Archive for the ‘Death and Life’ Category
November 15, 2017
While taking care of my daughters during the day, I have been working nights at various writing projects. These include Death and Life, various short stories, several incipient book proposals, and an academic paper based on my PhD dissertation. I wanted to take a moment to update my website with my progress on these projects.
Last week I finished and submitted the academic paper to a peer-reviewed journal, but I will have to wait four to five months to hear back. If it is not accepted, I will repeat the process elsewhere. I would like to develop these ideas into a critical opus, but that is still some distance in the future.
I’ve written a couple of short stories, and those are currently in rounds of submission, but once again it will take time to hear from the various places, and if they are rejected, I will have to submit them elsewhere. I’ve decided to be bold and aim high in where I am submitting, so the chances of rejection are quite high. However, the rewards if accepted are also great. Meanwhile, I continue to write more short stories.
The book proposals are a bit more difficult. I’ve developed a relatively comprehensive outline for one book based on the theoretical foundation on which my dissertation was based, but I’m having trouble figuring out an engaging way to introduce the ideas to a reader. I need to develop a more compelling introduction so that I can actually sell it. I’ve written several versions of this, but I don’t think I’m there yet. Meanwhile, a few other book proposals are in the outlining stage.
Death and Life moves forward apace, and I’m part of a novel-writing group that forces me to make progress in that writing while also offering incredibly useful feedback and advice. The work is nevertheless slow, as I am splitting my focus quite a bit. But it progresses.
As things go forward, I will continue to update this space.
Posted in Death and Life, Writing
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February 16, 2013
I’ve reached 20,000 words on Death and Life, which is good. I feel like I’m on the verge of getting this stuck-in-the-mud train finally moving again. But I’ve felt that way before.
Meanwhile, my lingering dissatisfaction with Looming Thunderheads has led me at last to the decision that I will leave that novel aside and rework the entire Redemption Saga series from the beginning. I do not do this lightly. I’ve been toying with the idea for a while, but every attempt to rework the story has led me back to embracing Looming Thunderheads as it stands. Nevertheless, that dissatisfaction lingered.
Part of the problem with scrapping the book was that I love most of it. I want to keep it. There are moments in the story that I need to present in whatever final version of the Redemption Saga I produce. Therefore, I intend to use the Looming Thunderheads manuscripts as a junkyard, pulling scenes and stories to incorporate into the new version. I think this will immensely help the overall story.
But at the moment that project remains only in the planning stage, and my focus ought to remain on Death and Life. I do need to get that one written so I can get it out of my system. That too has been a long-time project, and its original version was a completely different presentation of the same story. Hopefully, as it benefited from reimagining, so too can Redemption.
The Redemption Saga page, the Looming Thunderheads page, and the Current Projects page have all been updated to reflect this decision.
Posted in Death and Life, The Redemption Saga
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January 22, 2013
I did graduate last Spring, and I’ve moved back to Florida. I am now an Adjunct Professor at a local college.
Last fall I rewrote the prologue to Angie to give it a “softer” open, and Angie is now near some editor’s desk awaiting consideration. I also spent a bit of time reworking a few chapters of Looming Thunderheads to make them stronger, hopefully. I’m going to read through the text again and then hopefully Looming can go sit on some editor’s desk for a few months too.
I’ve applied to a few PhD programs, and we’ll see if I get accepted into those. If not, I may spend some of my time doing my own Literary Critical research and thinking. I have ideas, I do.
Meanwhile I think I want to return to Death and Life, as I have been mulling over how to narrate that story for some time, and I want to try and see if it works. That means redoing what I have, but for the better I think. We’ll see.
I also intend to update the website soon, and that may mean ditching this WordPress journal for something I write myself. Not sure if I want to spend the time programming that project, but for very many reasons I want to change this part of the site.
I apologize for the long-broken sections of the site, and the weird accumulation of various stages of page revisions. Hopefully as I move forward with this project I can fix that. We’ll see.
Hey, if you’re reading this, drop me a line. Thanks!
Posted in Angie Star, Death and Life, Life, The Redemption Saga, Website
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July 11, 2011
It’s probably obvious to anyone paying attention (which is likely no one) that I’m terrible at keeping up this Journal. I don’t anticipate that changing, primarily because (as I noted in my last entry) I’m not concentrating on writing at the moment, but on graduate school, which involves too much reading.
Anyway, my first year of grad school did not end as expected. Just before finals week a tornado destroyed a broad swath of ground through the middle of town and the semester was over. I had to finish writing papers for class, but school was effectively over at that point as we all set about the task of recovering. My house had relatively minimal damage, and my landlord was quick with the repairs. Most of the beautiful old trees that once shaded our street are gone, so the view outside is irrevocably changed. My immediate neighbor’s house was smashed, and another house beyond that was demolished soon afterward. And slowly the city rebuilds.
I’ve been reading this summer and relaxing a bit, and I’ve even done a bit of writing on Death and Life, though nothing substantial. I’m programming a webpage for the English Department, so that keeps me busy (and paid). For the rest of the summer (in addition to more website work) I’m going to begin a directed reading that will last through the end of the year. It’s supposed to be for the fall semester, but because there is so very much to read, my professor and I agreed to start the readings now.
I do not expect to update this Journal very much or at all for a while. The MA program is complete after next Spring, at which time I should graduate, so perhaps I’ll have more time then. However, if I am accepted into another program after that, who knows how long that will last.
Despite having said that, I know that I will write here again, and I will definitely write more on my various projects.
Posted in Death and Life, Life, Writing
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April 21, 2010
So I’ve updated the main page to reflect the fact that I’m no longer working on Death and Life and instead have returned to a story that has been calling to me for more than ten years—Samantha. I actually made the switch at the end of March, but I wanted to make sure I would make progress on Samantha before I updated the page to reflect it. Since I have now reached 10,000 words in that book, I think it’s safe to say that Samantha is my current project. I anticipate the book being complete somewhere between 60-80k: much, much shorter than Death and Life will be.
There are two primary reasons for making this switch. First, in February and March I was faced with quite a daunting bit of writer’s block (the writing only dribbled, a few hundred words a day). It wasn’t until mid-April that it finally started to crack open. The second reason is that I have been accepted into the Graduate Program in English at the University of Alabama with a Teaching Assistantship. So starting in August, my life will be completely taken over by pursuit of an MA degree. Death and Life is such a large work that I’m not sure I could have finished it by summer’s end—in fact, I never expected to do so. I’m not sure I’ll finish Samantha by August, but the chances are much greater, since it’s likely to be less than half the length of Death and Life. In any case, I should at least have a rough draft.
After we moved to Tuscaloosa so Jenny could get her MFA, I decided to sign up and take the GRE. I’ve thought about returning to school for a long time, but my undergraduate grades were so bad I never thought it was a realistic goal. Having scored fairly well on the GRE, however, I applied to UA (and only UA—I can’t go to school anywhere else while Jenny is going to school here). The next few months were painful anticipation as my life was being decided by strangers (though I’m accustomed to that, having sent out Queries and Manuscripts to hundreds of strangers). In February, I finally got the letter that I was being accepted. Last week I signed up for the classes I will take in the fall. I’m on my way. I intend to eventually try for a PhD., but I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself.
Meanwhile, I will devote the summer to Samantha, and I also have a notion (time permitting) of taking another look at a stage play I started last year (working title: ‘What do you want?’). Jenny will be working an internship in Illinois, while I stay here in Alabama working at the University library and writing—until August, when everything will change…forever.
Posted in Death and Life, Life, Samantha
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February 18, 2010
I struggled to reach 10,000 words in Death and Life, and since reaching it I haven’t written much new. I’ve been reading the old drafts of The Invasion (earlier version of the story) and spending some time plotting the way forward. The narrative voice has been difficult for me, as I am deliberately working against my instincts, writing in a way that is not usual for me—or trying to anyway. I am sure that it is more ‘me’ than I really care to admit, but it is different enough that I’m having trouble with it. Also, the narrator himself is a difficult personality to get down. I’m still trying to figure him out, and until I do it is likely that progress will be fitful.
However, I have rewritten the first 10,000 words so many times that I think these chapters have are fairly well polished already. Barring any dramatic changes, they will likely keep their current form more or less intact during future revision. Well, I say that now, but likely when I go back after finishing the book I will want to tear it all apart. Meanwhile I press on.
Posted in Death and Life
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December 22, 2009
Since finishing Looming Thunderheads, I have been working on a lot of projects that are not reflected on my front page’s ‘Current Project’. At first I intended to delve into Death and Life, but I got distracted by applying for school. Since Jenny is having such a good time pursuing her MFA degree, I felt left out. I signed up for and took the GRE in October and scored fairly well, so I decided to apply for an MA English Lit program. I spent a lot of time gathering information and preparing my application (writing the Statement of Purpose, revising a ‘Sample of Critical Writing’ (which I will put on the site soon), contacting people for letters of recommendation (I have no contact with previous professors and I am sure they wouldn’t consider recommending me), and getting everything finalized and submitted). I finally got everything together at the end of November and sent in my packet at the beginning of December. I’ve been agonizing over whether or not I’ll get in ever since.
In the course of that, I stalled on Death and Life and turned instead to Between the Stars. It was probably the work of putting together query letters and submission information for Looming Thunderheads that made me want to write a story easier to sum up. But even that story gave me trouble, and I couldn’t figure out a good way to approach it.
Then, as a way to rest my mind, I installed Visual Basic 2005 and started programming. It had been almost a year and a half since I had programmed anything, and that had only been a few days’ worth before I started the Angie rewrite. So, for the past few weeks I’ve been programming various aspects of the current idea of ‘The Universe Game’ (I discuss that in an essay). I first wrote a rendering engine for a vector-based, 2D object system, then I wrote the rudiments of a physics engine (2D collisions). Finally I spent a few days building the framework of a server-client network system on which to build a shared world experience. The Client processes the game in Turns, which it receives from the server, but those turns are rendered in ‘Frames’ to give a smoother animation. This requires a slight delay in Player Command processing, as commands get sent to the server, which then broadcasts them back to each client for simultaneous execution. I deliberately made the delay 600 milliseconds, which is an eternity. Eventually, if I get back to working on it sometime next year (2010), that will probably be reduced as latency drag gets ironed out in playtesting. I believe I have a robust framework (the 2D vector graphics, the rudimentary physics, and the Network) on which to build the game. The only thing to do now is to flesh out the game itself.
Meanwhile, however, I’ve turned back to Death and Life. I’m borrowing a Kindle from the Library so that I can read PDFs of my original manuscripts (for what was then The Invasion) as research. I have already gotten nearly halfway through that reading (much of which makes me cringe to know that I actually wrote it). The story is going to be dramatically different, barely recognizable, but there are a few pieces I want to keep, things important to the themes. The main character as I now envision him is so radically different that I’ve renamed him.
So, as my front page still declares, Death and Life is still in the ‘Planning’ stage. I have written a little bit more on it, but not much. I will update again soon.
Oh, I should mention that I also spent a little time watching the entire 5-season run of Six Feet Under. I’ve said it elsewhere, but it bears repeating: that show is undoubtedly among the most moving and meaningful works I have ever experienced. I wept at its ending.
One thing I’d like to say for Six Feet Under is that it doesn’t fall into the trap that a lot of ‘naturalistic’ works do: that is to say that it doesn’t trade the ability to really say something for its attempt at a ‘realist’ portrayal. It maintains a naturalistic rendering throughout, but still manages to really dig around in messy material in a revealing way. That is really hard to do, and sometimes I think a lot of work is lauded merely for its mimetic quality, the mimicry of ‘real life’ that doesn’t actually try to make any comment on that life. Six Feet Under succeeds wildly.
Posted in Death and Life, Writing
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October 4, 2009
I finished the last (red) edit of Looming Thunderheads last week. I’ve sent out a few queries and have had one rejection (already!). I just wrote a 6-page synopsis, very bare and plain, and that needs some serious revision before I start including it in query packages. I’m very eager for this book and I’m hopeful for its prospects. I do think it will be easier to sell than Angie, as its themes aren’t quite so dark.
I think that my next project will be a draft of Death and Life, rather than Baleful Deluge. I’ve decided to do this despite the danger of setting aside The Redemption Saga for two reasons: first, if I do not sell Looming Thunderheads before I complete Death and Life, it will be better to have two separate stories to try and sell rather than a part one and a part two; second, I’ve already written this story as The Invasion, and although Death and Life is a complete re-creation of the story, it is more complete than Baleful Deluge. I anticipate it progressing swiftly once I begin the endeavor. Much like Angie, it’s a single-perspective story (I’m going to try it in the first person and see if that works), and so I expect the same facility such a narrative voice gives (Looming Thunderheads suffered in its early drafts from a surfeit of characters).
We shall see…
Posted in Death and Life, The Redemption Saga, Writing
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August 21, 2009
I am now living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and at last I have internet at home. After the move, while I have been away from the internet, I was able to complete a great amount of work on Looming Thunderheads. This has all been in the form of rewrites of several scenes, a few additional scenes or extensions of scenes, and going over Pah-Tukh’s and Dindriad’s character arcs.
Ever since the very first draft last year, I have been disappointed with Dindriad’s story, and I have always intended to revisit it during one of the revisions. I tried a few things in some of those revisions, but it wasn’t until now that I finally found a satisfying way to bring his story together. I am very pleased with how it has turned out. This has all been part of my “blue” editing pass, and tomorrow I will begin the final “blue” pass with a rereading of the entire book from beginning to end. After that, all that will be left will be the “red” pass. (I discussed my editing process in an earlier entry on this journal.)
Tonight, after I had spent the day redoing some of Quorin’s story and some of Mellian’s as well as a few other things, I decided to step away from Looming Thunderheads and try out some new material.
From 1997 until 2006, I worked on a book called The Invasion. In 2004, I had a draft of nearly 300,000 words when I realized that my skill at prose had grown so that the last chapters of the book were so much better than the beginning that it seemed to be two different books. It was as if I had come to a point in painting a broad and complex mural where I looked up and found vivid and vibrant color depicting a lively and engaging scene of complex humanity, but looking back to the start of the mural at the corner of the wall, I saw that the depiction there was stiff and formal, black and white and clumsy. I decided that the only real option was to start the book over.
In 2006, I had brought the (much more colorful) manuscript to just over 100,000 words, but the story had lost its appeal. I was frustrated with the material, even though I felt that my writing had improved considerably. I set aside The Invasion and turned to Angie Star.
Since then, the story of The Invasion has toyed with me from time to time as I have had new insight on its themes and structure and the character of Oren. These past few weeks a few of those thoughts finally came to a boil and I started thinking seriously again about the book.
I have renamed it Death and Life (as a working title at least, though it may stick). I knew the opening line a few days ago, and tonight, after I finished my day with Looming Thunderheads, I decided to see what I could discover about Oren and his situation. The result was shocking. It is far more overwhelmingly despondent than I thought it would be—but the feeling of it seems so right. I am very pleased with what I have done. And the best part is that I have discovered more details about the story. I think that I will soon be able to embark fully upon this project, although Baleful Deluge and Between the Stars are still waiting, among many others. We shall see where I will turn when Looming Thunderheads had gone through all of its revision. In the meantime, Death and Life may be a worthwhile respite from the toiling slog of editing.
Posted in Death and Life, The Redemption Saga, Writing
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