With Mind Traveler almost done, I'm itching for a new story

I said that Mind Travler is almost done...almost. But not quite. I'm over 250 pages and just lingering for an unknown ending. How does it end? I have no idea. I'm wondering if I should begin my next book with the ending so I can avoid this pitfall. Speaking of the next story, I won't be writing details because I'm afraid of inspiring a better writer to beat me to the punch on this idea. It will be great, though. I will write about the characters and their interactions, but not about who they really are. It should be a really fun book to write, though. I've already got it mostly outlined. A title is still elusive since the one I first had is already taken.

I've written a little since we've been in Michigan, but hardly at all. I had thought of some new ideas for my next book on the plane over, so I had to get them down. And I wrote another page in Mind Traveler, delineating some possibilities and impossibilities in that fantastic world.

Mostly, I'm feeling excited about my writing, but a bit reticent to jump back into it until after this vacation. There are many difficult writing decisions to be made in the near future. And I want to do things right.

Sorry to be vague, but that's how it has to be on a public blog sometimes. Take care, my devoted following. :-)

Query Letters and Mind Traveler Update

I spent some time yesterday reading the internet for query letter tips. The query letter, as you may or may not know, is an important part of the author's toolkit. I'll send a query letter to my favorite agents or agencies when I'm ready to be represented with my book(s). The agency I most want to represent me asks for a brief synopsis to be included, so that's the type of query letter I wrote. For practice, I wrote two query letters, one for the Guardian Covenant series (which used to be titled Unbroken Promise), and one for Mind Traveler, which I'm currently writing (I'm currently on page 140!). It was actually fun writing the little blurbs that I imagine on the backs of my books.

I also saw the movie Twilight, made after Stephenie Meyer's first book. There were a lot of teen girls screaming in the audience whenever the hot vampires came on screen, so that was mildly entertaining/distracting. I also cheered when Edward's volvo spun out in a fast and dramatic way. It was so cool! I know I'm a dork.

But after we got home, I wrote ten more pages in Mind Traveler, so that makes about 15 pages for the day. Not too shabby. I'm enjoying Ruby's sidestory, too. It's helping me form the main plot.

I just got a call from my mom this morning wherein she made me feel really good by gushing about the first few chapters of the second installment of Guardian Covenant: Proving Ground. After all the criticism and lukewarm reactions or no reactions I've gotten from people, it felt really good to hear that I'm getting better as I go along. That's great news! It means that when I go back to revise, it really will be an improvement, instead of just rehashing the same old garbage.

I'm getting better!! That's a really good feeling. Thanks, Mom.

For those of you skeptics who think my mom is just patronizing me, you haven't met my mom. She's very honest, and I love that about her.

So I think if I get the opportunity, I'll write more tonight. I find my writing flows best late at night when I'm really sleepy. That's also when I most want to go to sleep, so it's kind of a toss up; I have to make the choice anew each night.

I tried Stephenie Meyer's idea of listening to music while I write, but found that it actually makes it more difficult for me. I think it's because when I write, I do a lot of rereading of the part I just wrote in order to keep it coherent and connected, and I can't read coherently--let alone write--when my mind is distracted by lyrics and beats. Maybe I could listen to enya or classical piano, but that's about it. :-) I'll just have to keep it silent when I really want to get a lot of story covered.

Oh, in the news, there's a story about the "Buddha boy" which is quite interesting in light of my story. My husband mentioned him to me earlier, but I didn't really read about him until recently. It seems he is capable of suspended animation for long periods of time. Interesting: a modern day example of what I've been writing. This story idea just gets cooler and cooler.

On a side note, I sliced my finger a fifth of the way in while cutting up a lemon for the salmon. Now I can't type with it, as it is largely bandaged, and all of my other fingers are picking up the slack on the keyboard. It feels weird hitting 't's with my middle finger instead of the index finger.

This too shall pass.

In the cities, they forget God--story idea

"In the cities, they forget God; they can't see the stars at all." -Sariah Burke

A whole concept framed around this single quote that popped into my head as I searched for stars from the ground in a city in southern California. City vs. country life. A girl forced to move to the city who longs for quieter, one-with-nature country life. That's it. Pretty abstract so far.


MIND TRAVELER UPDATE: I haven't written anything today. I just finished Breaking Dawn, the last in the Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer. It made me look at my own work with a more critical eye. Meyer is so artful, even in places where you don't expect to see art. Her colorful imagery and beautiful similes put me to shame. I'll have to work on that.

Mid-November Mind Traveler Update

As of writing this, I am 108 pages and 30,200 words into Mind Traveler. I have been writing somewhat feverishly lately, admittedly frustrated by my inability to create more vivid scenes, especially since the other world I am writing about is meant to be ultimately vivid in every way. I'm sure that once the plot and character development is largely out of the way, I will have to go back obsessively to recreate those dream sequences that are so vital to the intensity of the theme of escapism vs. embracing reality.

Here's a clip from chapter 9, the latest chapter I have yet written:

“Don’t look so creeped out,” the young Professor smirked. “I don’t have a God complex. I’m just looking forward to the next phase in evolution when people won’t have the boundaries against one another that we have now. People will all know each other’s dreams, and eagerly help each other to reach them, because nothing will be barred from anybody, and there will be no need for competition. You and I will usher in heaven on earth.” His eyes were not maniacal now, but gentle and wise, and something else. He looked tortured.
My own eyes softened as I realized he had his own nightmares, regrets, his own hell to overcome in ushering in heaven.

The whole book is meant to be an argument of Eric Pierce with himself over which is preferrable in the long run: reality or fantasy? Or is there a way to combine them both into one blissful existence?

I originally had him visiting his future in his mind, but then decided to make his journey more symbolic than futuristic and he doesn't meet his future wife. All throughout, there is the promise of somebody who could possibly be his future wife if he could only overcome his insecurities and fears. And so, love is a theme, too.

Right now, I'm a little lost in the plot and just following the characters' lead. I have Eric doing things in waking life that he normally wouldn't do because of his homebody-ness. :-) He is testing his mental tenacity in more subtle ways than pricking himself and denying the pain. The strength it takes to stand up to his fans, critics, friends, and family is greater than the momentary strength it takes to defy gravity or convince himself that he is not in pain.

Real life is more terrifying to him than his nightmares.

And that is where I am right now in the story. When I'm low on inspiration like this, blog-writing seems to help. It also helps to keep writing until I feel inspired again. Kind of like what they say about praying. If you don't feel like praying, get on your knees and pray until you do. That's what it's like with my writing, as well. So, I go back to the blank page. Wish me luck.

My personal intro on a Stephenie Meyer fan site:

I'm a happily married mom of a toddler boy who is going to love to read someday since he is always copying mommy. :-) I have a lot in common with the author because I'm a Mormon girl from Arizona who went to BYU and majored in English. :-)

Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series was recommended to me by both of my parents and several cousins before I finally gave in to peer pressure and read it. I'm an aspiring novelist in the middle of my third "practice" novel, so reading her first novel gave me several pangs of jealousy that it seems to come so easily to her! But I have to admit that I absolutely love love love the way she writes. She is not Bella, and yet she successfully convinces you that she is, and really weaves a story using what the ever-perceptive Bella sees--and what she doesn't see. It's remarkable, especially when I visited her web site and read the story of how she came to write the series.

But even though reading her series made me feel envious of her skills, it also inspired me to be more bold, and more myself in my writing. The honesty in her works is delightful, and I try to emulate that in my own first-person stories. I wish there were a way for me to write her a letter to express how much I appreciate her for the inspiration that she is to all beginning writers.

Thank you, Stephenie Meyer!

Oh, and of course I'm pro-Edward for Bella, but I married my Jacob and never regretted it one day. Being married to my best friend is the most comfortable and peaceful state I could hope for. Especially since glittering vampires don't really exist. :-)

Vote today--you matter!

I believe that with all my heart. Each one of us matters. Our choices matter. Our thoughts matter. Our dreams matter. And in America, our votes matter! I'm proud to live in a nation with free elections and term limits that protect us from dictatorships and tyrrany. This country was formed out of adversity by inspired men and women who believed in freedom and justice, and believed that they mattered. For them, it wasn't just a vote. It was a battle...a war. Families were divided then like they are now, with some on one side of the fence, and the rest on the other. Though it's important to stand up for our values and our rights, it's equally important to remember as C.S. Lewis said,

"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no 'ordinary' people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations -- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit -- immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously -- no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner -- no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment."
--C. S. Lewis, From The Weight of Glory.

More important than our candidate winning this election is that we keep our affection for all, whether or not we agree with them.

While searching for the above C.S. Lewis quote, I found countless others and am sorely tempted to post them all. Here are a few:

"Wherever any precept of traditional morality is simply challenged to produce its credentials, as though the burden of proof lay on it, we have taken the wrong position." -C.S. Lewis
YES ON 8 FOR CALIFORNIA--for traditional marriage and whole families.

"Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won't last forever. We must take it or leave it." -C.S. Lewis
Kind of puts the fire under ya, doesn't it?

"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream." -C. S. Lewis
I love this truth. It gives me hope for my authorial goals.

And on that note, I'll update you on my writing:

Guardian Covenant is set aside for now, with a running list of inconsistencies and revisions-to-be-made tallying up as my kind early readers give me priceless feedback. A comprehensive revision will be done once I have all that feedback.

The Mind Traveler is in progress with nearly forty pages completed. Part of me feels like I'm starting out too slowly. Another part feels I'm getting ahead of myself with the action. Either way, I am having fun writing Eric's story. He is hopelessly conflicted between craving acceptance and affection--and needing to be true to himself. After attending a lecture at a seminar on fringe neurology, he's wondering if mind travel is the answer to his depression. The idea of disciplining his mind to the point of total control promises to free him from unfettered, desperate emotion. He believes mind travel can cure his sorrow, repair all that has gone wrong with his life. As he learns more about it, he's eager to dive in before he understands all the perils and traps of his own mind. Though he's been warned, he jumps into the expanse of his imagination and finds a world he didn't expect...a place much like the world he abandoned for this one. And that's where even I don't know what will happen next.

The way this project started out is not where it seems to be going now. It was meant to be a twist on time travel, but based on the principles of hypnosis and belief. Now, it's much more complex. It started when I set out to write Professor Astor's lecture entitled “The Neurological Evidence of Mind Travel and its Implications on Human Evolution by Professor William Astor.” I wrote it in the form of an expository essay, seeking out points of evidence, but keeping it abstract for a wider readership and accessibility. He's my own personal mad scientist, kind of the voice within me that attracts me to science fiction in the first place--the dramatic possibility and superhuman, supernormal theory. Ah, I love it. It doesn't replace reality to me, but extends it. That's how I write it for Eric, too. He's intrigued by the idea of elective evolution based on intense mental discipline. Of course, his primary motive is escapism. His life has come to a devastating low, and he's faced with the reality that nobody understands him enough to love him truly, madly, deeply as he--and every human--craves.

Through mind travel, I intend for him to discover his worst nightmares, and to face them. In facing them, he will learn their antidotes. Of course, an added element of suspense will be the reader's fear that Eric won't be able to come out of his self-imposed coma or worse, that once he discovers the heaven in his own mind, he won't want to.

This will be a book for all the escapists out there like me who have, at one point or another, preferred an alternate reality to their own, and discovered once and for all that this reality is infinitely more beautiful when embraced.

The Mind Traveler project

In the same hour that I completed my first big literary project, I began the next.

The working title is The Mind Traveler and the concept came from a vivid dream about a man named Eric Pierce who visited his own future in his mind, adjusted to his surroundings, and then was forced back to his present only to find that he had not been "out" nearly as long as he had been gone. In the future, he meets his wife and must make choices between avoiding uncomfortable social realities or pursuing the love he craves from those he needs. In the process of belatedly growing up, my protagonist--a science fiction savant and a lonely bachelor--faces jealousy, betrayal, and abandonment from those he loves as well as his own darker side, an even more terrifying prospect.

This project is unique from my earlier project in a couple of ways. For one, the narrative is from first person perspective, which I have never attempted before. Secondly, the narrator is a man, and I have never been a man. Also, this work allows for more imaginative ramblings than my first because of my character's career as a science fiction novelist, as well as his journey into his own mind, which is basically the great and wild unknown.

I am, as yet, twenty two pages and 1.5 chapters into this project, so it's still in the excitement phase where I love everything about it and have a lot of optimism for its success. When I reach the one-hundred-page mark, I will force myself to update you, no matter how depressed I may be at that point. :-)

Here's a taste from the first chapter:

One thing I missed about the old telephones was the clanging sound they made when I hung up on a critic. Of course, I wouldn’t have to hang up on them if I didn’t call them in the first place, but it was so hard to have one’s life’s work denigrated and misinterpreted without the opportunity of defense and explanation. I pushed the END button on my cell phone as emphatically as the fragile little button could be pushed. It was yet unsatisfying.

One from the second chapter:

We ate lunch outside on glass dishes with silverware. The sun baked the air and, by proxy, us. It certainly kept the lasagna warm while we ate. Mom and Greg talked to each other about Greg’s goals and his new girlfriend, Tracy. I couldn’t help but smile at the way her name came up in a discussion about goals, as though she were priority one on Greg’s life to-do list. Mom turned to me at this point and in between sips of lemonade asked me if I was seeing anyone special.
“No,” I answered, leaving out that I had met an elf in the street yesterday. They wouldn’t have been interested—or amused—by that.

And another from the second chapter:

I looked in my bathroom mirror at my pale, thin face. The skin beneath my eyes was becoming lilac-tinted as I slept less and worried more about the foreordained falling out I was about to have with the only family I had. My shaggy red hair was getting too long. I pinched a strand near my forehead and pulled it taut to see how long it really was. I wanted the impossible: to look like the warriors I wrote about. Try as I might, my long hair more resembled a woman’s than a man’s. It would help, I thought masochistically, if I could grow some amount of facial hair to complete the look. But there was no arguing with the mirror; nobody ever wins against a mirror.

And now, empty room, you are all caught up to where I am in my writing projects.