Author Archives: Nathan Barra

About Nathan Barra

Though Nathan Barra is an engineer by profession, training and temperament, he is a storyteller by nature and at heart. Fascinated with the byplay of magic and technology, Nathan is drawn to urban fantasy and soft science fiction in both his reading and writing, though he has been known to wander off into other genres for “funzies.” He is an active blogger and posts twice weekly at NathanBarra.com. Nathan is always up for a good conversation, so please drop him a line through his contact page, or write on his Facebook wall (www.facebook.com/WriterNathanBarra).

Writers Are People Too!

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Have you ever noticed how we tend to speak of our time as if it were a commodity? Just look at the verbs we use! We spend time, we save time, and we waste time. At work, we earn time off and are paid in terms of tender per hour or per year. Ultimately, whenever you go work for another you are leasing them your time and attention, devoting your talents to their projects rather than your own. As the cliché goes, time is money.

So, if we count and budget money, why shouldn’t we do the same for our time? As an example, let’s consider my time in round numbers. There are 168 hours in a week. I find my job to be challenging and fulfilling, and so I spend, on average, 45 of those hours working. It takes me another 4 hours a week to commute back and forth, and I usually aim for about 7 hours of sleep a night. All that accounts for 98 hours per week and leaves me with 70 hours to do with as I please.

Sure, once you start considering the minutiae of everyday life, that time goes fast. However, just because I feel that I “need” to do a thing doesn’t change the fact that I’m expressing value by doing it. I clean my cat’s litter boxes because I value their companionship as much as I appreciate having a house that doesn’t smell like cat poop. I value my personal appearance and hygiene, as well as the health benefits that come from regular exercise and eating well. I want to be free from debt, live in clean spaces, and maintain my relationships with my friends and family. It seems like a lot to do in 70 hours, and it is.

However, in and amongst all those details I cannot allow myself to forget that I also value writing. Fiction is a demanding mistress. Like many other authors, I’ve spent years practicing my craft and actively working to maintain and improve my abilities. I’ve devoted countless hours to planning, writing, and editing stories. I’ve invested all of this time because I love the act of creation. I find joy in building worlds and characters, satisfaction in a well-crafted phrase, and a sense of profound peace in the ability to control a world absolutely. Writing fulfills a deep emotional need and so it is worthy of my time.

The major difference between a professional and a hobbyist writer is their commitment. The hobbyist writes when it is convenient. When they find time. The professional chooses to carve time out of a busy life to write. The hobbyist makes excuses for why they didn’t have the time, and the professional acknowledges the reasons and makes it work anyways. This is why I leave a notecard that reads “70 Hours” taped to my bathroom mirror. My time isn’t infinite, but it is mine to do with as I please.

There are many things in this world that seem really important, genuinely urgent, and make a great case for why I need to spend my time working on them rather than having my butt in the chair and my fingers on the keyboard. And while some of them do need to be taken care of now, most can be managed to still allow room for writing time. The past is done and that time has already been spent, but I can choose my actions going forward.

Knowing and saying all this is one thing, but living the commitment to be a professional is often much harder. I’m as guilty as anyone else when it comes to making excuses. In fact, one of my friends recently called me out on this, something that I love her dearly for doing. We all need writer friends to help keep each other honest.

I can’t tell you how to strike a work-life-writing balance that’ll work for you. As far as I’ve been able to find, there’s no magic formula. However, if you got it figured out be sure to share your solution. The best I can do for you is talk about what has worked for me in the past, and more importantly the traps that have bogged me down. But don’t just take my word on it.

This month on the Fictorians, you’ll hear from a truly inspiring roster of writers who all need to balance the many demands of life against their writing time. Though they each go about maintaining their work-life-writing balance in different ways, I’m sure that you’ll find some stories and advice that resonates with your own situation. Whether you feel that you just need to make a few tweaks or perform a complete overhaul of your work-life-writing balance, know that you are not alone. Balancing the many demands of life is something that we all struggle with. Be welcome and happy writing!

Scientist or Writer? Why Not Both!

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You wouldn’t believe how many times people have told me that I couldn’t possibly be a writer. NO! Nathan, you’re an engineer, a scientist. And everybody knows that those sciencey types aren’t creative. They’re ALL left brain dominant. Being creative is a completely different thing.

*le sigh*

Growing up I had two great passions: science and stories. To me there weren’t mutually exclusive. However up until recently, I’d been shaped and encouraged to follow my technical ambitions. I went to an engineering school rather than an arts school because it was what was expected of me. Now, don’t think that I was oppressed or forced into a certain path. I’m very stubborn, and wouldn’t have devoted such a large chunk of my life to science and math if I hadn’t genuinely enjoyed doing so. However, what I wish I had realized sooner was that I’m not limited by my choice of degree.

Looking back I believe that no matter what career I chose my creative nature would have always found a way to express itself. What many people don’t realize is that there are many different kinds of engineers. For myself, I have always gravitated towards data analysis and problem solving. Both of which require a fair amount of creativity. After all, if a problem were easily solved by the “normal” way of doing things, you wouldn’t need someone to devote their time and attention to finding a new solution.

My engineering training wasn’t a matter of stifling my creativity, but rather expressing and training those creative impulses in a different way. Even better, many of the skills and techniques I learned while pursuing my scientific development translated into my writing life. Don’t see it? Let me show you how.

Firstly, both scientists and writers need to be keen observers of the world and people around them. For a scientist, it’s about quantification, drawing trends, building models, and predicting the future. Writers, on the other hand, use those observations to bring their characters and worlds to life for their readers.

Additionally, both writers and scientists need to know how to manage large, complex projects. Both novels and research or design projects need to be broken up into smaller parts to be managed. Both are efforts of months or years and require significant organization, timing, and team work to pull off smoothly.

Furthermore both novels and physical machines are intricate constructs with many moving parts. If any one piece is out of balance, it throws off the rhythm of the whole. Ideally, both a novel and an engine are working at their best when the person on the other side isn’t even aware of the complexity beneath the hood. It just works.

Finally, scientists and authors are both in search of the capital “T” truth. We are trying to understand what motivates people, what makes the universe work the way it does, and use those discoveries to make the world a better place.

The truth is that science and fiction have been bedfellows for a long time. Many of the scientists and engineers I know are also avid readers, especially of science fiction. I’ve read interviews of Motorola engineers who claim that they were inspired by Star Trek communicators. I’ve also seen videos that demonstrate real world hologram technology (in progress, admittedly) that directly reference the Star Wars movies. It’s not surprising that the scientists and engineers, as fans, seek to bring the fantastic things they enjoyed so much into the real world.

The fascinating thing is that the transfer of ideas doesn’t go one way. I’m always keeping an eye on the major science news outlets for new discoveries or technologies that I can commandeer for my fiction. If I see something that catches my interest, I dig a deeper, try to understand the development as best I can, and then project it forward or sideways into one of my stories. Also, the natural world is unimaginably cool. There are creatures in the deep oceans that put fictional aliens to shame with their pure weirdness. Need some inspiration for your outer space settings? I signed up for NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day mailing list specifically to have cool visuals delivered to my inbox. More than one has inspired a change of setting in one story or another.

What I’ve come to realize is that the time I’ve spent developing my scientific half doesn’t limit my authorial half. Rather, I’d argue that my writing is enhanced by widely varied interests. I don’t need to choose between scientist and creator. Both are me, both fundamentally shape how I view and interact with the world around me, and how I tell stories. Realizing this, and using it to my advantage, have helped make me a better writer and a better engineer.

So, the real question isn’t how are the various parts of your life keeping you from writing, but rather how to use all of who you are to make better stories.

And Now for Something Completely Different

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When it comes to giving advice regarding plot structure, I have found that most everyone seems to focus on the time from the beginning of the book to the climax. In a way, I completely understand. After all, that’s where the majority of your story happens. However, I find that some people seem to forget that after the climax the story must come to a graceful ending, and that this resolution is as essential to the story as any other part. You’ve made the characters struggle and suffer for their triumph, so they deserve a little time off right?

The denouement is more than just sympathy for a cast you’ve spent years torturing. It’s a matter of practicality. The climax of a story is supposed to be the defining challenge of the protagonists’ life and potentially for the entire world they live in. It doesn’t matter if the story takes a single volume or a twenty part series to tell, once the climax is resolved, the story is done. Young authors need to learn to let go even when, or perhaps especially when, you don’t want to.

I really admire a storyteller who knows when to take their bows and move on to the next work. After all, we are writers people! We are not limited to a single story. Sometimes the best endings for an old story is the beginning of a new one. The more one writes, the better the stories get. Often it is best for our career to work on something else for a while and then return to an old project when the time is right.

Over the past couple years, I’ve been pursuing a deal in traditional publishing. For the first time, I’ve had a story that I knew was good, and that friends who I trust to be honest with me say is near publishable. I’ve devoted all my time and attention to this single story. Not just drafting and editing, but also networking and promoting myself in an attempt to secure a traditional publishing contract. I’ve been obsessed with the idea, and in my attachment forgot to move on.Don’t get me wrong, the story’s not dead to me. I still believe in its potential and will continue to shop it until I find a good home for it. Publishing takes a long time. With eight months to a year between submitting the story and hearing back, I just can’t afford to wait for it anymore. It’s like trying to fish with only one line in the water. You might eventually catch something, but you may be waiting a while for that first bite.

So, in 2016 I’m going to work on something completely different. Up until now I’ve written fantasy, both the sword & sorcery and urban varieties. In order to force myself to grow as a writer, I am trying my hand at a bit of science fiction. So far, it’s been a fun ride and has forced me to rethink many of the assumptions and tropes I had grown used to relying on. Even better, once I finish drafting and polishing this new manuscript, I’ll be able to cast a second line into the pool. Then I’ll start again. And again. Eventually, I’ll get a bite.

Balancing the Story Engineer and the Mad-Man

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When I was younger and less experienced, the joy of writing came from
building worlds and characters, then diving headlong into the story.
Full steam ahead and damn the consequences! Don’t get me wrong, I would
have a general idea of the plot in advance, but I was in no way married
to it. Or engaged. We were kind of dating, but really we were just
friends. As writing strategies went, it was loads of fun. Not terribly
effective, but fun.

As a not-so-surprising consequence, my writing suffered from all the
same problems that discovery writers typically face. Drafting took
forever as I would too often follow random bursts of “inspiration” down
a dead end path. I wasted scores of hours hunting down the perfect
moment for the finer corrections needed to justify and foreshadow an
ever evolving plot line. That’s not even touching the large scale
structural edits my meandering style necessitated. When combined with my
writer’s ADD, I’ve left many partially complete and messy manuscripts in
my wake. Looking back, I may choose to salvage a few of those worlds,
but probably scrap the prose and start again. It’d be easier than going
back and editing the mess into something publishable.

Discovery writing worked fine when I was a hobbyist. I was having fun,
and that was all that mattered. However, as I started considering a
writing career seriously, I recognized that I needed to change my ways
if I had any hope of making a living at writing. Most publishers and
readers don’t have the patience to wait years between manuscripts. I
needed to become more efficient at taking a novel from concept to a
completed work. Additionally, I needed to become more consistent with
the quality of my early drafts and more intricate with my plots. All of
which is really hard to do on the fly. As much as I hated to admit it, I
needed to outline.

It took a while to convince myself that outlining wouldn’t ruin all the
fun, but once I had, I began searching the Internet and my local
bookstores for advice. Published authors who had something to say about
outlining seemed to focus on story structure rather than the actual,
mechanical process of representing my thoughts and plans on paper. When
I reached out to my friends in the writing community, most everyone
seemed baffled by my questions. What do you mean you don’t know how to
outline? You just do it, right? Eventually I grew so embarrassed and
self-conscious that I stopped asking and started experimenting.

It took a while and many failed attempts, but eventually I ended up
settling on a graphical approach. Being an engineer by training and
trade, I was used to analyzing graphs and charts quickly. By plotting
story intensity versus time in story, I literally drew the shape of my
novel and labeled the scenes, reversals, twists, and foreshadowing. In
so doing, I was able to easily see the points where the action would
become overwhelming, or the narrative too slow to drive reader interest.
With a little tinkering and a comprehensive symbolic guide, I soon was
able to simply and clearly express complex thoughts and relationships of
tension and structure.

It worked well, but the results felt… mechanical. My plots were
technically sound, but I was missing something crucial to the very
nature of story. I understood the lack on an instinctive level, but
couldn’t put words to the feeling. It wasn’t until I sat down and read
through David Farland’s Million Dollar Outlines that I figured out what
I was missing.

While my discovery written works were erratic and often flawed, they did
have one very important thing going for them. They were passionate,
driven by emotion. When I tried to refine my structure, I was treating
my work like a science, not an art.

Farland’s book taught me that readers are fundamentally seeking an
emotional experience. They want to feel the heart pounding thrill of
overthrowing an empire or the sweet poignancy of a passionate first
kiss. Reading is an emotional exercise, a place in which they can
practice facing the world while still safe from the consequences of
defying totalitarian governments or risking one’s heart with potential
rejection. If your work doesn’t grab your readers’ heart strings and
pull, they won’t feel the satisfaction of a story well told. No matter
how technically sound your work is, Farland argued, you can’t forget the
importance of a balanced and powerful emotional journey.

So, I sat down and created a color code for all the emotional beats I
could think of, eventually refining the list down to ten key emotions. I
then began coloring in the symbols I had been using for my graphs. My
plot’s problem points began to pop out to me almost immediately.

I was planning a science fiction spy thriller, so I needed both drama
and action/adventure beats to support the story. However, I had decided
early on to focus on the adventure plot in order to help me maintain the
thriller pacing. And yet, I had planned to start with a drama beat.
Well, that wouldn’t do, so I rearranged the early plot structure to pull
the adventure and wonder forward while pushing the drama and mystery
back a bit deeper. Furthermore, there were several places where the
story descended into drama for a time, without a drop of action to be
found. I needed those sections to support later events, but was able to
add a few carefully chosen explosions and fight scenes to carry the
tension and pacing.

Perhaps the biggest problem yet, the climax was the wrong sort of
emotional payoff for the story as planned. Not completely broken, but
half wrong. What I really had was two plot lines that I was trying to
shoehorn into a single climax. By splitting them up and resolving the
subservient plot line with an appropriately emotionally satisfying
climax in the big middle, I was able to do both stories the justice they
deserved. I sat back and examined my plans. The plot wasn’t perfect, but
it was much better. Balanced. Good enough for me to start writing and
iron out some of the details in-situ.

I don’t think I’ll ever be the sort of writer who creates a 200 page
outline. That style is too rigid for my tastes. Even though I’ve been
spending a lot more time preplanning recently, I still do have faith in
the emotionally driven mad-man who loves to dive into the trenches and
set things on fire. I just have a more logical and deliberate part of me
in charge of keeping the other guy from wandering off after a shiny new
idea. In the end, I believe both aspects will be essential to my
writing. The trick will just be finding the optimal balance between the
two. David Farland’s Million Dollar Outlines was what I needed for the
technical side of my brain to understand what my passionate self knew
all too well. You can’t just outline the plot, you must also work out
how you intend to grab your readers by the heart strings and pull.