Jenn's World

Too. Awesome.

After re-reading the Wheel of Time FAQ, I have changed my mind as to who killed Asmodean.

It was Bela.

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And probably Graendal. Although I still think it would have been cool if Mazrim Taim or his controller hired Slayer to take out Asmodean so Taim could take his place as Rand's teacher and gain his trust. And when Slayer said the Dark One himself had called on his services, well, who else but to take a Forsaken? It would have been cool, but I don't think that's what happened. And Demandred's alter-ego is, apparently according to interviews, not someone we've met on-screen yet. Which is dumb.

You know you love a world when it can invoke so much rage in its readers.

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In other news, I apparently may not patent my catchphrase "throw the back against the wall." Someone else got to it first.

Tv Tropes is a wonderfully interesting website to explore, if you haven't already. Basically it covers tropes in television, movies, literature, video and table top games. Not to criticize the tropes, but to explain them. It has some beautiful terminology and I love the comprehensive links system. From contemptible covers to growing the beard to "Not Using the Z word," this has loving references to all the tropes we know and love. You can search by trope or by book/movie/whatever to discover all sorts of interesting stuff. Great time-waster! I love it! Be warned...you can get lost in this for hours...and it is definitely not WWJS (What Would Jesus Surf?). Especially the outside links, including some to...erotic Care Bear fanfic.

Ah, Grumpy Bear. You should be ashamed of yourself.

However, as a writer, you walk away from the site a sense of depression. Because YOU CANNOT ESCAPE THE TROPES. Nothing you ever do will ever be original. Ever.

I also got queasy after reading the 'unfortunate implications' page. I'm trying to do some interesting things with race in my books, but it gives me nightmares sometimes what someone reading about 'savage Dark Elvs' and the slavery of dark-skinned Lomari mages by the light-skinned humans (albeit after generations of the dark-skinned Lomari enslaving the light-skinned humans) will think after reading it. The end point of the book is that NO ONE RACE in this world is right and pure and perfect, and that its a semi-ironic take on the normal fantasy, especially of Elvs (ie, Our Elvs are better and the Noble Savage concepts). But I can see how some things can be misinterpreted.

Well, any press is good press. Right? Right?

It would be incredibly ironic if, when I write book solely on my desire to have brown-skinned female wizard protagonists (not as unique as I thought), I end up killing the same book because it accidentally comes off really racist. Well, at least she isn't a staff chick.

Ah, the overwrought conscience of a politically correct liberal.

On the plus side, I got 100 pages of revision done. The middle of my book is mostly dialogue so the pages just kind of fly by. I'm doing them over again, of course, and I'm going to try and add some more depth, and wondering whether some parts fit the rule of cool or its just me. Albeit not of the sexual and more of the bright shiny explosions variety.

So...Yeah.

I'm not a creepy person, but I do have creepy dreams. I view them as an asset. The only way I can come up with anything original is through dreams. It's hard to force my mind to go down anything but the well-worn paths of literary cliche otherwise.

Anyway, I dreamed I went to Brandon Sanderson's house to ask him about something unimportant, and I accidentally stole a copy of the new Robert Jordan book (I thought he had my copy of 'Fires of Heaven'). The cover was really weird--kind of this paisley wallpaper pattern with a burning phoenix at the bottom, but with no title/author/blurb on the front or anything. When you opened it, you found out its title was "Randiland" (not Randland) and it only had six chapters, and all of them variations of the word Rand.

When I started reading, the ink was so faded on some pages you couldn't see anything and then there were all these copy-editing marks in cursive handwriting so scribbly it was impossible to understand. When I gave the book back to Brandon, he kept asking me which signing I was coming to and refused to believe I wasn't from Salt Lake. Then he had me babysit his nudist roommates' kids.

Then we went to the mall to attend a lecture on Santa Clause, but when when we were sitting in this big Christmas-decorated lecture hall/movie theater, a 12-year-old black girl came up to me and accused me of using the "N-word" to insult her when we'd both been in elementary school, and I denied doing any such thing but Sanderson thought I was a racist and so left in a huff, except he reappeared when I was doing some sort of group therapy/conflict management thing with this black girl. And when I pointed out to her and her mother that I couldn't possibly be the same person because I was, you know, 14 years older than this child and so I couldn't have been in elementary school with her, but Sanderson told me I should apologize anyway because, since the universe is full of infinite possibilities, an alternate version of me from an alternate universe had probably done it in that universe, so clearly I had some race issues to work out.

Normally, I only share my dreams when they have something to do with writing but this one was so bizarrely entertaining...

Of course, if you don't have the context that I dream weird dreams about everything, and this was actually kind of mild for my subconscious, you probably view me as the kind of creepy person you should tell your kids to stay away from. Especially if you're Brandon Sanderson.

Oddly, it's one of a string of Brandon Sanderson/Robert Jordan book dreams. Obviously, my subconscious is terribly excited about the release. And I had been thinking before bed about what I would do if I were in control of the publicity for the Gathering Storm book tour, who would need to be approached, how to make the non-fanboy press understand the importance/significance of the events, etc. It would be a fascinating process to watch and it would give me ideas for what I would need to do on my own tour, if I ever have one.

Incidentally, its my 26th birthday today, although I refuse to admit it in public.

I'm putting a plug out for John Brown's book, coming out next week from Tor. I met him at a couple of writer's workshop and he had some really useful things to say. In fact, I credit one of his classes with helping me figure out the ending to my book. Without him...well, who knows?

Anyway, we had a fun brainstorming session where we took an item/trope/setting/etc. and thought about all the things associated with it. And then, we came up with those things opposites. In this case, we picked Pirates. Our pirates turned out to be 12-year-old girls on a living monster ship who were very clean, very nice and weren't looking for treasure but the way to help their monster ship home.

Anyway, he's a writers of the future winner, and how can you go wrong with the title "Servant of a Dark God?"

The first few chapters are up on his website for pdf download. I haven't read them yet, but I'll probably get to them tonight.

October 4, 2009 -- 10:04 p.m.

My novel wasn’t giving me an ulcer. It was swine flu. I spent two days throwing up whenever I moved and three days recovering.

I hate it when I can’t write. It’s like a burning inside, if the words get stopped up too long. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to go a whole week, except when I’m on vacation, without writing something—articles, essays, poetry, journal entries, debate cases… It’s an addiction I am unable/unwilling to break.

So that explains why I spend so much time writing. But why do I spend so much time reading fantasy and science fiction? The obvious explanation—I have an easier time relating to fictional characters than real people my age, whose concerns seem to circle entirely around television, music and the opposite sex—I was thinking about it the other day, and I wondered if I were different than others who read the genres. Since mostly, I read fantasy, I’ll stick to that for today. Why do you read fantasy? I distilled it into the following:

1) Escapism, pure and simple. Real life is dull. You push paper. You make mistakes. But it doesn’t really affect the world that much. Nothing changes, no matter what happens. Life goes on.

Fantasy characters don’t usually spend their day struggling to get out of bed trying to figure out why it matters if they go to work today. They don’t spend their day in an office reading email. What they does actually matters. They have a unique ability to shape their worlds, and that makes me envy them and love to read them. Epic struggles of good and evil sound much more interesting than the woes of the cubicle. The fantasies where the character moves through the world and nothing changes are usually the ones that fade from memory quickly.

Some people won’t admit reading for the escapism, or try to ‘pooh pooh’ it, especially among the literary elite. I have enough of a Marxist bent (specifically, the part about how, when people are removed from their work in the process of mass production, they become less individually fulfilled—if there’s nothing physical and concrete that they can point to and say “I did that,” workers become depressed) to believe that escapism will become more and more necessary in the future.

The fact is, it’s merely the flavor of the escapism you choose: whether you escape into the lives of your TV friends, or the romance of romance, or even in non-fiction, escaping to the interesting lives of people who did move and shake the world. Ditto with literary fiction.

2) Characters: Something about the epic nature of fantasy makes for truly unforgettable characters. I can’t remember most of the people, even the so-called “great characters” that populate literary fiction, but I’ll never forget the characters in the fantasies I grew up with. I read Dragonlance for Raistlin and Tasslehoff. I read Wheel of Time for Nynaeve, Mat and the Forsaken. I read Tigana for Dianora. I read the Cycle of Fire and Ice for Daenarys and Tyrion (I would mention more favorite characters but…they all got killed off.).

That’s why my preference skews toward character-driven fantasy, and epic fantasy series in particular, because there’s so much opportunity (often admittedly squandered) for strong characters who grow and change.

It’s funny because I have three character “types” that I love seeing over and over again. And I don’t really care that I’ve seen them before, that they’ve become staples of the genre. They are: The big, baaaad wizards (male or female, though I usually prefer male depictions because female evil wizards tend to be sexualized to the point of laughter or end up being conquered/redeemed by the power of luuuuuv.); the strong female protagonists who have to FIGHT for frickin’ everything (this can go to males too, but females usually have an extra layer of difficulty in their quests, an extra layer of threat—but if stuff comes too easily, well, they’re not worth reading about); and the lovable mischief-maker/outcast who sees the world through a different, humorous perspective. And, naturally, they all have to be intelligent.

If a book doesn’t have one or more of these characters types, it’s unlikely to hold my interest. I think that’s why it took me so long to finish Lord of the Rings. The women…well, aren’t really there. The big bad wizard…isn’t a viewpoint character (they have to be POV characters so their evil justifications make sense). And the mischievous Bilbo (the birthday party is actually one of my favorite parts of the books—though I might be the only one who liked it) gets sidelined right at the beginning. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was wonderful, incredible, earthshaking… but if Sam had been “Samantha,” I probably would have finished it the first time I set out to read the trilogy, and not the third.

So is it any surprise my characters are almost exclusively evil wizards, female underdogs, and mischievous renegades with dark senses of humor? I have a hard time writing anyone else. They bore me.

3) Concept: The third thing I read fantasy for is the concept. Villains by Necessity has an interesting concept: the villains are the heroes. Tigana has an interesting concept: what’s in a name? Is it worth dying for? Robert Jordan has an interesting concept: what happens when the savior of the world is also batshit crazy?

Intrigue me, engage my intelligence. Science fiction has usually been the province of “If”, but I believe fantasy can make an equally good case at it, usually from a softer social sciences perspective. Oddly enough, my some of my favorite science fiction stories (we by the Russian, Zamyatin, Brave New World, Farienheit 451) are dystopian because I love the “what if” so much.

Escapism and thought are not mutually exclusive. In sci-fi/fantasy, they blend in a near-perfect balance, at least for this reader.

Note, none of what I said, except for the big bad wizards, involves magic. Which is why, for the first time in my life, now that I’m trying to bang out a real magic system with rules and everything, I find it so very difficult. Most of the fantasy books of my childhood skewed toward D&D classic magic. It’s there. You can use it in limited ways, usually to blow things up. You don’t need to explain it or its rules. (Aside—I wonder why, in a genre supposedly directed to nerd readership, its so often the warriors—the jocks of the Fantasy world—who direct the plotline, while wizards, the ULTIMATE nerds who actually need books for their power and are usually skinny runts—are relegated to sidekick/mentor/bad guy. I’d think you’d have a bunch of good wizards triumphing over evil warriors, not the other way around).

So trying to focus on something that matters very little to me, like magic, which I view as somewhat of a plot aid to hang the character/concept on, is very difficult. But I believe magic should have rules and stringent limitations, so it’s something I have to do. Brandon Sanderson has a rule I like: An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic. So, the power well-explained/detailed the magic system, the more you can do with it. Otherwise, it robs the reader of some satisfaction—oh, magic was the key to everything all along! Yay! It becomes too easy.

I’d add a corollary—as long as the bad guys can match the good guy, things are okay. It’s when a nebulous magic system or law allows a triumph that things become frustrating and the reader feels cheated—like if a good wizard faces an evil wizard and a good wizard develops a new power suddenly when the bad guy doesn’t. As long as the villain can match it, its all right by me. For example, we don’t understand Moiraine’s limitations in the Eye of the World, but we do see that the bad guys can match and overcome her, so that’s okay.

Anyway, Sanderson’s good at writing magic systems. I’m good at characterization. I’ll borrow his advice, but I’ll stick to what I do best and won’t develop my magic as fully as he has, just because I find writing and explaining all the rules incredibly tedious.

It’s actually kind of scary to me, thinking about fans who might expect me to develop a real language, with grammatical rules and everything, instead of pulling words out of the air for the First Speech that I think sound cool.

Is it natural for someone to be good at writing what they like to read? Is there anything you’ve ever been good at writing that you hate reading?

Busy, busy, busy. I'm behind on everything.

The party went all right, a few people came and I had some nice conversations. No one came prepared to swin, so my swimsuits were a moot point. They arrived Monday and I love them.

The novel's going in circles. I've been reduced to removing and replacing words like "that" that I removed only a little while ago. Oh, the agony!

I've decided that I'm going to stew and wallow in the minutiae of commas and split infinitives unless I set a proper deadline. So, on a whim, I've decided that I will send it to people, ready or not, when I get the new Robert Jordan/Brandon Sanderson book on Oct. 27. The prologue for a Gathering Storm is for sale on Tor.com. The first chapter is free though, if you register. (Link is here). I just found it so I'm just reading it, so I can't comment on it. It looks like they continued the tradition of adding a paragaph of description to the "wind thing" per book. I have a sense that when I read it, I'll feel lukewarm no matter how well-written it is. The idea of someone else writing his books...

No offense to Brandon. I'm sure he understands. I can't imagine how he sleeps at night, I'd be so nervous. Will the fans like it? Will they hate it? It's a big, huge thing for his career either way. I wish him luck.

I'll get used to the idea, I'm sure. I was thinking that next year will be the Wheel of Time's 20th birthday. Oh my.

Anyway, I'll be there in the BYU bookstore signing. I'm applying to be one of the volunteers, but if I'm not, I might try to be first in line. I wonder how early I'd have to get there? I wonder how many other people will think of the same idea? I wonder whether or not the bookstore has plugs so I can put the finishing touches on Godsplay as I wait.

But that gives me about a month to get things hashed out. I'm trying to "lock down" a chapter a day. I'm putting my foot down and saying "no more revisions." Unless I need some earthshaking plot change or something, that is. But no more changing "he intoned" to "he said" and then changing my mind and putting it back again. And changing it again. And again.

Sigh.

Well, I've locked down the prologue and the first two chapters, which are now 1) Rachell meeting the Elv and 2) Sathain plotting. Tomorrow or Sunday I will try to lock down chapter 3) Rachell dreaming. Then comes 4) Thaya getting brain sucked. So that's the new order since the workshop. Necessary, because I threw such huge chunks of description in there. Everything lengthens.

I still feel a little nervous about the book's ending. I wonder if I made a mistake by limiting myself by word count. Maybe I should go for the gold and try for the 300,000 word novel, as long as every word is delectable and irresistible. Good sense, or my original vision? What should I do?

I was also thinking about Robert Jordan's vision for the scope of his series. How much did he plan out and how much did he wing it? The foreshadowing in his novels indicates he had a lot of stuff done in advance (can you imagine remembering every vision you foreshadowed for decades of writing? I'd probably forget and leave stuff out of my books). I don't, which makes me nervous. Stephen King didn't work from outlines. I'm kind of in the middle. I'm do outlines for a book but not the series. Because the plot of Godsplay was too big to fit in one 100,000-size book, it will get split into at least two, so I know what happens in this one and the next one, but after that?

I don't know. I have no clue. I'm lost in the dark. I wonder if I'm not giving myself the space to work, if I'll accidentally write myself into a corner I can't get out of later because I don't know what tools I'm going to need in the future. If I suddenly die, my readers are going to be screwed because I don't know what's going to happen.

Most people would say: don't invite trouble. How about you worry about getting one book done before you worry about the third?

Of course, that would be sensible. But human beings are not.

In order to save space, I ripped out the quotations of the Gods having conversations in the beginning of each chapter. I liked them, but they weren't really adding anything to the plot. And I need space, not filler, and they were easy to stow away. I've got them saved, of course. Maybe I'll use them somewhere else. Another book. The conceit is just too beautiful.

Celebrating my birthday tomorrow, again, this time with the cousins/aunt and uncle. I'm trying to learn two songs to play on piano at my cousin's baptism, but I'm so out of practice. My wrists are sore from playing and typing. I'm not sure I'll make it. They're simple songs, but it's been 14 years or more since I played seriously. We'll see how it goes. Luckily, there's a backup if I flunk out.

In between all that, I've been reading a little. The problem with revision is that you have a hard time just reading for fun--I have this urge to read with red pen in hand and strike out all the unnecessary commas (one of my own vices, I know). But I still managed to relax and enjoy several books in the past month:

I try and read with an eye toward education so I can improve my writing, but Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth sucked me in. I loved almost every minute at it and was amazed by the amount of detail and research in it. I expected it to be dull, but it wasn't at all. If you have this on your "to read" list, I'd recommend bumping it up and doing it soon. I was deeply disappointed that Kingsbridge wasn't real--I wanted to visit the cathedral in person. If I learned anything from this book, it's that, if you write what you love, a subject that may seem deadly dull to some people can be very interesting. Though anything with religious politics will likely stir my interest. This was a historical novel as historical novels were meant to be written.

Next is Terry McGarry's "Illumination." This is a re-read for me. I enjoyed this book a lot the first time I read in and have ever since. It has one of the most unique magic systems I have ever encountered. How the author ever came of with it fascinates me. One of the best things about the book is that it has a fallible narrator. Ever hate the fantasy heroes who always succeed? Meet a stubbornly flawed heroine who's wrong more often than she's right. It's the first book of a series, but it stands alone on its own--it's sequel doesn't involve the same POV characters. I also took away from it that using lots of incomplete sentences is okay as long as the meaning is clear. McGarry has advice for aspiring authors on her website. I wonder if it's good luck having a name like Terry? It seems to have worked for certain other authors.

Finally, I have PastWatch, the Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card. I don't normally like time travel books, but this one worked for me. Another good historical book, though with less depth (anything has less depth than pillars of the earth). I liked the characterization of Christopher Columbus and the history. I wished he'd focused less on the science fiction and more on the past world, but that's just me and my obsession with history. It's always fun to see more international characters woven into his stories. What I learned from this is that two authors can approach a subject in completely different ways and there's space for both. Because, while I liked OSC's way, it made me think about a time traveling book where Columbus discovers time traveling people are out to get him--a thriller, rather than contemplative. I'd read them both and I'd own them both. Like vampire books--okay, most of them are quite similar, but if two authors put different spins on the work, I'll put both of them on my bookshelves. Which is good news for anyone nervous because they're writing about an idea that's been "done before" (ie, Arthurian Tales, Tolkein-style fantasy, etc.)

I also read Worlds of the Golden Queen from David Farland. It's always fun seeing fantasy pretending to be science fiction. I loved the bear character, he was my favorite. I thought the author did a really good job thinking about what it would mean to be a bear. The POV was totally real for me. I liked the ending of the first book, too. I didn't see the Maggie part coming. From this, I learned that I probably need to work on differentiating my POV characters more. A human would not think like a Lomari, even if they grow up in the same culture, side-by-side.

What else? Well, I've been watching Legend of the Seeker in Hulu. It's humorous how bad the acting is sometimes. I want to whack the scriptwriters and say "use contractions. Interrupt each other. Have them speak in not perfect grammar." You can pretty much guess what's going to happen, and the characters don't always act with perfect, logical consistency, but Richard Cypher's a cutie. It's best when it sticks to the books, and there are moments of genuine humor. I liked the episode with the "Grand Puppeteer". Zed is the best actor of the bunch, I think. I wonder if he looks so bug-eyed in real life. I wonder how Terry Goodkind came up with Zed Zul Zorander's name anyway. I like the sword fights. They're a big step up from Buffy/Xena type "whap/pow" tv combat.

I have to find a gift for my cousin tomorrow. I never put off shopping for presents like this. What's wrong with me? Like I said, I've been busy.

I think this damn book is going to give me an ulcer.

My computer's back from the shop with brand new, shiny anti-virus software. The novel's fine. I've started over from the beginning with the goal of packing it jam full of shiny new adjectives, too. I'm ignoring the word count and pretending that this novel won't balloon to 200,000 words in the process. Hopefully, it won't.

It feels so good to write again. To go back to a familiar world. My self-confidence has been kind of shot lately, I don't know why, so it's good to be back to things I'm actually good at.

In the meantime, my swimsuit hasn't come yet and there's another person throwing a birthday party at the exact same day as me, so I'm likely to end up with a lot of food and no guests. Oh well.

Low expectations are the key to happiness.

What have I been up to? Where does the time go?

Well, writing has been slow of late. I started re-reading the book from the beginning and was disappointed at how much better the beginning is than the middle/end. It feels fresher, more vibrant. Understandable, since I spent so long perfecting it--this must be my 3001st draft of Rachell running down the hillside. The earlier versions are so different its funny/amazing. I figured out that I need to bring the villains out a little more front and center--hard to do, since really the book is almost three separate sections in one, and each time the villain is different (oddly like Mercedes Lackey's early work tended to be--except darker and different in tone, theme, etc.). The main thing I think is I need to tune up the description in the later chapters. Dave's workshop encouraged me to slow down and add more description, but the further I got away from the workshop/the more pressed for words I was, the more bare things became. So I'm trying to overwrite and cut out later.

I find that I actually write better description when I'm zonked out because my mind goes strange, non-cliche places. So I edit during the day and write/describe at night.

But I think I'm going to have to go over it all AGAIN before I send it out to beta readers. So tack on another month's delay, alas. I love you for volunteering!

If there's anything to read, that is. I was shopping for swimsuits online--I'm having a big birthday bash to celebrate my 26th since I haven't been able to really celebrate my 24th or 25th (damn newspaper)--and I somehow managed to contract a nasty virus that's effectively killed my laptop. I don't know how--I didn't download anything, to my knowledge. Anyway, it won't let me open anything except for a window offering me anti-virus software. Ahh, modern day mafia tactics. Extortion in the digital age. Can't you see some nerd with bug-eye glasses bullying me for "protection" money?

Well, of course I said a few obscene words that were, shall we say, 'very descriptive'. I've been saving my novel to a flash drive so hopefully that's all right, but things like the word count comparisons, lists of repairs and possibly some scenes I wrote separately could be utterly lost. Including the end of the novel. Grumble.

I'm not too worried. Even if they can't drive away the malware, they can probably retrieve the word data. Maybe I'll take the opportunity to replace my laptop with one that works better.

Other than that, I've been job searching. I might get a job running a flight simulator for a star trek space center thing here in Utah. It looks fun. I get to work with kids and computers. Unfortunately, it would mean a half hour commute and waking up early on days I had flights.

At least, after all the trouble I went through, I found my new swimsuit for my big pool party. The link is here. Though I almost bought this one or this one. Who'd ever think I'd have to order a size large? Asian sizing for you, I suppose. Anyway, it's free shipping today at this site so if you want to order anything, do it today! I love the wedding dresses--I wonder how my family would react if I showed up to my wedding in fire engine red.