Joseph Rhea's Journal

I passed 7,500 words in my new story last night, and I haven't even reached the halfway point in my outline yet. I was originally hoping for at least 20,000 words for this first story (of three) to put it firmly in a "novella" category (typically 17,000 to 40,000 words) and I should reach and then pass that mark quite easily. When I eventually finish all three novellas, I plan to combine them into a final "Omnibus edition" novel, which should be 60-80,000 words long. Still enjoying the experience of writing again!

Passed 5,000 words in my new story today. I love this story!

I past 4,000 words in my wip (work in progress) today. The more amazing part (to me) is that I am doing this in short but regular bursts of writing (half hour every other day or so), rather than how I wrote my first novel, Cyberdrome , which was 4-hour stints once every week or two. I didn't think I could write this way, but I actually like is better. I find that I don't "loose the moment" when I keep the space between writing less than 48 hours, which is great! I recommend it to anyone who, like me, feels they have no time to write.

I wrote another 1,000 words of the new story last night. I'm not averaging 1,000 words per day like some writers I know, but 1,000 words per writing session works very well for me. My original goal for this first of four stories was around 20,000 words, with a goal of ~80,000 words for the 4-book series when finished. However, as I am 10% there already and my characters are just now leaving the dock on their way to the adventure that will change their lives, I think this first story will be much longer, which is great! My first science fiction novel, Cyberdrome , was such a struggle because it was originally going to be a movie script, then it turned into a graphic novel, then finally a traditional novel (with a few of my brother's illustrations moved to the end.) I was also trying to base it on a computer game my brother and I had created years earlier, but at the same time, trying to infuse it with cutting edge technology and still make it a character-centered story. Add t...

On Saturday Jan 5th, I wrote the first 1,100 words of my next book. More important is the fact that they are the first manuscript words I've written in 5 years! Why am I writing again? Well, I have been outlining dozens of stories, and tweaking them over and over, but nothing really jumped out at me, at least enough to force me to "make" the time to write. With a full-time job in science and raising two kids, I simply don't have the free writing time I used to. Then I finally settled on one particular story that takes place on a distant ocean planet (I'm an oceanographer so it made sense to "write what you know") and I began outlining what was going to be a series of short stories or novelettes. I've been tweaking that outline for over three months and two weeks ago I thought I had a perfect 8-story arc completed. Then this past week I had a major brainstorm and slashed some of the middle "filler" stories and merged some of the others...

Being an author means having to be brave enough to put your writing out there for the world to read, and judge. The first part is what most of us strive for, while the second is what many first-time authors dread. They say you have to be "thick-skinned" to be an writer, and that's true. The best way I've found to handle negative reviews is to look at the reviews of any of your favorite authors. Do they only receive glowing, 5-star reviews? No. You honestly can't please everyone, nor should you even try. However, after a dozen or so reviews, a pattern should start to appear, and that pattern ought to tend toward the positive side. In other words, you can brush off a few negative reviews, but if most readers are having a problem with your book, then it's probably time to reexamine your writing. Is it poorly-edited? Is the plot incoherent? Are your characters flat and lifeless? Is your dialogue stilted and predictable? If you honestly have to answer yes to any...

Some people spend their free time building model airplanes, watching TV, or washing their cars. A decade ago I spent the better part of two years building my own "Artificial Life" simulation inside a computer, using my own "simplified" versions of genetic algorithms. I called it "Cyberdrome" and eventually wrote a science fiction novel of the same name, loosely based on this "game." Here's a flashback to some of my notes from that period, that were posted on my very first website back then. 20 October 1999 Work has resumed on the Cyberdrome Simulator, our 3D digital recreation of Cyberdrome's Infected Program Zone. Our current version contains 36 memory sectors, with each sector covering a scaled area of 25 square miles, for a total of 900 square miles of cyberspace to explore! In addition, each of the 36 sectors now contain up to 1000 independently moving Artificial Life forms, which means almost 36,000 new enemy programs are n...