The Beginning of the End

This past Wednesday . . . the Fall semester at Oneonta started. *sigh* So much for summer.

This semester, I have three courses to teach, totalling 11 credit hours. The typical load is 12 credit hours, but I did 13 in the Spring, so I've made up for the one credit lack. Those classes are:

Calculus I
Discrete Mathematical Structures
Ordinary Differential Equations

I've taught all of them before, somewhere, but only Discrete and ODEs here at Oneonta. So far, the semester is going well. I did not have any panic attacks or sudden chest pains before classes began. In fact, I just kind of strolled into the rooms and began by handing out the syllabi, as if I'd never stopped teaching. Does this mean I'm settling into the teaching role? Who knows. At least I seem somewhat relaxed.

My schedule this semester has the added benefit that I do not have any classes on Fridays. Three day weekends all semester! Yay! However, we don't have a break until mid-October. Yes, I do have to work this Labor Day. *sigh* (I know. I can feel the pity from all of you that only get 2 or 3 weeks off during the entire year.) But I'll survive.

This coming week, we hit the first quiz. This is where the laid back, jovial students suddenly turn vicious, their true inner selves coming to the fore. I'll enjoy my last few remaining days of calm. I do have one student already coming to office hours, which is fine; that's what office hours are for! I also have one student (a different student) who, in the course of two classes, has managed to annoy me. Most of the students are still a little shell-shocked by the return to classes and won't start being active until this coming week.

And that's the update on the past week. Oh, besides starting up the new dawbooks community of course. If you haven't checked it out, there's quit a few DAW authors hanging out there. Stop by and say hi.

Also, that top secret news that I mentioned a while ago that I'd love to tell everyone about but can't yet . . . is halfway to being revealed. I'll let everyone know as soon as I can. I'm dying to tell everyone.

And now, back to the beginning of the end of this semester. I have two colleagues "visiting" my classroom this week, along with meetings out the butt. *sigh* But again, I'll survive.

Writing: Worldbuilding

First off, I'd like to say that I DID manage to get off my ass this past week and get started on one of the two proposals that I'd been putting off. You remember. The two proposals that I couldn't get myself to begin because I knew that each story had a major flaw? The proposal I started was the one where I knew who the main character was and what the basic plot was, but I didn't have the COOL factor yet. I have no idea why I started with this one, but I did.

And I almost immediately ran into a problem: worldbuilding.

You see, all of the stories that I've written over the past 15 years have all been set in the same world, except for one (and that one was set in our world, so not much worldbuilding was required on my part). I started writing in that world in high school. Nearly every story I've ever come up with has been set there. Starting with the first novel, way back when, I've been writing and writing and writing . . . and in the process, without consciously realizing it, I've been worldbuilding and worldbuilding and worldbuilding. I mean, this world has HISTORY. I know events that happened over the course of thousands of years, and how those events affected other events, and other parts of the world, and different people in that world. I'd say that, besides the three books already out on the shelf and the one I just finished, I have another . . . 15+ novels set in this world. Not to say the world is completely flesh out. Where would be the fun in that? But it seriously has some detail to it already. GOOD detail.

So, when I sat down to work on the new proposal, I hit a wall. No, that's not right. I slammed myself repeatedly into the wall until I was bloody before I finally sat back and said, what gives?

What gives is that I blithely in my head imagined that I could sit down and whip out a proposal for a science fiction world where I know the story . . . but not the HISTORY. I don't know jack shit aboout how these worlds came to be in the state they are in at the moment the book takes place, when all hell is about to break loose. And guess what? Knowing the history is kind of essential.

And here's my problem: I didn't realize it, but doing all of that writing way back when in high school (and then college), with stories that haven't seen print, I was doing that essential worldbuilding. It wasn't planned, and I had no clue that THAT was what I was doing, but it happened.

And it hasn't happened yet for this new proposal, this new BOOK. I'm going to have to take some time and write out the history of these worlds, and I have to do it without actually writing stories, because I don't have the time. I can't write three novels to figure out what's going on in this universe just so I can sit down and write the novel that started it all. That worked for high school and beyond because I DID have the time. Not anymore.

So, I'm going to have to learn a new skill: worldbuilding. But worldbuilding on the fly. Most of this worldbuilding will likely not appear in the end proposal, but it will be essential to that proposal making sense and, perhaps, selling. Anyone up for a history lesson?

Oh, but I do have a tentative title for the proposed book: Blood of the Sisters. It probably doesn't sound that cool until you know that the Sisters are planets.

Aha, you say. Now there's a bit of intrigue, a little piqued interest. (Or so I hope.)

And guess what? That title also gives me the COOL factor that was missing from the proposal.

*happy sigh* Sometimes things just work out, even when they don't.