The Year of Dreaming Bigger and Reaching Higher

I’ve been quiet for a while, at least on my blog.  I’m more active on Twitter and Facebook because they’re a much shorter format.  (And you can find both off to the right-hand side!)

But this past weekend I attended the Life, The Universe, and Everything writing symposium again.  Those of you that have followed me for a while know that this is one of the biggest highlights of my writing year.   I’m still processing it all.  But as always, I will have plenty to say about it once that processing is done.  🙂

But the biggest, best thing I got out of it this year is a renewed confidence in my talent, skill, and ability to be an up-and-coming professional.  And because of LTUE, I know what the theme for 2015 is meant to be.

2015 is the Year of Dreaming Bigger and Reaching Higher.

This year, I believe in me.  This year, I believe in taking everything that the previous years have given me, and applying it to making something incredible of my life.  This year is the one where I build the foundation that will allow me to quit my day job next year and write full time.  And this year is the one where my life finally becomes everything that I want it to be, not what everyone else around me says it should be.

LTUE 32: Saturday

Saturday, 15 Feb. 2014- Sessions Attended

• Who Influenced Me As a Writer- Holli Anderson, Tom Carr, Jessica Day George, L.E. Modesitt Jr., Peter Orullian, with Eric Swedin moderating
• Wrapping Things Up-  Bree Despain, Megan Hutchins, Janci Patterson, Brandon Sanderson, Michael Young, with Chad Morris moderating
• Reading: Janci Patterson
• Verisimilitude: How Illusions, Confidence Games, and Skillful Lying Can Improve Your Fiction-  Presentation by Deren Hansen
• Banquet- with Toastmaster Brandon Sanderson

 

Best points picked up from Who Influenced Me:

• Read outside your genre, and read people who are doing things well
• Learn to be your own best critic
• Know the difference between valid criticism and internet traffic-seekers
• If you don’t like the book in the first five pages, don’t waste your time

Best points from Wrapping Things Up:

• If you can’t end your story well, what’s the point?
• Fulfill your promises
• Make your ending make sense
• It is okay to have something besides a happy ending- as long as there is sense to it
• Ending doesn’t have to be good in the first draft
• Don’t get obsessed with the “perfect” ending
• Always listen to what your beta readers still want to know at the end
• Don’t force it
• Always answer the narrative question

Best Points from Verisimilitude:

• How well does the story create the illusion of reality?
• The art of illusion is directing the reader’s attention
• In late, out early
• Sustain the illusion- don’t jar people out of it with incompetent wordsmithing or botched details

Overall, had a blast, got a lot of good things out of it.  Looking forward to LTUE 33 in February of next year.  And if I’m lucky, I might even get to present a paper of my own.  We’ll see….

LTUE 32: Friday

Doing the last of my LTUE summaries instead of talking about the craft this week and next week, because they are quite a bit about the writing craft.  It’s one of the reasons I love LTUE as much as I do.

Friday, 14 Feb. 2014- Sessions Attended

• Reading: Sandra Tayler
• Query Workshop
• Writing Fantasy: Using Words to Build Worlds-  A paper presented by Douglas Whittaker (a good friend of mine, yay!)
• The Rules for Writing Magic- John Brown, Al Carlisle, Teri Hartman, Brandon Sanderson, Natalie Whipple, with Emily Martha Sorensen moderating
• Mass Autograph Signing

Best points picked up from Sandra Tayler’s reading:

• It’s okay to treat yourself kindly.
• It’s okay to do your own thing.
• It’s okay to pursue a life of creativity.

Best points picked up from the query workshop:

• You have three sentences or less to grab attention.
• Watch out for wordiness.
• Use the RIGHT words.
• Have a really clear idea of what you’re pitching!

Best points picked up from Using Words to Build Words:

• World building is what separates speculative fiction from all other genres.
• Conflict is what makes writing into a story (Dan Wells).
• Iceberg theory: Show 10% of what you’ve built, but know the other 90%.
• Geography affects the way culture and society develops.

Best points from The Rules for Writing Magic:

• “Been done before” doesn’t mean anything- be creative.
• A story with great characters and weak magic will sustain better than strong magic and weak characters.
• Set your rules early on.
• Maintain consistency.
• Know your limitations (geography, cost, genetics, range, etc.).
• Know the purpose of your magic (scale of sense of wonder to plot tool).
• Magic should be grounded in reality.
• Magic should be AWESOME.
• Focus on one thing and dig in deep- have a deep system rather than a wide one.
• What does magic teach us about ourselves and our worlds?

 

LTUE 32: Thursday

All right.  Long overdue summary of LTUE that went on hold because of hiatus.  As always, I learned a lot from the experience.   I waited too long to be able  to remember everything I wanted to touch on, I think, but I also took very good notes (16 pages for Thursday alone…).   That should help me reconstruct some of the points I wanted to talk about.   Warning, this is a list-heavy post.

Thursday, 13 Feb. 2014- Sessions Attended: 

LTUE 32: A Brief Summary

Life, the Universe, and Everything 32 was pretty awesome.  I really enjoyed the panels that I attended.  Some felt like refresher courses in things I already knew about writing (which is not a bad thing), some were informative, and others, like the readings I attended, were simply fun.  In between, I got to do some networking and hang out with cool people.   Right now I’m just going to tell you which panels and presentations I went to.  Later I’m going to touch on some of the things I got out of each day that were most relevant to me.  

Home from LTUE

IT WAS AWESOME.

That is all.

Seriously, though, I just got home from Life, the Universe, and Everything.  I got a lot of good ideas, got to attend some pretty good panels, met some pretty awesome people and renewed connections with other awesome people I met last year.    Yes, I had a couple of fangirl moments, but I think I managed to mostly keep them to myself instead of making a fool of myself.

I have a lot to process.

And that processing might include setting projects aside for new ones.  It definitely includes a spark that I hope turns into a blaze of motivation that will get me back into university.  There’s a lot to do in order to make that happen, but now that I finally know what I want my degree in, instead of spinning my wheels majoring in changing majors, it’s time to go do it.  (That will be a post of its own because I have a lot to say on the matter.)

Right now I’m still in overloaded-brain mode, but tomorrow I’m not going to be able to get out of bed.   I overdid my physical limits a little and the fibromyalgia is letting me know it.   Tomorrow sounds like a very good day to get some blogging done, yes?

YAY!

Life, the Universe, and Everything 32 is this weekend.  I’m excited.  I’ll be heading out here in a few minutes.

I’ll probably be tweeting more than blogging over the next few days (not that this is anything new) but I guarantee that I’m going to have a lot of racing thoughts and good ideas.

And maybe next year I can be a participant and not just an attendee, right?

LTUE Processing Part 1

This is long overdue, but now that I’ve gotten some things sorted out in my life, I can get back to where I was before chaos happened.   I’m just glad that I took some pretty good notes at Life, the Universe, and Everything, because I don’t have a lot of reliable memory of the last five months.  I’m not going to post my notes word for word, since a lot of it is the intellectual property of others.  What I am going to do here is talk about what I took away from the panels and events I attended.

Wham! and lists

So… apparently that feverish feeling that I was getting the day after LTUE?  Actually a fever.  I’ve been out of things lately.  Between the sinus infection borne of the underworld, and the resultant vertigo (which was far worse than the congestion and ick by far), it’s been all I can do to manage day-to-day activities such as taking care of myself, going to my day job, etc.  My writing has, unfortunately, suffered because of it.   And I still haven’t fully processed LTUE.  I’ve been too sick.   BUT.   I am feeling much better now, and just because I wasn’t doing a lot of writing doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a lot of idea-marinating and pre-writing happening in the back of my mind.

I sat down with these ideas last night and made three lists for the rest of 2013.  The first list is what I want to write this year, the second is made up of the things that I want to accomplish as an author.    The third list is a little different; it’s the list of all the things I want to do with my personal life to make achieving the items on the other two lists possible.

Starting to process LTUE

It was a wonderful, fabulous weekend.  I think the only low was when I lost my jacket and couldn’t find it, but everyone was so helpful and I was able to find it again.  (Even if it did take seven hours.  I still was able to find it thanks to awesome people, and everything was still in the pockets.)

I can’t even begin to process ALL of it just yet.  I want to do this write-up properly, so I’ll probably write more extensively on the experience tomorrow after I have had time to digest.  It was probably one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life.  It’s the best decision of 2013 so far, and the best decision I’ve ever made as I work on moving my writing from deeply-involved hobby to career.

I got lots of neat stuff, and not all of it was flyers and bookmarks and nifty things from all the vendors.  The information I received was far more valuable than any physical thing.  I never knew both how ready I am to jump into the publishing world, and how much I didn’t–and still don’t–know.

There was a question on one panel where the moderator asked, “when did you feel like you could call yourself a real writer?”  One of the answers really struck me, because I think it hit on what I’ve been missing up until very recently.   When you are ready to commit to writing as a life, then you are a “real” writer.

I’m ready to commit.  Like the badge ribbon I got from Howard Tayler’s vendor table says, “I am out of  excuses.”

No more excuses.  No more whining.  No more letting fibromyalgia or depression keep me down.  This is the Year of Doing for me, and I am getting out there and doing.  (And getting in here and doing, and getting into Word and doing, you get the idea….)

All-in-all it was a very positive and encouraging experience, in spite of that little voice that keeps saying “too much competition; look at the people that are here and multiply that by a million or more”.  For the first time in my life I feel not only capable of competing, but READY to compete too.   So bring on the rejection letters and the eventual successes.  This is my year.