Lawyer and Writer

The last three weeks I have:
- Travelled to California
- Met wolves and had one lick my face
- Been a bridesmaid in one of the first legal LGBT weddings since the Prop 8 decision
- Travelled to Texas
- Fed antelope
- Melted in the hot Dallas sun
- Returned home
- Finished the second read-through of OtherWhere

Next week should mean more regular updates!

Just a quick update today.

I discovered Coursera. As I understand it, the courses are done online, are completely free (or have a small free) and are actually taught by real University professors from places like Harvard, University of Tokyo, University of Melbourne, or my alma mater, University of British Columbia, and many more.

I've signed up for courses ranging from Intro to Computer Science 101, to Nutritional Science, to something about Fantasy and Science Fiction.

If you complete the course and pass you don't get a diploma, but you can get a completion letter from the professor, which could be of assistance in getting into a university program in the future. Or you can just do it for the sake of learning.

I'll report back when I've tried it! My first course is Nutrition, Health, and Lifestyle: Issues and Insights, and it starts on May 6th.

Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration, but the last two months have been pretty terrible for my writing productivity, and my blog productivity.

Things I've accomplished:

1. A huge amount of lawyering work, making no dent in the ever-rising pile on my desk in my office.

2. My very first multi-day Supreme Court trial. Which was as stressful as you might expect. Which is extremely. I didn't get any writing done for the week before, or the actual week of, the trial.

3. Getting so deathly ill from the flu, that I discovered the downside of working with my wife is when she gets even sicker than I am, and then there's no one healthy to work. Especially since I had that trial I mentioned. Remember the ever-rising pile? Yeah.

Thankfully, my Mom flew back from Arizona and worked while Miko recovered and I worked a trial.

Counteracting the guilt is a few facts:

1. I am only 3 chapters from the end of the first draft of Dale Shephard and the Bug Aliens from Outer Space. This is definitely the fastest I've finished a novel. I normally wind up taking months off at a time, which makes it take a long, long time. But I started this novel in November, and now I expect to get it done in early March.

2. Soon (probably this week), I will be doing an interview about Mortis Unbound at Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing, one of my favourite writing podcasts. I'll announce and link when it happens! I'm very excited and slightly nervous.

3. I started editing OtherWhere, my technothriller murder mystery about an MMORPG. And it doesn't suck so far. Also exciting.

I really hope March is less crazy than February, January, and heck, December were.

I was going to do just a basic update today, but then I thought I'd talk about something that I've been struggling with lately, and add a bit of an update at the end.

I'm a multitasker. It's something I'm pretty good at. I'm capable of writing while doing something else - like talking to people over instant messenger and keeping up on my twitter feed, even with the television on in the background, so long as it's not a terribly engaging show.

I'm also a very fast writer, I think, compared to many people. If I focus and do nothing else, I can pump out 1000 new words in 15-20 minutes. And they're generally decent words.

Over the years, I've gotten really lazy with this. If I spend the entire evening switching between writing and other tasks, I can still pump out a good 1000 words, but it's in snatches. A paragraph, then check my email. Another few words, then I respond to a message. This is not a good way to write. I feel like I've spent the whole night working and not accomplished much, and the writing never flows and gets going - it feels like a chore.

Last October, we moved from a one-bedroom apartment into a three-bedroom townhouse. I finally had a desk, an office, for the first time, literally, in my entire writing career. I literally did all of my studying for law school on my bed. I wrote on my sofa, or my bed, or at a coffee shop, all these many years.

In November, I did NaNoWriMo for the 10th time, and I was determined to hit that 50,000 words, since I hadn't managed it for a few years. It had been a long time since I was really able to keep up with my 1000 words a day goal that I used to break routinely (mostly because law school took up so much time I used to spend writing) I made a pact with myself that I would go to the office, turn off the internet and write until I had done my 2000 words each day.

It worked fabulously. I had some 3000 and even 4000 word days, and even though I took some full days off, I beat NaNoWriMo long before the end of the month.

After so many years of telling myself that I was still being productive if I spent an entire evening "writing" and struggling to make 500 words in a night, I was often easily passing my 2000 mark in an hour.

Then I got lazy again. Sure, I could write that much, but did I need to retreat to my office when I could hang out with my friends online and still get some progress?

Well, the answer is, yes. I really should.

Since November, I really haven't been that productive. I've had days when I was productive, especially on weekends, and many - too many - nights when I really didn't accomplish much at all. It's just so hard to tear myself away from the internet when it's sitting right there, so shiny, begging to be looked at.

So a couple of days ago, I pulled out my netbook. I stopped using it after I graduated from school, and got myself a new laptop that's got a lot more memory, allowing me to multitask to my heart's content. The netbook chokes if I try to run firefox and liquid story binder at the same time.

It's perfect.

When it's time to write, I head upstairs, plug my iPod into the speakers on the shelf (the netbook chokes on iTunes, too) and close the door. The netbook is so tiny that I have plugged a keyboard into it, and I'll be purchasing a simple usb mouse as well. I have Dropbox, so all of my files are automatically shared between my laptop and my netbook, so I don't have to worry about version issues or file transfer problems. I can write on my laptop (and do) but on the netbook there's little temptation to multitask because it becomes so frustrating to try to run more than one program at a time.

My productivity is so good in this setup that in an hour or so I've reached my goal. And then I can go have fun or even spend the night continuing to try to write-while-multitasking, without guilt. Today I wrote for an hour and got over 2000 words.

The lesson I've taken from this is, it really is worth it to do a few things to maximize your productivity and create a good space to work in. I might want to spend an evening relaxing with my friends online, but if I know I only have to take fifteen minutes or half an hour and I'll be able to do that guilt free, it's much easier to take that time and do it. It doesn't have to be forehead bleeding for the whole night, after a full eight-hour workday, if you can get yourself into the right mental space and really focus.

Obviously there are nights when it doesn't flow, and I could bash my face against the keyboard all night and still not manage to accomplish much. But if I get myself in the zone, without anything to distract me, the chances of accomplishing something go up substantially.

What do you do to get yourself into the proper frame of mind to write? How do you eliminate distractions?

---

For the promised update, I'm continuing to work on The Dreaming, and it's going at a good clip. I completed Chapter 19 today and started on Chapter 20. There are 27 chapters in my outline, and I've gotten through some pretty tricky emotional scenes, so I'm exited to get into some pure action adventure stuff, which will be dominating the next little bit. I've gotten to know my characters, as well, which feels wonderful. When I get into Sam's head, it really flows. Of course, he's a lawyer, so he's verbose. I'm probably going to have to cut a third of the words of this book, when I edit.

I also submitted a short story to an anthology today. I stumbled across the contest quite by accident, and since the short story I recently finished fit the criteria, I tossed it in. They had an option where I could pay about $10 to receive some feedback from the judges, regardless of whether I win or not, so I paid for that. Even if I don't win, it'll be interesting to hear what they have to say, so I'm looking forward to that.

My plan is to focus on Dreaming until I get The Sleeping Death back from my editor. My beta readers are also starting to trickle in with comments, though none of them are finished reading yet. Hopefully I can get all of their comments back around the same time as I hear from my editor, so I can incorporate all of the feedback at the same time.

And that's what I'm up to!

I've been meaning to do an in-depth post like this for a long time, and now I've had a couple of requests, so I'm going to bite the bullet and try to put my thoughts into order about this topic. I've done a tonne of research over the last couple of years, and there are many reasons why I've decided to self-publish, some financial, some not. I very much welcome discussion about this topic. It's a hugely timely issue for writers, as well as readers, and I think a lot of people don't really grasp the enormity of the issue.

My reasons break down into several categories, which can probably be summarized as: money, career planning, control, and trends. ( Read on for my reasons )

Though it may not be obvious from the silence around here, I've written several blog posts recently! I am working on a series about freelance editing and I want them all to be done before I post the first one, for various reasons, so stay tuned, I guess.

I've also been plugging away at my various projects. Yesterday, I updated my profile with more information about what I'm working on and the status of them, and I'm going to try to keep that information reasonably current.

I've selected my piece of artwork for the Reverse Big Bang on originalbigbang. I have to write a minimum 1000 word piece inspired by the artwork by May 22nd, so it's percolating around in my brain right now. I definitely have a few ideas and I'm making some notes, but I don't want to wind up writing something really long, so I'm letting it gel a bit before I sit down to write it. It's going to involve werewolves and time travel, I think.

This morning I found out about two fiction contests that I might enter.

The Canadian Authors Association is holding a Fiction Contest for fiction between 1000 and 2000 words, deadline October 10, 2012. The prizes range between $50 and $300 (though I don't understand why the second place prize is smaller than the first place...) and the winners get published in an anthology.

There's also the Surrey International Writer's Conference Writing Contest. There are several categories, but the Storyteller category is between 2500 and 5000 words, which is more of a range I can sink my teeth into compared to the CAA contest. Deadline for that one is September 14, 2012 and the winner gets $1000 and publication in the SIWC anthology.

I'm definitely going to enter the second one, and I might do a little something for the first one, too. I plan to go to SIWC this year if I can possibly afford it, and last time I went I didn't find out about the contest until it was too late.

I had some interest in this so I'm going to make an attempt to do something a little different. This is a bit of an experiment, so we'll see how it goes, and I may do more if people want to see more.

As you may know, I've been taking an editing course through Holly Lisle's Forward Motion Writer's Board for, um, a while now. Law school has stretched this out a lot longer than I would have liked! Forward Motion is a writing support forum, which I will review properly someday when I get around to it.

The course I'm doing is called How To Revise Your Novel. It's a 22-week course, and highly, highly recommended. I'm not even done, and the number of things I've learned about writing is staggering. Again, I'll do a proper review of the course at some point. It's definitely on my list. I just want to finish it first.

Anyway, in a nutshell, the course involves reviewing your novel multiple times, looking for various specific things, such as conflict, character consistency, pacing, etc. You fill out worksheets and make notes, and it's all very structured. In week 17, you finally take everything that you've learned about your novel, good and bad, and start actually revising it. Exciting!

So what I thought I would do is scan my first scene and post it for your edification/amusement and do a bit of a commentary on what I'm changing and why. If there's enough interest, I'd be willing to continue the commentary in future posts, too.

Keep in mind that this is going to look really rough. I'm doing the edits by hand, and I will type them all in later, so I apologize if you can't read some of my handwriting.

I've left the pictures as links to another page, because they're extremely large. If you want to be able to easily flip back and forth between the picture and the commentary without having to hit the back button, right-click on the link and select "Open Link in New Tab".

Page 1

As you can see from the crossed-out page number in the upper right-hand corner, this scene was originally page 135 of the manuscript. I was never happy with the original first scene, because I felt it started too slow and was too awkward in terms of revealing the world I have built, without info-dumps and irrelevant exposition. So after a lot of thought and poking around, I decided to pull this scene into the beginning, as a flash-forward. I help to indicate this by including a date at the top of this scene and subsequent ones, as well as indicating that it's the year 316 "After Breakthrough", which won't make sense yet, but will later.

I think it makes a far more intriguing first scene, introduces the main character, Liilan, and one of the main themes of the book, which is about Liilan's conflict between keeping his career intact, and searching out and reporting the truth, which is what journalists are supposed to be doing.

You'll see a lot of weird number codes in my draft. These are references to worksheets that I've filled out. Some of them refer to problems in the manuscript that I want to change (for example, [1Ba10 #8] at the top refers to an entry in a worksheet that points out that Liilan broke his cellphone in a previous scene, but now suddenly he has it. I solved this problem by deciding to make him not break his cellphone, and in fact I will be removing the whole thing that caused him to break it in the first place, because it related to a sub-plot that never went anywhere and which I am cutting from the book)

For plot reasons, I've decided that it's early winter, so I made it colder than it had originally been in the first draft. I also edited those middle paragraphs to account for the fact that the reader won't have read the scene before it, to introduce the existence of two characters, Mortis and Phames, without referring to events that would just confuse the reader.

I also mention that Phames is a vox, but I'm not explaining what that is, yet.

Page 2

On page 2, we introduce Salmo, Liilan's editor. Because this is now the first scene, so Salmo hasn't been seen before, I fiddled with his description. I also added a line to show how tired Liilan is, as he's been dealing with a lot of stuff over the last few days.

Originally when I wrote the first draft, I put all of the new words I invented in italics. This got tiresome pretty quickly, so I made a note to myself to remove the italics. I think this melds the Aerian language into the book more seamlessly, especially since the terms are used so much throughout the course of the book.

Again I fiddled with description to introduce concepts the reader was going to have to understand since this is the first scene of the novel, and removed references to Phames' safehouse, since I think this would be confusing at this stage of the book, and not really necessary. I added more description to show Liilan's been busy, not at work, and dealing with badness, even if the reader doesn't know what that badness is yet.

Also I should mention that in the original draft, Liilan had been shot it the leg before this. I decided that he shouldn't have been shot in that previous scene, so I am taking out references to his injury throughout this scene.

Page 3

The scene goes on with Liilan trying to give his boss the story of the century, and Salmo acting more and more weird and agitated. Liilan suspects far earlier than in the original draft that Salmo's turned on him, even though he doesn't want to believe it, because it's pretty obvious by this point that something is terribly wrong.

I also include a few references to the incredible - almost unbelievable - length of their friendship. Three centuries? How could anyone live that long?

I also had Salmo refuse to say the word 'dead'. Liilan says it for him, in fact, showing far less fear at the concept, and more acceptance of it. This suggests that there's something about death that Salmo is too terrified of to even mention, while Liilan is coming to accept it.

Page 4

The police finally strike, and Liilan's fears are realized. Instead of being totally shocked, he's angry at Salmo for betraying him, while Salmo is almost afraid of him. The police treat Liilan like a dangerous criminal, and it's clear that Salmo has his own problems that he was trying to avoid.

Page 5

The fight with the police officers continues on, with Liilan unable to do much, because he's a journalist, not a fighter, and there are lots of guys holding him. Also for some reason I kept referring to the van as a truck, so I fixed that.

And then the previously-mentioned Mortis and Phames appear - and they have wings. I describe the wings (again, because this is the first scene they haven't been described previously, and I want the reader to have a few extra seconds to notice that something weird is going on). And Mortis does something that shouldn't be physically possible. The police officers try to run, but Liilan thinks that that's pretty pointless - you can't outrun Death. Mortis is Death.

Page 6

Mortis actually has amnesia and doesn't know what she is (though by this point in the story, she's learned that she's the vox of death). In the original draft, she couldn't even remember her name, and Liilan gave her a new one, Umos. But the new-name thing never really was significant and she ultimately learned her real name and started using it, so I am removing all references to the Umos name.

I also decided because of the magical physics of this world that guns are pretty useless weapons. I was fairly inconsistent about the use of guns throughout the first draft, so I'm cleaning up any mention of them. So Liilan wasn't shot in that previous scene, and the police don't carry guns to shoot uselessly at Mortis. Liilan does get shot in this scene, though, by a sniper rifle. It shocks him that anyone would bother using a gun, but for the single shot, it's mortally effective, and we are left at the end of the first scene with a cliffhanger.

I hope you enjoyed this, and I'd welcome comments and feedback! What do you think of the scene so far? Does it intrigue you and would it make you want to read more? Or are the number of things I leave out to whet the appetite making it a little confusing?

Also if there's else anything that I've changed and you're curious why, please ask! I pointed out most of the major ones, but I'd be happy to discuss any of it. I have reasons for pretty much every word I've changed or added.

So the last time I updated was... Day 12. It's now Day 20. Go me. I am the slackiest.

I can't feel too bad, because I have been writing since then. I wrote about 8000 words since my last update, actually. But I just haven't really felt like writing blog posts afterwards, I guess.

In fact, I feel like I hit my Week 2 slump in Week 3 instead. No clue why. But I've only missed two days of writing since my last update, despite feeling...slumpish. I'm hanging on to my lead by the skin of my teeth, as well. My stats aren't looking quite as pretty on the site, but I am not behind, and that's important.

Also, I woke up this morning with an exciting idea that I think is going to break me out of the slump. I've been struggling with this whole section of the story for some reason, and I'm not entirely sure why. At least, I know that my centaur/psychologist character isn't interesting me nearly as much as I wanted him to, and I feel like at some point later I'll need to go back and jazz him up, make him more quirky and terrifying. So I guess that's a big reason why :/ But I think this idea will give me an opportunity to let this character flower into the terrifying mad scientist I originally envisioned, and I think that'll make it a whole lot more fun.

---

On another note, I've noticed that the timer thing in Liquid Story Binder is both motivating me and screwing me up at the same time. It's really quite fascinating.

If I'm committed to writing and get rid of all other distractions (like plurk, livejournal, rping, aim, etc.) I can write like the wind and the timer keeps me plugging away.

But if I don't feel like putting all those distractions away and instead I want to just pick away at writing, doing a few words here and there (which I know is bad bad bad but sometimes I want to do it anyway, because I'm a masochist and like making myself miserable, I guess) I hesitate to open LCB at ALL because I know the timer will be ticking away even though I'm not looking at it.

Even when I'm planning on doing a writing session with no distractions, I don't open LCB until I'm ready to drop everything and go, and sometimes that means I don't start writing until hours after I intended to, because I keep getting distracted, doing other things, without that window open and staring at me from my computer. I used to open Microsoft Word and just have it sit there while I did a bit of email and such, and then it would keep sitting there like "You were going to write, remember?" until I finally surrendered and went "Oh yeah...better...close my email and get to that".

None of this is coherent, I know.

--

When we last met our intrepid heroes, they had just been attacked by a horrible monster in a lake, and Damien left because things were getting too hot for him.

Sam and Kendra continued on their journey and passed the border into Zhen. This is a rather pretty country with lots of grassland and gently rolling hills.

And thunderstorms. Lots of them.

And also horrifying mutated creatures who try to capture them.

They run from the mutants, and Damien appears out of nowhere to distract them long enough to get out of Zhen and back across the border into Shun, where the mutants won't come. They rest for a bit, and decide to try flying over Zhen instead. They only have one broom, but Kendra has wings. She says if they rest frequently, and don't go too fast, they can make it. The broom definitely can't support the weight of all three of them (it can barely handle both Sam and Damien), and Damien wants to come, though he won't say why he's changed his mind.

So they try it, flying deeper into Zhen and avoiding the mutants, until Kendra calls for a break. Again the mutants show up and encircle them, cutting off their escape, but instead of attacking and eating them, one of the mutants explains that their King has requested their presence at the castle, and is offering them a place to rest and assistance on their journey.

Reluctantly, Sam, Kendra, and Damien climb into the coach that's provided for them, and are brought to the castle in the middle of Zhen. Damien manages to give everyone the slip, and Sam and Kendra are welcomed to Zhen by a majestic (if I bit oddball) centaur, quite different from the ones that Sam ran into way back in Chapter 1. His name is Blaise, and he looks exactly like Sam's psychiatrist at the hospital in the real world.

Back in the real world, we see Kendra and Landon coming to visit Sam again. Blaise the psychiatrist tells them that there's a problem - Sam won't wake up, no matter what they do. Something is very wrong, and he believes that Sam's mind is retreating from reality.

In the dream world, Sam and Kendra are offered assistance in getting over the Gen mountains, which lie on the far side of Zhen. They're also offered dry clothes and a meal and a night of rest. Though neither of them is comfortable here in this creepy stone castle, they agree to stay. It's not like they really have any choice.

So yesterday was my birthday. I received a new laptop, so I made the executive decision to spend the evening a) having a lovely dinner and drinks, and b) loading all of my files and programs onto my new laptop, instead of writing.

I can't say I regret that decision. But as of today I'd got all of my files transferred over, I've got Liquid Story Binder loaded up, and I was ready to go.

--

Today I decided to call Chapter 9 finished and add a new scene onto the beginning of Chapter 10, instead of continuing the longest scene ever. It had a pretty decent cliffhanger the way I had it, so I think it worked, and it meant that Chapter 10 starts with a bang.

Literally.

With a little smart thinking on Sam's part, Kendra manages to incapacitate their two guards. Then Kendra uses her magic to cause a lot of chaos, and Damien sneaks into the supply tent to rescue their things, his things, and their broomsticks.

They fly away, but are being pursued by an angry Thief King with powerful magic, and a whole lot of bowmen trying to bring them down. Obviously Anju doesn't want them dead, but she is trying to force them to land and come quietly, and is keeping the sky lit up with magical flame.

Sam remembers the amulet that had been used against Kendra to block her magic while she was being held prisoner. He's got it in his pocket, and he loops back, rides his broom straight at the spider Queen from hell, and drops it right onto her.

This causes her magic to fizzle, and the three escapees are able to lose their pursuers in the dark by heading in a different direction.

--

After I'd gotten that written - and in mid-sentence - I got interrupted by my roommate coming in to talk about some stuff he'd done tonight. I've got about 1920 words for the day, so I decided once he'd gone to bed, that I'd leave the rest for tomorrow night.

I have about 17,000 words now, and I'm still well ahead of the necessary pace. Week two seems to be going well so far! I usually have a really hard time motivating myself to write in the second week, and I did feel a little bit of that malaise tonight, but I forced myself to get going, and it went well. I just have to keep on myself and not let myself get distracted.

Welp, today I came back to Dreaming, refreshed and ready to tackle it again after my break. I had a sort of tentative goal of 5000 words for today, but I didn't get started until late, had an interruption in the form of houseguests for an hour, and then hit a slight wall when I realized I wasn't exactly sure how I wanted to do the next bit and needed to have a bit of a think. So I topped out a little over 3000 words for the day.

I still feel really good about it, though XD 5000 words in one day is something I've only managed a couple of times. It was an ambitious goal and I'm happy with 3000, which puts me over 10,000 words for the month so far.

--

Today I wrote Chapter 8, which turned out to be pretty short. The first bit is from Sam's best friend, Landon's, POV, in third person. He reflects on his own perspective on all of this. While he cares about Sam, he also is determined to get the partnership at the firm, and feels he's likely to get it anyway. He thinks it's probably best for everyone if Sam just gives in now, instead of working himself into a nervous wreck competing with him for the spot.

Kendra comes out of the room, distressed, and Landon gets perhaps a bit too intimate while comforting her. Is he just a close friend? Or does he have designs on Sam's wife as well as his promotion? We find out that it was Landon's idea that Kendra sign Sam's rights over.

Then we're back in Sam's POV as the doctor returns. Sam is angry and shouts a lot, and finally takes a swing at his doctor. This has predictably poor results, considering Sam's in a mental institution at the moment, and they sedate him.

This sends us into Chapter 9, where Sam wakes up in the castle where he had gone to sleep earlier. He dresses in native clothing with the help of invisible, magical servants, has breakfast with Kendra in the huge, empty castle, and then they depart, using broomsticks to travel faster. Riding a broomstick and dealing with all of this magic is disconcerting to Sam, but also fun.

Right now he questions whether the whole episode in the hospital is even real. Maybe everything he's experienced has been a dream up to this point. He has a hard time believing that there's a real world where he could have a breakdown like that, and where his wife would betray him to such an extent.

They reach the borders of the country of Shun and enter Li, which is a vast desert. And that's where I stopped for the night, because they're about to be attacked, and I have to decide if I want them to land first ;)