult sci-fi. After all, Ender's Game has a young protagonist but adults love it too.

I wish Amazon had more sub-genres. Science fiction/fantasy as a category is much too broad.

Yesterday, I also wrote a 5,000 word short story, a re-write of the classic Cinderella fairy tale that came to me in a dream. Only in this version, she kills everything she touches and uses a glass knife to frame her evil stepmother for murdering Prince Charming's father. Rell's fairy godmother is a glass blower. I wasn't able to work in the step-sisters, but ah well. It's probably a better story idea in theory than in practice, but it felt good to work on something else. When I edit it enough that it makes sense, perhaps I'll post it. Whenever I write short stories, I go into 'fairy tale mode', meaning a lot of jumping around people's heads, heavy narration, and very shallow POV, so it probably isn't very salable, but it was fun to write.

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Good Day

Posted by Unrepentant Escapist

June 14, 2011 -- 12:21 a.m.
Good day. I managed to get 3000+ words on Skin Farm done. I also wrote up a 500 word synopsis. I have trouble with synopses, as I think everyone does. I can write ones that are about eight pages long or ones that are about a page long, but no in between. The short one, I cheated by doing the 'and they were tested by various challenges' kind of summary, but I can't think of any other way to do it. For some reason, God's Play seemed easier to shortly summarize even though it was a longer book. I'm not sure why.

There's a part of me that feels guilty for not writing more since I have a bunch of spare time at the moment, but there's only so much I can do before the well goes dry. I have to accept that I can't write at a breakneck pace all the time. I have my limitations.

It helps if I'm writing dialogue or action, then the words just fly by. It's also easier to write beginnings. As I get toward the end, it's harder to punch the keys because of worrying about past chapters and because of the looming sense of import. Your book is almost done. Is it any good? You'd better make it good and choose every word carefully, because the ending will make or break everything that's gone before. Maybe the beginning is important, because it gets people hooked, and maybe the middle is also really important, because it KEEPS people hooked, but the end is the last taste a reader will get of your style, of your philosophy, of your everything.

Which is why endings make me nervous.

***

I'm re-reading Katherine Kurtz's Deryni series. I liked it more when I was younger. It came out of a different age. I've become used to modern conventions, like magic systems with more rules. There's a lot of 'Camber learns a new spell' that can feel deus ex machina. Still enjoy it, though. Like old, familiar friends who've come to visit after so long.

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Top 10 Insights From LTUE 2011

Posted by Unrepentant Escapist

February 20, 2011 -- 10:45 p.m.

Beautiful cover for Karen Mahoney's Iron Witch. It would stop me absolutely dead in the bookstores. Everything is perfect, from the curve of the arm mirroring the swirls on the background to the biggest drops of color coming from the jewels in her hand.

I thought we'd see more witch in high school stories along with the Vampire craze. I always loved Willow best of any Buffy character. It frightens me a little that Buffy the Vampire Slayer started its run 13 years ago. I'm getting old... (*weep.)

I went to LTUE and enjoyed it. I was in a cranky mood part of the time so I was more Scrooge-like than I usually am, mostly because some authors tended to drop into English teacher mode, which is "Let's define things" instead of "Let's talk about writing" (The first twenty minutes of the Dystopian panel, I'm looking at you!!!)

My joy was not assisted by questions from a certain class of writers who seem to be shouting "Look At Me! Look at ME!!!" during Q&A. IE, asking, "My book is about this, is that okay?"

My response to my fellow audience members is, "Will you stop writing your book just because I say no?" If so, you're not cut out for this life. And if you'll write it anyway, regardless of the answer, why ask the question? Why seek validation from authors who haven't actually read your work?

I practiced my pitch to the editor of a small press and got shot down, which was expected. I didn't think my story quite fit her line, and she agreed with me. Good practice. Hopefully I wasn't annoying. It really is hard to sum up a story in 15 words or less. Unfortunately, the words you say in front of a mirror aren't always the words that come out of your mouth, either. And there's the strangled, fast, sweaty tone. This was my first time ever doing it, so I'll give myself a little leeway.

My worst fears are confirmed that agents/editors are being glutted with post-apocalyptic stories like Skin Farm. I would have been able to finish and query my book much sooner if I hadn't gone back and revised my first novel, so I'm a little frustrated I may have killed a book just because of poor timing. I will make sure I try the regional presses when I query in hopes that they may be less swamped. I need to read more locally published books to see if I fit in with what they're selling. James Dashner and Brandon Mull both started in local publishing, as did Ally Condie.

My friend/fellow writing group member Stephen will be posting videos of some of the lectures and panels, so anyone who didn't get to go can still get some insight. My favorite panel was probably when author John Brown broke Hunger Games down scene-by-scene and chapter by chapter, showing us the mechanics behind why Katniss so easily grabs both our attention and our sympathy. I love working with other people to strip away the smoke and mirrors behind good books. He said he'll post his slides on his website, here. It's full of good advice for new writers.

Anyway, here are my Top 10 insights from LTUE:

10) If you want your books to do well internationally, you might want to create characters from different races/backgrounds.

9) Part of the reason urban fantasy is so popular is because of its low learning curve. It's easier for readers to get into the world because everything's the same, except for one significant change, (IE, witches are real). Not everyone has the time or desire to understand the thick, complex otherworlds of your B.A.F.S.

8) Author Paul Genesse uses the Myers-Briggs personality archetypes to help shape his characters. Too technical for me, but I've never heard that method before. Probably because I put the I in INTJ.

7) From John Brown's Hunger Games lecture. Every single book only has a small audience. Even for big-time authors like Stephen King, while millions of people pick up his books, even more people hate him/don't read him. So whenever you write a book, your audience is going to be relatively small. Ergo, you should take other people's advice with a grain of salt NOT because they're wrong but because they might be the wrong target audience. (For example, Dan Wells and Brandon Sanderson weren't fond of Hunger Games because they'd seen the story before, while the teenage audience that carried it to NYT bestseller status hadn't been exposed to The Most Dangerous Game/Battle Royale. My younger brother hates Wheel of Time and G.R.R.M.)

6) New authors are frequently advised to put their characters in pain. In response to a question, "How dark is too dark?" James Dashner said that too dark is when a character's pain is meaningless. You can torture your character, but don't do it for no reason. I asked a similar question to Brandon Sanderson in his class. I asked, "How do you create a necessary sense of progress while also making your characters face miserable amounts of set-backs?" The answer was to give your characters successes with one hand and kidney punches with the other.

5) From Dave Farland's lecture: When it comes to editing, don't try to tackle everything in the first go-around. He separates his own editing process into multiple stages. I know I waste too much time with line/syllabic editing early on, so it's advice I should listen to. The problem is, I never do.

4) To quote John Brown: "Manure is Gold. Cherish your crappy ideas." In a brainstorming session, we looked at stereotypical, boring ideas and turned them into interesting ones. We were dealing with ghosts. I think my favorite two were, "Ghost Labor Unions" and "A People-Whisperer" (ie, the only ghost in a ghost society who can talk to people). Either of these could make an interesting book. I came up with the idea of a ridiculous Pro-Wrestler's ghost. Think of Hulk Hogan's ghost haunting an arena, trying to scare people. Go on. Try not to laugh.

3) There's a reason big totalitarian governments are so common in dystopian stories. Because a) they make sense from a world-building perspective, since tyrannical govts logically arise after great economic/social stresses. b) they create easy sympathy with the character, because an all-oppressive government turns them into an instant underdog. If you want your novel to have the same sort of menace but don't want to use a government, find something else that has that same atmosphere of oppression. I like this advice because it transcends genres. Threats to your heroes should always feel oppressively, well, threatening.

2) Turning old tropes on their head can be good advice, but consider your audience. Larry Correia's wife got sick of goody-goody Tolkein rip-off elves, so he created "Trailer Park Elves" for his book, Monster Hunters International. But Dan Wells once pitched a story about vampires who were a twist on the trope because they were total, absolute losers and was told that you can't sell novels about vampires who...uh, suck...to an audience that loves vampires. So the advice is be original, but know your audience too.

1) Some babies have really big lungs. Seriously, lungs must make up half an infant's weight. I can't think of any other reason so much sound can exude from something so small.

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WoT pumpkins, a good query

Posted by Unrepentant Escapist


November 8, 2010 -- 2:50 p.m.


Love these Wheel of Time pumpkins by LynnKitty (from Brandon Sanderson's Tweet page). Very well carved!

In other news, it's NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I'm not participating because I'm in the middle of the book which is the trickiest part so I don't mind if it goes a little slowly. But maybe I will next year.

There was a bit of a comment flurry on Evil Editor's page about writing query letters before your work is done. Personally, I always write my query before I'm done, sometimes before I start writing the book. It's a way of giving myself direction and nailing down the book's selling points/voice.

NOTE: I didn't say I sent the queries before I finished writing. I just have one for personal reference so every time I get yanked off on a subplot that doesn't matter, I can go back to the query and say, okay, am I taking away from these promises I've made in the query? Or does this entertaining tangent add and make the story better?

While query letter writing comes naturally to me--it involves the same skills I learned in journalism school--hook, summarize, explore consequences. In newspaper writing, we have a thing called "inverted pyramid" which means you have to pick the most important/interesting issue in whatever you're exploring and put that first, then sort all the other facts out also based on their importance/interest, with the goal being to NOT let the reader stop reading until they reach the end of the article (the least interesting part). But I think most people don't have that summarizing/sorting training, so that's why they have a hard time figuring out how to write a good query letter. Wow, I used far too many /'s in that paragraph.

Anyway, the best example I think I've ever seen of turning a bad query into a stunningly good query is HERE. The transformation is incredible--one of these books sounds boring, and one of them I would yank off the shelf in a heartbeat. And she points out exactly what she did wrong at first--create a laundry list of plot points, without making them interesting to us. Most authors tell you that interest comes from conflict, which is true, but it also comes from caring about a character. As far as I've been able to see, most bad queries fall into two categories: Too much information about a character's background, and not enough about what they're doing, and too much information about plot, and nothing about why it should matter to us. I'm not going to link to examples of horrible queries because they might end up as big name authors and ridicule me one day, but I think if you go to Evil Editor's site, or read through the listings at Query Shark, you'll quickly see what I mean.

I had a dream three nights ago that I needed to make a change to my query for my fantasy novel. That it was crucial for me to add a third paragraph containing more plot information. And I knew exactly how to word it and everything. Unfortunately, when I woke up, I forgot everything. Since my query rate is 25% positive responses, I'm not sure if I should mess with a winning formula or not, but my subconscious insists on it, so perhaps I'll pull it out and look at it again.

Anyway, I'm not going to have a writing prompt, but you might want to try writing a query for your current project and see if it doesn't give you a clearer picture of your work. Plus, then you can sit on it for awhile and perfect it, while you're perfecting your manuscript. My query for Skin Farm was pretty stinky at first, but now I like it...even if it's probably too short on details. Because I'm definitely trying not to fall into the third query trap I didn't mention: Too much world background--a disease that strikes almost every fantasy writer at some time in their lives. Pity these poor creatures, for they know not the boredom they cause.

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CONduit Report

Posted by Unrepentant Escapist

June 3, 2010 -- 12:16 a.m.

Well, it's Weds. somewhere, right? I got caught up in some expected yardwork today when the sprinkler system went down, so this post's a little late. But here it is...

Ah, CONduit. The Salt Lake City Con where you can attend a writing panel on How to Get published, stay for a belly-dancing performance and learn the basics of detecting paranormal activity...all in a single night. This year's theme was space pirates. There's such an ecletic mix of gamers, artists, anime fans and writers, if you go to CONduit and don't come home with at least one new friend...it's probably your deoderant.

Of course not everyone's friends are as cool as the Dread Pirate Roberts. But hey, you can't all be as awesome as me. Relax. Don't strain yourself. We wouldn't want to be setting the bar too high now, would we?

Anyway, I had a lot of fun. I even introduced myself to some new authors who's advice I have been listening to for a couple years now, and found out that Larry Corriea and John Brown are every bit as nice as they seem to be. And Provo Library doesn't carry a copy of Larry Correia's book, FOR SHAME! Some regular faces were absent (I missed Howard Taylor's jokes) and some of the local authors didn't stay long, but I still went home with a belly-full of advice and a bucket-full of motivation. I chucked out about 40 pages of text on Skin Farm yesterday (and by chucked out, I mean typed out. How much is decent enough to merit staying in the book, we'll see). Brad Torguson recognized my face from previous conventions and came to talk to me and introduce himself without prompting. I also managed to avoid all Lost spoilers, miracle of miracles. I'm still a season behind, grumble.

My question of the con was: How do you deal with form rejection? And boy, these authors had experienced a lot of it. I didn't quite ask every author there, but the ones I missed I'm sure would have had the same advice. Keep your chin up. Work hard. Throw stuff at the wall. Something's bound to stick eventually.

In some ways, there were a lot of depressing moments at the con, because some of the authors haven't had much upward career movement since last year. Barbara Hambly, our guest speaker, has had a whole ton of success over the years--our library has a shelf almost dedicated to her exclusive use. But after she'd "made it", quit her day job, worked full time as an author for decades, she ended up getting chucked out by her publishers (and this time, I do mean thrown out) and forced to find a job at the time in her life when many people start contemplating retirement. So...you can make it, and still not be safe from the terrors of the 9-to-5.

The funny thing is, the community college she's teaching at wouldn't let her teach creative writing, because she didn't have a masters in English. Ha!

Anyway, a lot of advice we got was the kind of thing you've heard before...ie, don't send your query letter on perfumed paper, or dark paper...(part of me groans at people's ignorance)...but there was some new stuff too, like that sometimes the "no submissions" policy at publishers is just a shield and if you send a manuscript to someone anyway, you might get a bite with comments. Not something I'll try unless I have a few Writer's of the Future awards under my belt, but interesting nonetheless.

Barbara Hambly--who is a really interesting woman, she talked about her ghost sightings and her student's reactions to her numorous tattoos--advised me to start with character when writing a historical novel and then work outward, since I'm finding the whole historical setting bigger than I can chew. She also told me her WoW server (not mine, alas) and that she plays on Thursdays.

Another thing: One of the distinctions between M.G. and Y.A. involves spheres of influence. In a M.G. book, the biggest influence on a main character tends to be family. Often kids saving their parents or having to make due without their parents or fighting their foster parents or wishing they had parents, etc. In Y.A., that influence has shifted over to friends. It's less about family and more about that cute boy with the locker three feet left of the girl's bathroom. Friends in trouble that need rescuing instead of parents. Anyway, I'd never thought of it that way before.

I also learned there's a new subgenre called "New Adult" which is for college-aged folks. Not quite adult, not quite young adult. I'm not sure how you'd go about marketing such a thing and whether its a viable sub-genre since college kids are pretty much adults, but it'll be interesting to see if it develops. I can see how there are some unique "college" issues that would make for great reading. I haven't seen a shelf for it in bookstores, but it's been awhile since I went walkabout in a Barnes and Noble.

James Daschner also told me not to worry that I've missed the bandwagon with post-apocalyptic. They're still hot, which is good because I hope to get queries out on Skin Farm by Christmas.

Anyway, I went to readings, a Wheel of Time panel, and other events, and saw pirates and armed knights carrying signs "WILL FIGHT DRAGONS FOR FOOD." James Daschner gave me a copy of the first few chapters of the sequel to Maze Runner (signed) which made me squeal a little. I squealed a lot when Brandon Sanderson told me the first Wheel of Time signing for Towers of Midnight will be at BYU again this year. I'm picking out my sleeping bag already, you losers. That #1 signed copy is MINE!!!

But more importantly, I came home with so many story ideas, I'm not sure what to do with them all. I'm beginning to wonder if I might not actually be a secret Y.A. author in disguise. I think of myself as gritty, but Y.A.'s gotten pretty gritty of late, and most of the characters that spring into my mind are young, if not high school aged. Probably because I am trapped into a perpetual state of immaturity. There would be some advantages--Y.A. authors are less penalized for genre-romping, so I could write historical fantasy and dystopian science fiction under the same pen-name--as well as a wider audience and bigger paychecks. Sounds good to me.

Next year's COnduit will be superhero themed. The guest is Tamora Pierce. They've already got the website up for next year. I've never read anything by her, but I like some of her book titles. I find myself scratching my head and wondering where to start. Usually I study an author's career in chronilogical order but reading 26 books by the same author is a little dauting.

UP FRIDAY: Double book review! The Lies of Locke Lamora and Paper Mage.

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Updates

Posted by Unrepentant Escapist

May 18, 2010 -- 12:06 a.m.

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

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