Tag Archives: Evan Braun

I think it’s because I come from a small town. Growing up, there were about 1,500 people in Niverville, Manitoba. As I’ve grown into adulthood, my hometown seems to have grown with me, to the point where the population now is just shy of 5,000. By most everyone’s definition, however, even after this lightning quick population boom, we are tiny. A mote of dust in the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s eye.

The truth is, I like it that way.

When I attended college, I packed my bags and moved to the nearest city: Winnipeg. It is now, as it was then, about 750,000 persons strong. A city of moderate size, and hugely spread out. You’d be hard-pressed to find another city anywhere, much less a regional capital, with such low density. After college, I lived for a couple of years in Huntsville, Alabama, home to a mere 450,000. Winnipeg was larger than I liked, and Huntsville, while just about right in terms of population, was most enjoyable for me when I relocated to its most distant suburb.

So it should come as no great surprise that I eventually returned to little ol’ Niverville. Recently, in fact, I doubled down and purchased property here. For the time being, barring some unforeseen life changes, this will be home.

It’s an interesting thing, but the fact that the town doubled in size during my time away has profoundly changed my experience of it. When I was a kid, I knew everyone. If you showed me a face, I could tell you who they were, or at least who they were related to or where they worked or where they went to church. Now? More than half of my friends from high school have moved away, and the people who’ve taken their places are largely unfamiliar. Somehow a lot of strangers have decided that this town is perfect for them.

I no longer know all their names and faces, and more often than not they aren’t related to anyone I know. Because I work from home, I often don’t know where people work, and I certainly don’t know where they go to church (probably because I myself don’t go to church anymore).

In short, 5,000 may seem small to you—but the difference between 1,500 and 5,000 is pretty big.

Why am I going on and on about the populations of the communities I’ve called home? Because I think it has a strong bearing on the kinds of communities represented in my fiction.

My books aren’t very urban. In The Watchers Chronicle, the characters visit a number of cities, but it’s a travelogue, so most of the time the characters are in smaller, quieter locales or travelling through countryside and otherwise empty spaces.

My more recent stories take me to (1) a tiny and insulated Martian colony, (2) a small ship of cryogenically frozen interstellar travelers, (3) a generational space vessel, and (4) a future Earth overrun by wilderness and devoid of human life.

These are the settings that resonate to me, the ones I gravitate to. They’re very intimate, with a relatively small number of characters who are often incapable of getting very far away from each other in a pinch.

The whole “write what you know” mantra totally applies. It’s funny, because logic dictates that you’d need to squint to see the similarities between Niverville, Manitoba and a little dome of civilization on the Martian plain. But really, they are much more alike than you’d think—including in temperature, sometimes, but I won’t go there.

Everyone knows everyone else, for better or worse (often for worse). People’s lives are deeply tied to their pasts, to their reputations. A small number of larger-than-life personalities can wield a disproportionate amount of power and influence. The family you were born to, or marry into, carries big significance. It can be hard to outrun your problems, and really hard to hide from your mistakes. Life lived on a small stage, ultimately, is subject to greater exposure. (You know what they say about life in a fishbowl, right?)

This is what I know—and frankly, it can lend itself to some stellar drama.

Evan Braun is an author and editor who has been writing books for more than ten years. He is the author of The Watchers Chronicle, a completed trilogy. In addition to writing both hard and soft science fiction, he is the managing editor of The Niverville Citizen. He lives in Niverville, Manitoba.

Meet The Fictorians: Evan Braun

January 29, 2016

fictorians

Interview The Writing Life 2 Comments

“Come in, — come in! and know me better, man!” -Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

We’d love for you, our wonderful readers, to get to know us better. That’s why, each month, Kristin Luna will interview a member of The Fictorians. We’ll learn more about each member, such as their writing processes, their work, where they live, and what they prefer to drink on a cold winter’s day. We hope you enjoy this monthly installment of Meet the Fictorians.

Meet the Fictorians:

Evan Braun

Kristin Luna (KL): Hi Evan! What are you drinking right now at this moment?

Evan Braun (EB): I am enjoying a cool, refreshing glass of Fresca, which is probably my favourite beverage of all-time. (I say “probably” because I go through phases; next week I might answer Diet Dr. Pepper, but I’ll be wrong. The real answer is Fresca.) While I’m on the subject of Fresca, one of my greatest frustrations in life is that in Canada we only have the original citrus-flavoured variety, whereas in the States you have access to the sweet ambrosia that is Peach Fresca and Black Cherry Fresca. Unfortunately, the folks at Coca-Cola, likely in conjunction with the Government of Canada, have decided we don’t deserve good things.

KL: Maybe Canada and the U.S. should come together and have the Fresca Peace Talks? I think you guys deserve some Peach and Black Cherry Fresca!

So, few people other than the Fictorians know this, but you were our intrepid leader since nearly the beginning. How many years exactly?

EB: The Fictorians started in March 2011 as a loose collective of bloggers. Though I was involved from the start, there was no leader per se. I gradually stepped into a leadership capacity about a year and a half later.

KL: What was it like in the beginning? How was the group The Fictorians formed?

EB: The original group of bloggers met in 2010 at the first annual Superstars Writing Seminar in Pasadena. The idea of forming a writing blog came about while we were nursing drinks at the hotel bar, which I think is how all convention-goers come up with their great ideas. We spent the next year in close communication, forming an accountability email list where we’d make weekly goals and report on our progress to each other. And then, almost exactly one year later, the Fictorians made its debut.

Like I said, there was no leader, and in fact we barely had any organization at all. We had a loose commitment to blog once a month, and to schedule our posts for certain days, but there was nobody to make sure any of this got done. We strived to post three days a week, which I think is a good goal at the start of an endeavour like this.

From there, our numbers grew, people came and went, and now we have a bona fide organizational structure undergirding the whole enterprise.

KL: You already let the cat out of the bag, so I don’t mind reminding everyone that you live in Canada. Do you draw inspiration for your writing from your surroundings?

EB: At this moment I’m looking out my window at a seemingly endless field, flat as three dimensions can produce, covered with at least a foot of snow—three or four feet where the snow has drifted—and the overcast and foreboding skies presage an imminent winter storm poised to dump another foot and a half. Once the snow starts to fall, everything will be white and I won’t be able to distinguish the horizon between ground and sky. Beautiful. And horrible. Definitely a mix of those two.

But do my surroundings inspire me? In a way, yes, I think they do. I’m currently working on a novel about a small colony on Mars, and its population and social structure is quite similar to the small town I actually live in. And of course, on Mars the colonies are isolated and the weather bitterly cold (albeit a lot drier than my prairie reality).

KL: If you couldn’t live in Canada, where would you live?

EB: I guess the easy answer might be… Hawaii?

The only other place I have lived is Huntsville, Alabama, for two and a half years, so I’ve had a good taste of the American south. As much as I enjoyed my time there, and made some of my very best friends, the experience only sweetened my appreciation of home. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that there was a time, when I was younger, when I wished I lived somewhere bigger, better, and busier than the quiet little place I’m from. I don’t feel that way anymore. And it turns out I really like quiet.

Not to make a joke or take this in a cosmic direction, but honestly, how strange and scary and life-changing and inspiring would it be to leave Earth and live on another planet, like Mars? Our generation is almost certainly going to see people do this in our lifetimes, which I think is just mind-boggling. So there you have it. It’s Canada or Mars for me!

KL: I hear you about someplace quiet. And Mars should be reeeeeeally quiet.

You have been busy with your series The Watchers Chronicle. Is the series complete?

EB: Yes, I’m finished that series now. It’s three volumes—The Book of Creation, The City of Darkness, and The Law of Radiance. The third book came out this past spring, and it’s done now. Of course, I reserve the right to go back to it at some point in the future. There are a number of nooks and crannies in that story which haven’t been told yet.

KL: What’s something important you learned about writing and/or about yourself while writing The Watchers Chronicle?

EB: My biggest lesson in writing was that it’s so much harder to finish something than it is to start it and keep it going. While I was writing the third book, I was flooded by one amazing cliffhanger idea after another. It would have been so easy to ramp up the story to an irresistible climax and then defer the endgame for another book—and I imagine I could have kept doing that for quite a number of volumes. Writing a satisfying and definitive ending is hugely difficult.

As for my biggest lesson about being a human being? Well, that would be related to the pains and joys of collaboration (I had a co-author), busting through creative logjams, and working through the difficult and painful process of making compromises.

KL: Speaking of pains and joys, what’s your ideal writing time look like?

EB: In the middle of the night. Being self-employed, I have the freedom to work any hours I choose—and by extension, write for whatever hours I choose. This means I usually get up around noon and go to bed around 4:00 a.m., with my prime writing time happening right at the tail end of that “day.” For me, nothing can beat those quiet, distraction-free hours.

KL: Any words of wisdom you’d like to impart on our readers?

EB: It’s nothing profound. I hear all the time that the one quality that sets really successful people apart from the rest of humanity is dogged determination. You just have to keep going, no matter what. Yes, make changes and adjustments when you hit a roadblock, but never stop. Because getting back up to speed and rebuilding lost momentum is a crushing weight.

KL: Second to last question, I swear, what is your favorite snack? (Crossing my fingers you’ll say Boy Bawang.)

EB: Kristin and I are both partnered to Filipino men, and as such have recently been introduced to the joys of Filipino cuisine. (Except balut, no thank you!) Now, I’m not sure “cuisine” is the appropriate term for a heavily salted deep-fried corn kernel, but anyway, that’s Boy Bawang for you. The best flavours are classic garlic, adobo, and butter.

KL: [Audible stomach growling]

EB: Well, to be honest, while that is the most recent snack to be added to my repertoire, I’m not 100% certain it’s my true favourite. I’ll probably never get over the simple, high-caloric pleasure of eating a bag of Doritos one chip at a time, sucking the last morsel of radioactive-orange nacho cheese into my gaping maw. Sorry, that got a bit gross.

KL: Not gross at all to this Doritos fan! I hope one day I get rich enough or get a really fancy grant or something to sleep on a bed of nacho cheese Doritos. I can just eat my way out of bed every morning, and fall into a crunchy bed every night.

ANYWAY. Final question: what is your favorite Fictorians post that you’ve written so far?

EB: This is an insidious question. Because I don’t recall, at this moment, any one post that I’m especially proud of, I had to go through each of them to refresh my memory. And it turns out I’ve written 67 Fictorian posts to date. So thanks, Kristin.

Well, because I took the time to peruse my entire Fictorians past (it turns out 2013 was a good blogging year for me), I’m going to provide my three favourite posts. Here goes.

3. “It Doesn’t Happen in a Straight Line”, September 2013. Here, I break down the many plateaus of my burgeoning writing career, and what I’ve learned from them.

2. “Making the Science Work: Freedom through Limitation”, March 2013. In this post, I examine the relationship between science reality and storytelling convenience.

1. “Platonic Relationships in Fiction (a.k.a. ‘The Glue’)”, February 2013. I remember struggling mightily to come up with a good blog idea for Romance Month, so I waited until the last minute. And then this came out, and it’s my clear favourite.

If you have any questions for Evan, please leave a comment below. Thank you for reading!

The Power of the Word Count Tracker

January 22, 2016

Evan Braun

Editing Evan Braun Finish It! First Drafts Goals Making Progress as a Writer Motivation Self-Motivation Successes The Writing Process 4 Comments

Last year, when January rolled around, I had to face facts: I had to somehow wade through the toughest writing of my career so far—and in record time. The third and final book of The Watchers Chronicle could not wait another spring, another summer, another year. It was summer 2015 or bust. That wasn’t a lot of time to wrap up my most ambitious book to date.

I needed help. I need motivation.

Some other writer on Facebook (I don’t remember who it was) seemed to be in the same boat, and they shared a blog post which espoused the practice of using an Excel-powered word count tracker.

The picture got my attention right away, and I said to myself, I must try this.

That happened on December 30, so I didn’t have much time to waste. I jumped on Excel and did my best to replicate what I’d seen on that timely, heaven-sent blog.

Sixteen weeks later, this is what it looked like:

The essence is that you write down your daily word total—honestly—and color-code your achievements. Maybe only a minority of people will respond to the reward of getting to upgrade the color of a little spreadsheet box, but I am unashamedly one of those people. I would get near to the boundary between yellow and orange, and pick up my pace significantly.

Of course, the color-coded word count tracker only works well when you’re actually writing loads of new words. And by the eighth week of 2015, I finished my first draft and had to jump straight into some heavy editing.

As you may intuit from my picture above, I reworked my spreadsheet to allow me to account for edited words. Two passes are clearly recorded. From Week 8 to Week 12, I focused on cutting as much as possible, since my first draft was about 25,000 words too long. Each day, instead of counting new words, I counted the number of words I had cut. This worked well enough.

Then, in the middle of Week 12, I set upon my final draft proofing, a kind of work no longer conducive to counting cut words. What I did was count the overall number of words I edited in a given day, then halved that number. This produced numbers generally in line with the rest of the chart (this seemed important at the time, because I was also calculating daily and weekly averages).

Though it’s been less than a year, no matter how long I squint at the chart, I can’t quite remember just what exactly I meant by those brown-colored, italicized “750” boxes in the last couple of weeks. I think I was doing edits of polished material, resulting in very high numbers—and in order to keep those numbers in line with the rest of the chart, I just wrote down an arbitrary average. Hence, 750.

Which is kind of dumb, if I think about it too hard.

Anyway, my point is this: I finished my book at the end of Week 16 and entered into a period of extended hibernation—a state with which I suspect most writers can identify. As a result, I abandoned the chart. After entering in a week and a half of black zeros, I finally deleted the shortcut from my desktop and tried to forget this word counter ever existed.

But the word counter was very helpful for the time that I used it, and a part of me greatly regrets that I didn’t carry on with it for a full year.

That’s a goal I hope to achieve if not in 2016, then at some arbitrary 365-day period in the future that doesn’t have to begin and end at the turn of the calendar. Who’s to say you can’t start on February 22? No one. Absolutely no one.

Today I encourage you to keep yourself accountable, even if just long enough to complete an important goal. As for me, I’ll be starting my next first draft in March.

I smell another word count tracker coming on…

Evan Braun is an author and editor who has been writing books for more than ten years. He is the author of The Watchers Chronicle, whose third volume, The Law of Radiance, was released earlier this year. In addition to specializing in both hard and soft science fiction, he is the managing editor of The Niverville Citizen. He lives in Niverville, Manitoba.

Getting Ahead of Deadlines

December 2, 2015

Evan Braun

Balancing Acts Business Evan Braun Interacting With Professionals Life Philosophies Motivation Professional Behavior Self-Awareness The Writing Life The Writing Process 1 Comment

I have always been a dyed-in-the-wool procrastinator, telling myself that I work best under pressure and that turning around projects at the last minute provides me with valuable motivation. This might all be true. Or it might just be something I tell myself to justify continuing to be lazy. There’s really no way to know. (Or is there? Read on.)

I’ve had to change my ways. It turns out that when you become inundated with a certain gross tonnage of deadlines all at once, you can’t actually wait until the last minute anymore. Especially when a dozen (or two dozen, or three dozen) important deadlines all congregate on the same day. When that happens, some advance planning is not just a balm to one’s state of mind; it is non-negotiable. At least it is to me—nowadays.

For the most part, I have a job that allows deadlines to be a little bit flexible. Freelance editing allows for the occasional grace period. And writing novels on spec? Well, all those deadlines exist in my own head and pretty much nowhere else. It’s possible, as a result, that I have developed some bad habits.

But in August 2015, that all changed. Abruptly. In addition to editing and writing at my previous pace, I added a third job—newspaper editor. It will surprise no one to reveal that in the newspaper business, deadlines are extremely inflexible. There aren’t any grace periods. The print deadline is the print deadline. Everything needs to be written, revised, fact-checked, and proofread on time or the whole enterprise falls apart.

This was probably one of the best things that could have happened to me, because frankly I could stand to have greater structure imposed on my work life.

The result is that I’ve been forced to get out ahead of deadlines. If twenty articles are all due on Thursday, some of them have to be finalized on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday. There’s just no way around it.

Likewise, I’ve been forced to apply this new approach to deadlines to my other jobs. The result is that I now find myself finishing projects several days before I absolutely have to—and for a lifetime procrastinator, that is a strange feeling.

Having learned this lesson, I can confidently revisit the question posed in the first paragraph of this post and inflict a bit of newfound logic on the situation. While it may be true that working at the last minute results in strong motivation to get things done, it also ensures that only the bare minimum ever gets done. By completing projects ahead of schedule, by necessity, my productivity has significantly improved in all areas of my life.