Our Boot Camp assignment was not unexpected: we had to write a short story based on one of the ideas generated on Monday, to be completed and turned in by 9:00am Thursday morning so that they could make copies and we could start reading by Thursday at lunch.  It was presently Tuesday before dinner, but since we had the Q&A session afterwards, those of us hard core enough to stay through the entirety of that had effectively only Wednesday to write the story.

OSC told us, "You will write fast.  Probably faster than you've ever written in your life.  Some of you won't sleep."  I think he followed that up with something like, "But I don't care, because I'm going to sleep just fine," but by that point my mind was already reeling from the immensity of the task before me.

I am a slow writer.  I also tend to write long.  Of the handful of short stories that I've completed in recent years, I think I've only written one that came in at under 10,000 words (that's about 40 pages, double spaced) or took less than a month to finish.  I'm used to doing a little bit every day and having a lot of time to figure out where things are going.

But there is good reason for doing this story-in-a-day marathon.  It means that you can't have very much investment in whatever you wrote, not the way you would if you brought in something you had labored over for weeks or months.  Everyone is on an even footing.  And it guarantees that none of the stories can be too long, which is important since you'll have to read them all by the end of the week.  (Although one person, who shall remain nameless, did his best to give us a novel anyway.)

I have very little to say about Wednesday.  If this were Boot Camp: The Movie, it would be one of those scenes where you see me at the computer, and then the clock fades from morning to afternoon to evening, the shadows all grow longer, and I look more and more haggard with every shot.  I started out enthusiastic, confident in my story, and by dinnertime I had written myself into a corner with no way out.  I took a walk after dinner—that's how I do my brainstorming; usually it's walking to or from the bus to work—and half an hour later I was back making progress again.

I did have one bit of adventure that evening.  It was getting dark, and it was apparent to me that I was going to be up quite late if I intended to finish this story.  Now, the food at the SVU cafeteria isn't much to speak of, and I hadn't exactly filled my plate for any of the meals that day.  I knew that I'd be absolutely ravenous before the night was over, and if I wanted any sort of snack I'd have better luck finding it sooner rather than later.  I detached myself from the keyboard, checked to make sure my keycard was in the name tag holder around my neck, and set out on a quest for food.

Just my luck that this was when the storm clouds decided to roll in.  The wind was picking up but it wasn't really raining yet, so I ran down the hill in search of a vending machine, a convenience shop, anything.  There were still people in the little campus cafe, but they had already counted the register and couldn't sell me anything.  One of them pointed me to a dorm that should have a vending machine in it.  By this point it was sprinkling and the wind was whipping my name tag around my face, but I jogged over to the dorm and wandered its corridors for a few minutes without finding anything.  The storm wasn't going to hold off for long; I gave up and set back out for my room.

The rain was a little thicker, the wind a little stronger, and it was entirely dark out now.  I was ready to give up on my hope of food and just get back to my writing.  As I headed up the hill back to the dorm, I fished in my name tag holder for my keycard.

It wasn't there.

How to describe what I felt at that moment?  The horror of it, the cruel impossibility of the locked door that now stood between me and my unfinished story.  I knew I hadn't forgotten the keycard.  I knew it wasn't in my pockets, though I checked anyway.  I knew that somehow, unnoticed by me, the wind had flung my name tag about and dropped the keycard on one of the dark streets of Buena Vista.

That was a low point, to be sure.  But it could have been worse.  I tracked James down and got the number for campus security, and it didn't take them too long to get me in my room and set me up with a new keycard.  And James even spared me some junk food to fuel my last hours of writing.

It was near midnight before I had a rough draft done, and another two hours to read it through and make some minor corrections.  Slightly over 6,700 words; 29 pages.  I saved it, backed it up in two different places, and went to bed.

At the beginning of Boot Camp I had this half-baked idea that I'd blog about it while I was there.  That wasn't going to happen.  It lived up to its name, and I had hardly a minute to spare over the entire week that wasn't spent on reading, writing, or talking about reading and writing.  Oh, there was eating and sleeping too, but not as much of either as I'd generally prefer.  It was an incredible week, and I'm really not ready to transition back into work mode.  To that end, I'm going to spend this week blogging an after the fact reaction to my experiences.

The writing class portion of the camp took place on Monday and Tuesday.  It was open to anyone; I think just shy of 60 people attended.  There was a sense of eager excitement as the start of class approached, people milling about, finding out where other people were from, what types of things they write, and discovering who the crazy and/or lucky people were that were to stick around for the full Boot Camp.  And then Orson Scott Card showed up, and we were off.

I'm not going to say much about the material of the class.  The bulk of it is covered in his books: Character and Viewpoint and How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, and in a later post I'll list the things that really stuck out for me.  The thing is, even if I was familiar with most of the material, it's a completely different experience getting it in a classroom setting.  OSC is an incredible speaker.  He has a very ad hoc, conversational style, jumping from topic to topic (or rant to rant) depending on questions from the class.  Yet everything is entertaining, informative, and in the end he always brings it back to the topic at hand, like your favorite college professor that would always get drawn off on tangents, and yet somehow taught you more than the most focused stick-in-the-mud academic.

One of the main things we did on the first day was pick apart the Boot Campers' application writing samples.  We were asked to submit just the first page of a short story.  OSC said that he could have filled Boot Camp two times over this year—he got that many good applications.  He looks not so much for "good writing", but for a sense that the author knows what a story is.  Because, as he said, that's something that you just can't teach.

Since people tend to be curious about just what it takes to get in, here's mine:


OSC made it exactly one word into my story before he went off on a riff about fantasy character names, what mistakes you can make when naming characters and how readers react when they come to a name that they can't pronounce.  (They just think of them as "that 'D' person.")  To be fair, though, he can't rag on Deidret too much when he's used a name like Enziquelvinisensee Evelvenin.  But he also said that the first line was incredible, one of those lines that most authors just dream of.  (Yay!)

The main flaw that everyone pointed out is that point of view is a mess: you can't tell whether this is through Deidret's eyes, or Recai's eyes, or a smattering of each.  And they're absolutely right.  I'd intended it to be from Deidret's point of view—and you could interpret a statement like "...he found an infant..." as her interpretation of what he was seeing—but since I never took the time to firmly establish whose point of view we were getting, there's no reason a reader would assume that.

The group also pointed out that I made good use of fantasy tropes to signal what genre this story was in, and that I made a clear promise of what the story would be about: the fate of this younger twin.  So I'll take the good with the bad.

How many of you out there have seen the TV show Wonderfalls?  Show of hands.  Anybody?  How about just heard of it?  No?

I'm not really surprised.

I only heard about Wonderfalls in passing, usually in some online discussion about how Fox manages to cancel great shows before they can even get on their feet.  Firefly got most of its first season before it saw the axe. Wonderfalls aired four episodes.  Fortunately, all thirteen of the show's produced episodes are available on DVD, and so I was able to check them out.

I'll admit, the premise is a tough sell.  Twenty-something underachiever Jaye Tyler prefers to put her most apathetic face to the world, but when various animals start talking to her she is compelled to break out of her shell and help people.  Oh, and did I mention?  These aren't your typical zoo-dwelling animals.  Think more the tacky-souvenir-at-a-Niagara-Falls-gift-shop variety.

A typical episode will go like this: Jaye finds herself in an uncomfortable or unusual situation.  She's ready to close her eyes and go her own way when the animal of the day speaks up and gives her some enigmatic instruction that only she can hear.  One way or another she ends up doing what the animal says, hijinks ensue, and somehow it all works out in some way that no one—least of all Jaye—expects.

Here's the thing: the animals don't matter.  Oh, sure, they matter, in the sense that they're what make the show unique, but they don't matter because the show isn't about them.  It's about Jaye and the journey that she needs to make.  The animals are just there because she'll never take the first step without some impossible external force to pack her bags for her and boot her out the door.  Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Jaye isn't a very likable person, or at least she tries not to be.  The actress who plays her, Caroline Dhavernas, was impeccably cast: she's cute, sure, but she doesn't come across as the classical Hollywood beauty.  Her words, her attitude, even her facial expressions—everything is designed to drive people away.  And yet it's evident, from the very first episode, that in many ways Jaye is a very broken and lonely soul.  And so, despite everything she does, you can't help but love her.

And that's where the appeal of the show is.  The plots from episode to episode may be outrageously over the top, ranging from the unlikely to the absurd, but the people and the relationships that grow over the course of the season are very real.  The other characters—Jaye's family, dysfunctional in its own loving way, her friend Mahandra, and Eric, her latent love interest—each have a key place in the misadventure that is Jaye's life.

Of course, Wonderfalls isn't a perfect show.  A couple episodes just fall flat—but then, that's going to be true of any TV show.  It's a comedy, and most of the humor is well executed—none better than Jaye's unparalleled snark—but it has its share of crass jokes too, and I might wince even if I'm laughing at the same time.  The characterization of Jaye sets the bar pretty high, and I can't say that the rest of the ensemble ever quite equals it, though they do certainly grow over the course of the season.  But overall, in my opinion, the faults are far outweighed by the places where the show shines.

And here's the best part: if you watch the thirteen episodes on the DVDs, you're getting a complete story.  Unlike Firefly, which was cut short with numerous plot threads hanging, Wonderfalls ties up into a very satisfying ending.  I'm sure it could have done great things with a second season, but if a first is all I get, I can be very happy with just that. 

Yes, I'm still plugging away at the writing thing, though I haven't made mention of it on the blog lately.  Actually, I haven't made mention of anything much on the blog lately, largely because I'm still plugging away at the writing thing. 

I have four stories I'm actively submitting to magazines at the moment.  Three of them are currently out, and one just came back with a too-familiar form rejection.  (Curse Fantasy & Science Fiction!  They're so eager to reject anything I send them.  This time it came back in six days.  Six!  It's like they had the rejection letter waiting to go the moment my manuscript showed up!)

In the Shadow of the Virgin Dawn is about a man trying to stake his claim as a pioneer on a newly settled planet.  It was the first story I've ever submitted to a professional market, and thus the story I've collected the most rejections for.  Still, it earned an honorable mention in the Writers of the Future contest, and I'm still hopeful about it.

Orphans of Merdibah is another sci fi story that takes place in a dismal city on a blighted, backwater planet.  A parentless boy, nearly outgrowing his place at his orphanage, has his life turned upside down by the orphanage's newest residents and the secrets they bring with them.

Lady of the Season is a novellete length piece with the air of a fairy tale; it follows the four seasons, embodied in four sisters, whose jealousies and rivalries cause havok in a colonial New England town.

In Flesh Divided is about a mother who is forced to struggle with her concience and her faith in the face of a religion that demands the death of one of her newborn twins.

My bigger writing news is that I applied for Orson Scott Card's Literary Boot Camp.  I'll find out in June if I got in, and if so, I get to look forward to a week of getting my writing butt kicked later in the summer.

Why?  Because I was bored at work, I guess.

1) I hate memes.  I don't take internet quizzes, I don't do chain letters, and and don't buy into pyramid schemes.  In grade school I was never one to "pass it on".  I won't tag twenty-five people, and I never forward an email to twenty-five friends.  If I were a cave man, I would not etch my drawings onto twenty-five cave walls.  You get the idea.

2) I'm not sure I even have twenty-five friends.  That's probably not true if I were to count, but I'm far to lazy to do that.  I guess my bar for friendship is pretty high.

3) I will proofread this at least twice before anyone else reads it.  I'm a stickler for grammar, spelling, and formatting.  A little something dies inside me whenever people don't capitalize correctly.

4) I did not, contrary to popular belief, start swing dancing to meet girls.  However, I did meet my wife that way, so I guess I can't deny that it had that effect.

5) When I was young, I had a babysitter named Maria who would speak Spanish to me.  My parents attribute my talent in Spanish to this--I took it throughout junior high and high school, and was always near the top of the class.  Now I hardly remember it at all.

6) I fancy myself a writer, and have been trying to get my short stories published.  So far I have four rejection letters in my file cabinet.  I'd feel much more successful as a writer if I had a lot more rejections.

7) Tracy and I don't have cable and just about never watch "live" TV.  We do see a lot of shows on DVD or online.  The result of this is that commercials are endlessly fascinating to us.

8) Wikipedia is possibly my favorite web site.  Whenever I have a question about life, the universe, or anything, I Wikipedia it.  Recently I learned about the roman emperor Hadrian, the properties of an RLC circuit, the con jobs pulled by Victor Lustig, and the proper way to do a sit-up.

9) When I was in grade school I invented a prank which I dubbed "the fool note".  While at recess I would "accidently" drop a folded up piece of paper, apparently without noticing.  My intended victim would pick it up and unfold it to find my gleeful message: "You are a FOOL!"  Fool notes became pretty popular around my school.  For about a week.

10) I wonder if anyone at work would find a fool note funny.

11) Eating in front of the TV is my guilty pleasure.  Whenever Tracy is away and I have to eat dinner alone, I always take it to the TV tray and pop in the next episode of whatever I'm watching.

12) As a kid I actually had quite an arsenal of tricks up my sleeve.  Some of my favorites were paper bullets (slingshotted from a rubber band strung between your fingers) or what we called chinese bombs, made from popsicle sticks.  (For a picture of the latter, see this entry on Wikipedia.)

13) Orson Scott Card is my favorite author.  I read basically everything he writes, like his weekly review column (even when it's reviewing stuff local to North Carolina that I'll probably never see) or his columns for an LDS website (despite the fact that I am not LDS).

14) I've never really had a nickname.  I was on a soccer team where one guy would call me "Mike" (I guess as short for "Mikula"?) but that never really worked for me.  Sometimes people call me Steve, but I'm pretty sure that's because they just don't remember my name.

15) One semester in college my friends and I decided to take the salt and pepper shakers from the cafeteria.  (They were the plastic, disposable kind that you might find at a fast food place.)  We took them from our table every day, and by the end of the semester I had a huge pyramid of them constructed on my desk.  Then we decided to return them all.  Our plan was to reconstruct the pyramid on the cafeteria table, but too many people were staring, so we chickened out, dumped them all, and ran.

16) When I have to list my allergies on a form, I write, "Plants, animals, dust."  I'm just glad I'm not allergic to foods--I don't think I'd handle not being able to eat certain things.  My allergies used to be much worse; when I was younger I would get allergy shots: six shots every week.  Needless to say, I've been broken of any fear of needles I might have had.

17) They don't.  (See #10.)

18) I was pulled over for drunk driving once.  I wasn't actually drunk--there was a lot of frost on my windshield, and when I hit a well lit street it became completely opaque and I couldn't see anything.  I was trying to find a safe place to pull over, driving slowly and possibly having trouble staying in the center of the lane (what with the not seeing and all), and I guess the cop came to the obvious conclusion.

19) In high school, I asked one girl to go to the prom as a favor to the girl I really wanted to ask.  I must have had "nice guy" stamped on my forehead.

20) In an effort to improve my vocabulary, I try to look up words that I don't know when I'm reading books.  I used to jot them down, but it was inconvenient to get the pen and paper out all the time.  Now I have those little Post-it tabs to mark the page.  I will admit that the number of little tabs sticking out of the book does affect my opinion of writer.

21) I enjoy cooking and I like to consider myself an adventurous eater, but I will only try new recipes if they come from America's Test Kitchen.

22) In my mind, there is a competition between me and the neighbors about who will bring in the trash cans first after the garbage man has emptied them.  Sometimes it won't happen until the weekend, but as long as we're in first, I consider it a win.  Desipite this, I'm not particularly motivated to do it.  In fact, Tracy is usually the one that ends up bringing them in.  Doesn't matter--still a win for my team!

23) I have a bit of a compulsion when it comes to board games--if I'm interested in one, I read all about it: reviews, discussions, strategy.  Then I trounce people the first time we play it and no one wants to play it with me again.

24) I recently watched "Done the Impossible", a documentary about the fandom of the short-lived "Firefly" TV show.  It was disturbing what lengths people have gone to to evangelize the show, with a fervor that is usually reserved for religion.  And yet, I've realized that I personally probably do a better job proselytizing "Firefly" than I do my own faith.

25) I am a compulsive list-maker.  I have lists of things to do, lists of books to read, list of books I've read, lists of movies to watch, lists of gifts to give, lists of games to play, lists of restaraunts to try, lists of stuff I like, lists of ideas for stories.  Now I have another list.