Category Archives: A Collection of Shards

Progress updates on my futuristika novel, A Collection of Shards.

Dawn on an Alien World

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Went to a fantastic party hosted by the Huddarts, Friday night.  I enjoyed myself throughly.  Meet new people, had a few too many drinks, and had a lot of fun.  Some of the conversations ended up as discussions about my novel.

I’m at an impasse with my novel.  I have to decided the setting of my novel.  The setting turns out crucial when developing the plot, since I desire to keep things realistic  The novel can either take place on a post-nuclear war Earth in the near future.  Or it can occur on the planet Mars about 200 years from now.  In both cases, a central element of a swarm of military drones and a covert ops team trying to infiltrate a ruined city works.  However the Mars plot called for  starships (the original plot).  These starships act as vehicles for the plot: one gets shot down, another acts as a carrier to launch fighters and a third acts as a spaceborne heavy weapon.  And they play pivotal points in my plot.  The last two can be replaced with either a land-based facility or an orbital platform.  But I can’t come up with a plot element for the first one.  I need a reason why a military group finds itself under fire from a swarm.  And said military group has to be far from safety, carry some sort of important mission-critical cargo and needs extraction.  Being dropped from a crashed starship explains it all.

Now in the post-nuke Earth starships don’t exist.  At least not in any large form.  However with a near future plot I can use real life experience, existing technology and current events to make the story more realistic.  I also face the danger of offending readers if I make things too realistic or tie my story too close to the current world.  And I’m not in the mood to deal with snarky, political vigilantes and their poisonous e-mails.  Besides I do want to give the story a sort of a ruined future in the desert feel.  The Mars plot nicely abstracts all that away, but I lose realism.  The Earth plot bases itself in realism but I’d have to do a balancing act to keep the plot neutral and interesting.

So what should I do?  Stick with the easier to write but more space opera Mars plot?  Or a realistic, gritty Earth-based plot that needs a good explanations, and realistic equivalents to my Mars plot?

Update: Played a bit of Alpha Centauri, and I would absolutely love to write my novel in such a setting.  But a Earth far from Earth comes with its own set of problems.

Just Another Bug Hunt

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Today feels like one of those days that I’ll really have to struggle.  Struggle to not fall flat on my face.  I guess not sleeping much has something to do with it.   But part of me just doesn’t feel right.  One of those days when I’m probably going to have to work really hard, to feel comfortable in my own skin.

And to do just that, I’m going to do some bookkeeping and oodles of writing today.  I hope I’ll feel better after I start transcribing some of my handwritten notes into digital form.  I’ve got about two chapters to write up.

Hitting the Ground Running

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Before I left for my leave, I left a bunch of thing half-done.  I also had planned tasks too.  But I never got around to doing them earlier.  Life’s twists and turns surprise you and throw all your carefully laid plans to the wayside. Now I’m back, I can get back to them.  Time to get back into the game of life so to say.

One of things I managed to get done while on leave, was writing.  Right now I have two-thirds of chapter two written by hand.  In the next couple of days I plan on typing up my notes.  Then I’ll continue the push to get most of the novel written by the end of this month.  Also I plan on rewriting my notes on another project (which I hope I can show off something tangeable in the near future).  Wish me luck.

Forced March

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Another quick update on the writing.  I managed to write up the second thread/part of chapter one.  I am not in the mood for writing today actually.  But I’m going to force myself to keep writing.  Once I have the entire book on paper I can agonize over it later.  Content first, editing later.  Anyways I must continue.

In other news, I’m a bit tired, worn down and honestly don’t give a damn about many things.  Too much crap happening in my life.  Eveything feels like I am in a vicious cycle.  And all my “solutions” aren’t helping more than just coping.  Life goes on, progress does happen but I’m bitter.  Please excuse the fatalistic drama.  Life is becoming a bit of a forced march.

Update on Writing

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Yesterday I wrote the first section of chapter 1 of my novel.  I’m not sure about all the elements of the novel, especially the names and characters.  I might not want to base my characters completely on real life friends.  But I will work with what I have as a rough, rough first draft.  I plan on hashing out the novel first, and then start editing once I am further into the writing.  I might even forego editing until I finish the entire novel in the rough.

At the moment, the first part of the chapter now lives.  I plan on writing two more parts, since the story will consist of two or three interwoven threads or storylines.  And for consistency, I will keep that style throughout the book.  I might merge the storylines together at the end.  That seems like a popular solution to wrapping up a novel, or maybe not.  I plan on crossing that bridge when I get there.

Recovery and 15 Minutes Writing Sprints

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As I sat down to do some writing I couldn’t have expected it to happen.  I had 15 minutes to kill, and so I thought that I would just fire up the current chapter I was working on.  The rain ended my plans for a walk.  But this I didn’t imagine.  I didn’t imagine all my writing work disappearing… instead being replaced by a logged chat.  Totally weird.  Fortunately I managed to unzip the ODT, and recover the content by extracting bits of text out of an XML file.  Well instead of working on the next part of the chapter, I had recover my work.  Bummer.  Anyways, after doing so I uploaded a copy of my work to Google Docs for safe keeping.  So remember kids, backup, backup and mirror!

Anyways I’m experiementing with writing my novel in short 15-20 minute bursts.  I’m hoping this lead to more output, in a short period of time.  We’ll see how it goes.

Bruised and Sore

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Uff! I’m bruised and tired from yesterday’s taekwondo session. The warmup consisted of a lot of running, jumping jacks, pushups, sit ups, and leg raisers. At the end I wanted to pass out from panting exhaustion on the floor. A great workout, followed by practice on kicking and hand motions. There is so much for me to perfect, but I think I’m making good progress. Still I’m months away from a black belt. Give a year or so. 🙂

This morning however I could not be bothered to get up. Or rather got up stiffer than a stiff. And sore, and parts of my anatomy (limbs I mean, I don’t know what you are thinking about) aren’t fully cooperative.  Movement in general today feels constrained and straining. I’m sure it will wear off by the time I go for the next session.

Fortunately, muscular bruising hasn’t adversly affected my thinking. The story and ideas for the novel are rapidly taking shape. And I’m enjoying writing it, since I have not thought out the entire story in such detail that it bores me. Instead every paragraph explorers a new thought and dream. I’m not sure how it will turn out and that is what makes it exciting. Also I started reading up on Qt development. I must say that the more I read about Qt and C++, the more I like those two technologies. I’m already looking forward to coding up my first C++ applications in the near future. Should be quite exciting. And finally a word about my secret project… I’ve done a fair bit of work on it, and I’m just dying to write about it. This project challenges me in everyway that I want to grow professionally and artistically. However I can’t openly talk about it… or maybe I could. We’ll see I guess once I have something concrete to show for my pains.

All in all I am bruised and sore.  But I’m excited with the prospects that appear before me. Little bits of sustained effort are paying off.

Introducing “The Keeper of the Serenity”

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After a good days of worship, work and yard work, I managed to snag a few minutes to sit down and type.  Typing by itself should never be considered an enjoyable experience.  However when typing involves sitting out on the deck with your laptop (running an illicit version of Kubuntu), that activity becomes fun.  And even more when you are typing, nah, conceiving a novel.

After so much internal debate and arguing, I finally think I have an idea distilled into novel form.  Yes, the novel still exists in a science fiction realm.  I am a child of the future, and I feel most comfortable there.  However I refused to give into the temptation of using magical devices.  I am tired of authors, playwrights and screenwriters playing willy-nilly with the fabric of space-time.  It seems wrong to tear gapping wounds in the universe, just to get to exotic places faster.  It has as much finanesse as a bullet entering a body has finanesse.  There is not such thing as clean shot.  Blood, muscle, bone, nerve and tissue get twisted, minced, torn assunder and pulverised whenever hypersonic projectile meets human body.  The same goes for all those other magical elements.  Interdimensional portals, grey goo, biomechanical virii, aliens, et cetra.  If an author goes down that road, why not throw in a wizard, a merry band of trolls and a dragon called Puffy?  It is all fantasy anyways.

On the other hand, I like to drege up uncomfortable issues.  I am rebel.  But setting things in a pure post-apocalyptic world seemed a bit much.  Especially nuking Toronto seemed too much.  After dining out and having so much fun downtown… I decided nuking downtown Toronto felt wrong.  So I decided to devastate some poor future city on Mars.  In fact Mars in the near future seems like the best backdrop for many of my ideas.  I can develop my own old ideas into this setting.  And I can also use real (or feasible) technology, politics, and social settings, without touching too many raw nerves.  I can’t please everyone but I try not offend too many.  I prefer not to make enemies in the process of my writing.  Overall I like the backdrop/universe, it has potential for this novel and other similar projects.

Also some of my friends will probably end up in some form of characters in the novel.  It is almost unavoidable to do so, or at least to base characters on people you know.  Exactly who, where and in what role I will see.  And as promised certain names shall be dropped.  Now all I need to do is to write it in its entirety.  Fortunately the novel consists of ideas and elements distilled and refined of over a decade of daydreaming and writing attempts.  This time I will write the novel and not just attempt to write it.

Oh, and the working title: The Keeper of the Serenity.  Apologies to all you Firefly fans out there, but I want to call the protagonist’s starship the Serenity.

A Case of Insomnia

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I can’t sleep.  After some initial attempts to fall back asleep, including pushups… I just gave up and started surfing the web.  Updated my Facebook account and read all of my RSS feeds.  Still can not sleep, too much on my mind.  Why is trying to do the right thing so difficult?  Why is trying to live a full, happy and prosperous life so tiring and trying?  I don’t know.  If life is a garden, why are there days I feel more like a man with firebrand and a machete than a gardener?  Again, I don’t know.

I just can’t sleep.  So I am updating my blog.  Then a bit more passive surfing, and maybe some novel writing.  Once 6:25 comes around, I’ll stop pretending to sleep and I’ll get ready for work.  I should have enough time to change my look from Ugh the caveman to Dorian the professional software consultant.  Still not sure what novel I want to actually write.  But I think that instead of brooding over it, I’ll just write it and deal with this child of my mind somehow.  Or rather I know what to write, I just lost a character and the book is not perfect in my mind.  I plan to slay this worm called Perfection and just get on with the job of writing.

I finished reading Mary Beth Bonacci’s Real Love.  A fantastic read and quite an eyeopener at least for myself.  I finally know what my issues are, and what I really need.  One thing is for sure, all those other dating books (a.k.a. seduction manuals) are useless.  Attraction is subjective, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and true love comes from God.  Real love comes from respecting others and living God’s teachings in relationships.  It will be a hard and long road ahead.  But at least I have no more doubts about is the right thing to do.  I know what to do, now I just have to do it.  Self-improvement is a lifestyle, just not an easy one at that.

I’m off now to deal with a few online issues.  Then a bit of furious writing shall follow.  After that I’ll get up and pretend to live a normal life.  As I look around me, I think that everyone else seems to do.

The Morning Came Again

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Another fine morning and another beautiful sunrise rising over Toronto.  This may seems like a common theme, but I love the mornings.  I love the mornings cause it matches my personality.  I am a forward thinker.  I enjoy peering into the future.  Little wonder why I enjoy trying out beta software.  Or why I follow future trends.  And I feel happy when I see I bright future coming.

The sky just turned a flamelike orange.  And the Sun is a brilliant orange ball of light.  Amazing how far away the Sun is, and yet how bright and warming it is.  Beautiful.

I figured out my plot and my setting for the science fiction novel I plan on writing.  Interestingly the setting turned out a composite of reality and my own past imaginings.  And plot, influenced heavily by games and novels that I played and read through, should be rather original.  While the novel recycles many of my old ideas, I think it will be original as a composition.

I also found two main characters.  Should prove to be an interesting duo.  An interesting contrast of personalities, hopefully that will drive the story forward.  Part of me is proud of my achieving believable characters in such a simple manner.  Part of me is telling me to not reveal too much and to mix it up more. As Marika notes: getting good characters is something a writer has shape, model and chisel away at.

I think I will start the story off in the morning, with the sunrise.  I run off to write the first chapter.