nathanberna-blog

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Hello Again

Hey all,

It's been a while since I’ve updated the blog. I’m getting it back online and resuming regular updates. 

Things have been fucking crazy. There's a lot I want to say about recent experiences, but those are worth their own posts. Mostly, I just wanted to get this blog back online and give a little status update on my writing projects:

First up: I finished the 2nd draft of Sam: Book One. Whew. Feelsgoodman.

It feels great to have it done. It's about 15% shorter than the first draft, or 28,000 words. There is a lot more fluff to cut, characters to flesh out, and story arcs to improve, but I'm happy with the overall shape, enough at least to call it 2.0. I've sent it off to a few friends and family, and I'm looking for more Alpha readers. If you're are interested, please let me know.

It's still called Sam: Book One. I'm at the stage where some possible titles are starting to bubble up, but it's not there yet.

Second: I'm working on a new book called Wing (yes, another working title.) It's a very different type of world and book from Sam. It's much more traditional fantasy / adventure in some ways, and it's written in first person. The world isn't magical, exactly. It's a fantasy world inspired heavily by rural America. It's about poverty, boyhood, fatherhood, a mass-epidemic, and all sorts of other fun stuff. I'm excited about this one. Stay tuned for more.

Third: I've started working on a collection of short stories all set in a fantasy world called Joshun. For now I'm calling it... wait for it... Joshun Stories. The goal here is to make fantasy that is focused on nuanced, adult themes, with a heavy focus on lower-class struggles, displacement, spirituality, marriage, adultery, all sorts of other fun stuff. Maybe it's a bit of an outlet for Trump-related anxiety. I'm excited to share some of the stories with you soon.

Lots of other stuff in the pipeline, but that's about it for now. Thanks for reading!

- Nate

[nathanberna-blog]

Some thoughts on YouTube

I'm obsessed with tech videos on YouTube lately.

My two favorite tech-related channels are: MKBHD and Dave 2D. The Verge also makes great stuff - though I wish they put out more reviews.

I've always liked tech and following the industry. But tech-related video reviews were never all that interesting to me until recently. This huge upswing in quality from guys like MKBHD has made me a fan.

First of all, the videos are high-qaulity. They're well shot, well edited, personable, and light-hearted. They're good videos, period, regardless of the subject matter. The passion these guys have for their chosen niche is obvious. The enthusiasm is infectious.

It helps that the videos aren't very long - clocking in around 7 minutes on average. These aren't exhaustive deep-dives into every component of a given device. They're approachable videos that cover all the essentials, without boring you to death.

This post bumps against another topic that I've found interesting lately. These days I'm watching a lot more YouTube than TV.

I still watch TV, definitely, but the way I watch it has changed. Every couple of months a show will capture my attention and I'll binge watch it. Then I don't watch anything else until the next show comes along. The last show I watched was Insecure on HBO, and that was like a month ago. Before that was Westworld. (Thumbs up to both, by the way.)

Shows that capture my attention focus on adults dealing with normal problems. Shows like Insecure, Love, Girls, Easy, and Transparent. And there's the occasional big-budget drama like Westworld and Game of Thrones, because hype. But those shows only come along a few times a year. The rest of the time: not much TV.

But I watch YouTube every day.

Sometimes I watch TV shows on YouTube. Shows chopped up into short, digestible, YouTube friendly pieces. Shows like SNL, Jon Oliver, and The Daily Show. It's more common for Elise and I to sit in bed together and watch YouTube clips than it is for us to watch TV.

But actual YouTube content is where it's at. CGP Grey, Kurzgesgat, H3H3, Cinemasins, Easy Allies, Seagull, Casey Neistat. On and on the list goes. I'm always on the hunt for new YouTube content, and there's always something new to find. How about a 2 hour analysis of Fallout 4? Yeah, sure, it's there. And it's good!

It's the same rush I felt with podcasts eight or nine years ago. It's real people, talking about real things that they're passionate about. It's not manicured fiction that tries to pander with violence and drama and sex. It's honest, it's vulnerable, and it's often fun in the same way that hanging out with a good friend is fun. (And the TV shows I do watch these days tend to have some of the same qualities!)

Also like podcasts, YouTube is a way to pinpoint other people with the exact same interests as yourself. For a few minutes every week, I get to hang out with a guy from Hoboken, New Jersey, who's as excited about Android 7.0 as I am. And that's pretty cool.

That's it for today...

Until next time, -Nate

PS - stray thoughts:  

1. I need a proper sign off for my blog posts. According to Jesse Thorn, "All great radio hosts bloggers have a signature sign off."

2. I miss podcasts after writing this. What are the good podcasts these days? Is Jesse Thorn still doing interviews? He is? Great!

3. All the YouTubers I mentioned are men. I don't know of a lot of female YouTubers... Though recently I've liked a few of Hannah Witton's videos. I need to find more ladies on YouTube!

4. I’m trying to expand the range of stuff this blog talks about. At this point, nothing is off limits. My primary goal is to become a better writer. Let me know how I’m doing!

[nathanberna-blog]

Small Update: Alpha Readers!

Hey readers,

I was working on a new blog post about talent and inspiration, but it wound up becoming much longer than I first anticipated. I’m going to need to keep tinkering with it before it’s ready for the light of day.

In the mean time, I thought I’d drop by with a few random tidbits:

I’ve made good progress on the book this week, editing a total of 38 pages since my last update. I’m now shooting to have 2.0 done by the first week of March!

Once I reach that milestone, I’ll be looking for Alpha readers. I’ve already gotten some friends and family lined up, but I would also like to extend the offer to anyone reading this blog. Just hit me with a note saying that you’re interested, and we can get the ball rolling!

Also, I just stumbled across this great video about Cowboy Bebop, and now I want to re-watch the series very, very badly. Check it out!

[nathanberna-blog]

The Best Gorydamn Trilogy I Read in 2016

Of course I’m talking about Pierce Brown’s Red Rising:

Good lord, can Brown write a revenge thriller. It’s fast-paced. It’s violent. It’s anger-filled. It’s full of heart. For sheer entertainment value alone, these were my favorite reads of 2016. You can basically stop reading here and go get it.

But for my full take, read on:

What’s it about?

Imagine The Count of Monty Cristo set in space. Now add in the super-violence of Kill Bill, and the brutal politics of Game of Thrones, and you’ll begin to get the shape of Red Rising.

In this particular take on the future, society has gotten nostalgic for Roman history and abandoned democracy in favor of a strict color-coded class system. I had trouble getting on board with the concept at first, but once I was hooked, I was hooked. Stick with it and you’ll be rewarded with some extremely interesting world building.

Each rank of Red Rising’s society is given a color designation. Purples, for instance, are the society’s artisans, poets, and musicians. Obsidians are giant brutes bred for war. Golds are the peak of civilization, the ruling class that gets all the money and power and all the best weapons. They are also the bad guys, and a hell of a lot of fun to read about.

The lowest of the low are the Reds. That’s where our boy Darrow comes in. He lives underground in a poverty-stricken Red colony on Mars. He works as a pilot on a big-ass drill tunneling for Helium-3, that he’s been told all his life will be used to terraform the surface above. All lies, of course.

Things begin to go south for Darrow very quickly. I don’t want to spoil anything, but let’s just say he becomes very angry with the Golds for a very good reason. Darrow is not someone you want angry with you.

He decides to join the resistance and infiltrate Gold society by becoming one of them. Things get messy. People die. Cue one of the best revenge stories I’ve ever read.

All of this break-neck plotting is elevated by Pierce Brown’s snappy writing. This guy knows how to write charming character dialogue. I was often reminded of J.K. Rowling’s accessible, lovable characters. 

Brown uses this entertainment value to draw you into Gold society right along with Darrow. By the time Darrow is enchanted with Gold society, so is the reader. And it gives the book a wonderful sense of grey morality that pervades the entire trilogy.

And what a trilogy it is. Each book was better than the last. Red Rising was Pierce Brown’s first published book ever, and you can feel it in the writing. (Don’t let that deter you, it’s still excellently written.) But Book 2 comes out firing on all cylinders, and the momentum never lets up from there. Book 2 and 3 are some of the most fun I’ve had with books, period. I can’t recommend it enough, and I think just about anybody would enjoy it, as long as you don’t mind a healthy dose of violence.

And to be honest, I didn’t read it. I listened to it. I'm a fraud! I downloaded it on audible.

Tim Gerard Reynolds’ rough, gravelly performance was the perfect match for Darrow’s intense personality. His voice acting made me fall in love with Sevro and Cassius and Victra as much as Pierce Brown’s fantastic writing.

Do. Not. Hesitate. Go read this series right now. There’s a new trilogy coming out soon, and you need to be ready!

-Nate

[nathanberna-blog]

Days 12, 13, and 14

Not much was accomplished on the book in the past three days. I work as a concierge on Saturdays and Sundays for 12 hours each day. I also worked Friday to cover for a friend who was out of town.

Work was great, and having money for food and coffee is helpful, but I’m dying to get back to the book!

Until next time...

-Nate

Currently reading: Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb. It’s Game of Thrones meets Pirates of the Carribean, with a dash of H.P. Lovecraft thrown in!

[nathanberna-blog]

Why You Should Read Robin Hobb

It's always difficult to tell exactly how popular a fantasy author is. Fantasy is already a niche genre, and the big names tend to overshadow everyone else in the popular consciousness. Everyone knows Game of Thrones and Harry Potter, but far too few people have heard of names like Peter S. Beagle, Sherwood Smith, or Robin Hobb.

A quick glance at Amazon reveals that Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb has 1,414 ratings, which seems good to me. I'll be beyond thrilled if my first published book gets half that many.

For comparison's sake, genre titan Name of the Wind clocks in at a whopping 6,139 ratings. Close behind is Brandon Sanderson's ever-popular The Way of Kings with 4,799 starred reviews. 

According to author Seth Dickinson (via Reddit) when asked the best way to support his work: 

"The best thing you can do - no matter how you buy it - is to leave me a rating on Goodreads and especially Amazon! Even if it's a single sentence. The algorithms care about the number of ratings more than anything else."

So, if you love an author, go out there and throw a good rating their way. (I'm looking at you, Jonathan Strange fans!)

Anecdotally, nobody I've told about Robin Hobb has heard of her. These are people that read a fair amount of fantasy, or at the very least have read the genre's biggest hits. It seems Hobb occupies a niche within a niche.

She deserves more recognition.

It's easy to see why her books don't have more traction. Her titles are simple to the point of being uninviting - titles like Assassin's Apprentice, Ship of Magic, and Fool's Quest. These aren't attention-grabbing titles like The Lies of Locke Lamora or A Darker Shade of Magic. Instead, they are spare and straight to the point, much like Hobb's writing itself. The simple titles hide an enormous amount of heart and depth.

Hobb’s books differ from the genre norm in scope. The majority of her Farseer Trilogy focuses on one castle and its small cast of characters, all from the point of view of one character. These are not vast, action-packed epics with casts of thousands. You won't be seeing hordes of orcs or stunning displays of magic. Hobb's books are zoomed-in, adult fantasy.

The tight focus allows her characters to shine. You will find some of the most memorable, realistically flawed people in the genre. These are not Mary Sue's who can solve any problem thrown their way. Our hero Fitz blunders more than he succeeds, and is ruled by love and rash anger rather more than reason.

Every character that surrounds Fitz's life is equally interesting and flawed. Fitz, the bastard of an absentee prince, is given over to be raised by a man named Burrich, the stable master of the castle. He later becomes the apprentice of the castle's assassin, Chade, as well as assisstant to his uncle Verity. We get to see how each father figure impacts Fitz's growth into a man, and how he begins to adopt some of their individual strengths and weaknesses.

It's rare to see complex relationships like this in Fantasy. Hobb doesn't shy away from realistic depictions of abuse and alcoholism, and how those traits can manifest in intelligent, redeemable parental figures. She shows, with great tenderness and care, how those types of relationships can damage a child, and shape his future. Fitz develops a soulfulness and depth that few other genre heroes can match, and it all feels real rather than contrived. Hobb is clearly someone with a keen eye for human behavior, and understands how good people hurt one another without intending to.

If character relationships are your thing, don't hesitate to go pick up Assassin's Apprentice.

The magic present in these books ties into this focus on relationships. There are no fireballs or levitation spells here - instead, the magic is a form of communication between individuals with a strong bond that allows them to connect with each other across great distances. It’s like being the only people in the world with a smartphone, while everyone else is stuck in the middle ages. It’s fantastic, and has far more depth than I can convey here.

To say any more would be to spoil the fun. I fear I've already said too much. Discover the rest on your own, and I promise you won't be disappointed. 

Robin Hobb’s books kick off with the Farseer trilogy, starting with Assassin’s Apprentice. After that, read everything in publication order for maximum enjoyment!

-Nate

[nathanberna-blog]

Day 10 and 11

I didn’t put anything up yesterday. My entire blog is ruined.

I’ve been re-listening to Grit by Angela Duckworth when I take walks to get coffee. It’s so good!

I just listened to the chapter that delves into a cartoonist named Bob Mankoff, detailing his decade-long struggle to become a contract artist for New Yorker. He had to face dozens of rejections every week, while simultaneously producing enough content to maintain his submission quota. Just goes to show how consistent effort is more important than raw talent.

I’m looking forward to getting my first rejection slip.

The book!

I made good progress on the book over the past two days. I edited two important chapters, 18 pages in total, and I’m hoping to get another work session in after I post this blog.

Right now, I’m trying to maintain a pace of at least four pages a day. I have 293 pages to go, so at this rate I’ll be done in... 73.25 days. Yikes.

But if I maintain my current pace of 9 pages a day, I’ll be there in 32.5. Much better!

Unfortunately I work long hours on the weekend, so I usually don’t get much done with the book those days. In all likelihood, it’ll be somewhere in the middle. 

So, short post for today. Still trying to figure out exactly how to pace out this content. 

Thanks for tuning in!

-Nate

[nathanberna-blog]

Day 9: Nine Things About the First Draft

In celebration of the ninth day of this blog, here are nine things about the process of writing the first draft (plus three sub-things because sure why not):

1) The first draft took me about eight months. Early on, I tried to write 1,500 words per day, seven days a week. Some days, I hit 3,000. Other days, I barely squeezed out 500. The most important thing was doing it every day.

Early on I was also trying to write a second novel at the same time (Wanda #1). It acted as a nice change of pace from working on Sam, which is a much darker story. But ultimately I realized it was the right choice to put my energy into one book.

2) I mostly wrote in coffee shops. At the time, I lived in a tiny studio with my girlfriend. It's tough to focus when you have a TV and a woman you love and a cat five feet away.

I dream of having my own office somewhere, someday, where I can write in solitude. Maybe with a little fridge and a couch for reading.

3) The book is divided into 5 parts. Parts 1 and 5 are the shortest, and serve as bookends for the overall narrative. Parts 2, 3 ad 4 are focused on the central conflict. Each part is supposed to feel like a satisfying narrative arc, like an episode of television. I think it gives the book a satisfying sense of progression, and makes a fairly long book much more digestible.

3) I get distracted by the internet constantly. It's still my biggest problem. It's the easiest thing in the world to open Chrome when I feel stuck, and suddenly an hour vanishes. The important thing is not to feel bad about it. When I realize it's happened, I take a deep breath, re-focus, and dive back in.

Rescue Time is amazing. It's an app that shows you exactly how you spend your time on your computer. Week after week, I realized I was dumping way too much free time into YouTube and Overwatch. That's the cool thing about this blog: it's not taking time away from the book, it's taking time away from bad habits.

4) Libraries are the best. Every so often I would get tired of coffee shops. It's annoying to have to buy a 3 dollar cup of something every time you want to work. I would check out a study room at the library for two hours and get some good work in. The only problem is that it's really easy to get sucked into doing "research" at the library.

5) I often got distracted by other projects. There was a night where Elise and I were hanging out. We made a fort in the living room and watched Disney's Tarzan and ate snacks. It was fantastic. After she fell asleep, I had a random jolt of inspiration and started writing a brand new story. I want to get back to that story so bad! I had a friend once who called this problem "procrastiworking."

6) I kept a daily journal. I would just do a brain-dump, whatever came to mind first. It was a great way to clear the cruft and stress of daily life and make room for writing. I never go back and re-read the entries. Interestingly, it seems 500 words is about all it takes to get everything dumped out onto the page. It's like a bridge between the external and internal world.

7) When I finally finished the first draft I felt cold and empty. I thought I would feel ecstatic, but it felt more like running two miles and realizing I still had ten to go. I came home and my friends were watching TV and I just kinda sat there in stunned silence while I watched the rose ceremony.

8) When I finished the first draft, I wasn't sure what to do with myself. I was working a new job at the time that I hated. I had been living with the first draft for the better part of the year, and it felt like a constant companion was just gone. I had no desire to work on the second draft, so I started working on a new book.

9) It took me about 4 months to finally feel motivated to work on the 2nd draft. For a long time I struggled with questions like: Do I really believe in this story? Is it something I want to keep investing my time in? Can it be salvaged? The answer to all of them was: yes of course, you’re just afraid.

It's really easy to fall into the trap of: I've learned a lot, time to start over on something new. That temptation was there all the time with Sam. But the only good reason to abandon a book is if it's fundamentally broken, and Sam wasn't. It just needed a lot of work. Abandoning it would be laziness and nothing else. So I decided to keep going.

And there you go, first draft complete. It was an arduous process, but it was an essential step on the road to becoming a writer. 

Whenever I worry about whether I will be successful or not, I just remember that every book is made one step at a time. All you have to do is open up Word and work out one sentence, and then work out the next. And you can fix the bad sentences in revision.

Any book that you’ve ever loved is just a long series of steps taken by a person sitting at a desk. And most of the stuff that sounds wise or beautiful was probably found during revision. The angels of inspiration only visit so often, and it’s usually after weeks of pounding your head against the keyboard.

All it takes is patience with yourself, a willingness to respond well to frustration, and a commitment to staying focused on one goal for an extended period of time. If I can do it, so can you!

That's it for today. Until tomorrow!

-Nate B.

[nathanberna-blog]

Day 8: Better World Building, Ghibli Style.

World building is also one of fantasy’s major selling points, one of the most powerful things the genre has to offer. It’s one of the pillars of the genre, right next to great characters and cool magic.

But it's also something that I like to think about in my own way.

First of all: we need more realism. 

I don't mean Game of Thrones style realism: good people dying, realistic medieval politics, bad guys win, incest, etc. etc. Those things are great, and Game of Thrones is great, and there are a lot of valuable lessons to be learned there, but it's not really what I'm getting at.

I mean Ghibli realism.

Let me explain:

I love Ghibli movies. I deeply, romantically, obsessively love Ghibli movies. I could write a whole book about Ghibli movies. I could go on and on about why they are the best things in the world, but I'm really only interested in one particular facet right now.

Ghibli movies have fantastic realism. 

Even when they are portraying completely made up things, the animators at Ghibli render them with genuine weight and authenticity. Moreover, everything behaves in a plausible way within the given film’s reality. Ghibli films have delicious internal consistency, and breaks from those rules are generally used for artistic effect.

Everything in Ghibli films takes up physical space, and every background character has a mind of its own, with their own agenda and sense of self-preservation. A plane or a monster has real mass, and effects (and is affected by) the environment around it accordingly. A typical shot in a Ghibli movie is dense with life, brimming with energy, complexity and movement.

This is something that I think Disney often fails at. Their worlds usually feel artificial, like there isn't much beyond the horizon. You have the castle, the forest, the evil-witch's lair, and that's... kinda it. It feels like if you travel too far in a Disney movie, you'll hit a literal wall.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Disney has its roots in fairy tales, and the world only needs to be big enough to fit the parable. There's a reason Disney translates so beautifully to Broadway, and it’s not just the great music. But it’s important to note that Ghibli also has its roots in children’s books. Hayao Miyazaki is an avid reader, he even ran a “Childrens’ Literature Research Club” at his university. Classic children’s lit and fantasy have inspired all his work. 

Where Disney and Ghibli differ is in the execution of that inspiration: Walt wanted to make big bucks selling animated movies, so he (brilliantly) made straight, audience-friendly adaptations of fairy tales. 

Miyazaki, on the other hand, was more invested in the underlying themes of those stories, and infusing them with his own unique Japanese perspective. He used the inspiration to make his own work, rather than recreating existing material. Even when he does adapt something, he puts his own spin on it.

This brings me back to fantasy books. 

So many fantasy books are rendered just as beautifully as a Ghibli Film, if not more so. Ursula K. Leguin and Tolkein painted lovely worlds that inspired the likes of Naussicaa and Castle in the Sky. 

But there are many other fantasy books that are full of cool ideas, powerful heroes and villains, and interesting characters... but they fall flat in the execution. They are missing the weight and realism and sense of space that makes for great world building.

The author will write about a horse, but we don’t get the sense that the horse is a living, breathing animal with a mind of its own. The author will write about a sword fight, but the swords and armor don’t feel like they have any weight or drawbacks. It’s dull, and it quickly breaks down the immersive quality of the book.

So what does this mean for me? 

I’m still figuring it out. Execution is hard, and the stuff I’m talking about has a “you’ll know it when you see it” quality. It’s hard to explain in concrete detail.

But here are a few stray thoughts for world building in Sam: Book One: 1) I don't want to retread the same fantasy world we've all seen a million times. My books will never be stock-standard medieval swords and dragons stuff. I love Game of Thrones and Name of the Wind as much as the next person, but those paths are paved-over city streets by now.

2) The book is Sam's story first, and a fantasy novel second, so the world has to serve and reinforce Sam's arc. Other books I write won't be this way, but for Sam, it's really really important that the world is built for her. As I figured out who Sam was, I was able to figure out what the world was.

3) I always tried to keep realism in mind while writing. How do the actual physics of this work? What would real consequences be for this or that action? 

4) I tried to stay away from power fantasy as much as possible. The action in this book is messy and flawed, and the characters all operate with a sense of self preservation.

I would really love to tell you all about Sam's world, but I think it's best discovered by reading the book itself. 

That's actually something I'm torn on - should I post concept art and work-in-progress maps and that sort of thing here? Or should I only post that stuff after people have read the book?  

At the end of the day, I want the world to have that “sense” of realism. That feeling that pervades my favorite movies, TV shows, books, and video games. 

Anyways, I hope that was interesting. Today’s post was strangely hard to write. This was my third attempt to write it from the ground up... 

Okay, that’s it for now.

BACK TO WRITING

[nathanberna-blog]

Day 7: Progress Report #1

Sam: Book One, Draft 2.0 is currently sitting at about 25% complete. I have 300 raw pages left to revise. The current word count is 175,000, down from the 1.0 word count of 184,000. My target is 150,000.

When looked at in those terms, the project feels daunting.

But! I think the next 75% will go much faster. Those first 100 pages were by far the messiest - I was learning by trial and error, blundering through the early chapters like a toddler through a pile of Legos. It was often like trudging through a forest, only to find out the next day I had gone the wrong direction entirely. To get back on course, I'd have to sit down and do hours of research.

Oh I see, passive voice is why half my scenes feel like wading knee-deep through mud. Now I have to go back and fix the 10 chapters of hot garbage I just wrote...

I had a much better sense of what I was doing by the time I made it to the second half of the book. Not that it came out easily... there were many days where the well was dry, and writing felt like this: 

But the rest of 2.0 should be fairly smooth. I'm happy with the overall bones of the story, they just need some meat. There are a few characters that need more distinct personalities, and there is a lot of continuity to flesh out, but I don't see many of the core story beats changing.

I’m aiming to have 2.0 finished by the end of March. Yay deadlines!

Other Writing

Part of the problem with writing a novel is that it takes a long, long time for a story to go from conception to readers' eyeballs.

I've always loved stuff like podcasts and journalism and development blogs that have a shorter gestation period. These things allow for immediate feedback, revealing what resonates and what doesn’t. It exposes weaknesses that need to be shored up... all good things I wanted to integrate into my writing process.

I wanted to get to a point where I was regularly shipping finished work, and I didn't want to wait until Sam was wrapped to do it. So far, I have two solutions to that problem:

1) This blog.

It has been fun having a deadline every day. Finishing something, even something small, feels good. And the daily format means that some days are simply going to be better than others, and some stinkers are inevitable. Failing early and often is important. 

2) Short stories.

Short stories are a medium that I haven't engaged with much as a reader, but I realized recently that they have had a disproportionately huge impact on my imagination.... Particularly:

"Werewolves in Their Youth" by Michael Chabon

"Stories of Your Life and Others" by Ted Chiang 

I read those collections years ago, but the small stories planted deep roots, and seeded lots of story ideas that I still think about. Perhaps the short length and relative lack of detail allows the story to sink deeper into your brain...

So, I want to do some short stories, but with the caveat that they're all set in the same fictional country, partially inspired by Ursula K. Leguin's Orsinia.

I hope to start releasing them soon. My end goal is to get some of them published, but for now I’m just looking at them as good practice. I'm thinking about putting them up in this space to start. Is that something that would interest you, dear readers?

That’s about it for today,

Thanks as always for reading!

-Nate

[nathanberna-blog]

Day 6: Women

Today was about women women standing up for their rights. It was a victory, a chink in the armor of President Trump. It proved that the heartland was not his and his alone, as his seemingly-impervious PR campaign would suggest. And today we learned that more people were willing to march for women than see an orange misogynist get sworn into office.

I have very little of value to add to the hundreds of thousands of wonderful, brave, wise voices that spoke up today. Instead, I would like to share these words from Ursula K. Leguin, who always rattles me with her wisdom.

From her acceptance speech at the National Book awards.

To the givers of this beautiful reward, my thanks, from the heart. My family, my agents, my editors, know that my being here is their doing as well as my own, and that the beautiful reward is theirs as much as mine. And I rejoice in accepting it for, and sharing it with, all the writers who’ve been excluded from literature for so long – my fellow authors of fantasy and science fiction, writers of the imagination, who for 50 years have watched the beautiful rewards go to the so-called realists.

Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom – poets, visionaries – realists of a larger reality.

Right now, we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.

Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial. I see my own publishers, in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an e-book six or seven times more than they charge customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience, and writers threatened by corporate fatwa. And I see a lot of us, the producers, who write the books and make the books, accepting this – letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish, what to write.

Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.

I’ve had a long career as a writer, and a good one, in good company. Here at the end of it, I don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds; but the name of our beautiful reward isn’t profit. Its name is freedom.

- Ursula K. Leguin

[nathanberna-blog]

Day 5: Inaguration

Today, our 45th president takes office. News is pouring in from the inauguration, and from both peaceful and violent protests across the nation.

Like many, I feel despair, anger, and hopelessness at the outcome of this election. I fully support those who oppose Trump and refuse to accept his leadership. 

I have no confidence that Trump will be an effective president, and every day yields new evidence that confirms this belief. There are many frightening pieces that have fallen into place over the last few months, and it feels like we are poised at the edge of a cliff, ready to tumble over the side with the slightest push in the wrong direction.

I appreciate those who are trying to find an optimistic line of reasoning, to give Trump a fair chance, but I have seen nothing in this man that evokes a feeling of goodwill or trust. I feel nothing but dread.

I encourage you to read this piece by Sarah Kendzior, which beautifully summarizes the problems far better than I ever could.

Now I'm going to go head out to take a look at the Portland protests. More tomorrow.

-Nate

[nathanberna-blog]

Day Four: Distraction

Hey there,

My primary goal has been “become a professional writer” for the past year. But that goal is vague at best, and raises many questions. How do you become a professional writer in 2017? What are you going to write about? What is the best path into writing? Whose wisdom do you follow? Whose do you ignore? And so on and so forth down the mildly infuriating rabbit hole we go.

A lot of times, the answer is, “Ignore all the hard questions and watch a YouTube video.” Or, “Read that Wait But Why article about procrastination. THAT will give you all the answers.”

No. Not productive.

But it’s hard, right? We all feel that sense of distraction. We open up our laptop to work, but hey, let’s impulsively click on Chrome, why not? You’re instantly presented with a million things competing for your attention. Did you hear? Netflix just dropped a big-budget Series of Unfortunate Events… series. Or hey, there’s this really alarming article about Trump you should read. And you should really catch up on that Nintendo Switch news… And if you dare open your Facebook feed, well… God rest your soul.

Then, to get away from all the noise on your laptop, you open your phone. There you’ve got text messages that need attention, emails that need replying, errands that need to be run, notifications for god knows what app.

And this is something that we all know about. It’s been talked about to death. People have written books about how to fix the problem, TED Talks have been shared millions of times about how to fix the problem. And then, you get online and see all sorts of people producing all sorts of cool, deep work, all the time. It should be surmountable, right?

No matter how many solutions are presented to you, no matter how hard you try to focus, that sea of distracting noise is always right there, looming over your shoulder. It’s like an alcoholic being constantly followed around by an open bar. A walking open bar with robot spider legs and a hot bartender who’ll listen to all your problems.

Like, how does Casey Neistat do it? Every time I open YouTube he’s got a new video, and they’re all good! Well… let’s check out his video on time management and see what he has to say… okay well now another 10 minutes are gone.

It’s a problem.

I think that there’s this message out there in our culture that YOU, the individual, are the problem. It’s YOUR job to rise above the noise and work hard / play hard. It’s your job to surf on the sea of distraction like Mark Gonzales surfs the streets of New York.

And yes, I agree that personal responsibility is important. I choose what I do with my time, I choose what vices I partake in, or don’t partake in. Nobody else is responsible for the consequences of my actions. The sea of distraction is no excuse for immaturity.

But if it were as simple as “handle yourself,” why is there this epidemic of anxiety and depression? Why do we have famous YouTube comedians talking about survivorship bias on Conan? Why are we auctioning tickets to unpaid internships for $22,000 dollars? Why do we have unpaid internships at all? There are incredible forces at work to poke at your very human weaknesses, 24 hours a day. Everyone wants to part you with your money, but nobody wants to give you any. Your attention is stretched to its breaking point, constantly.

Still with me? If you made it through that paragraph, you know what I’m talking about.

It’s a massive struggle to get a quiet moment for yourself, to calm that constant, negative, irrational chatter. It’s such a struggle that meditation has become an international, agnostic craze as we try to find peace among all the white noise.

There’s a reason books like “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck” are bestsellers right now. We’re desperate for ways to calm the monkey brain down, and cope with the world as it is.

Maybe we just aren’t built for it.

We are told: work hard, find your passion, drink coffee, and top off your day with a craft beer and your favorite syndicated drama. It’ll all work out, you’ll be the next big thing, and you’ll die a millionaire with no debt and children who adore you. Why can’t you be more like Elon Musk?!

But it’s not going to work out for most people. Only 1% of 1% of us are going to find the extreme success that we all crave. It feels like a deep-rooted sickness in our culture we all adapt to and ignore in order to survive. We have people like Casey Neistat that lead us, unintentionally, to reflecting on ourselves negatively. Why don’t I have his crazy work ethic? His dauntless positive attitude? How do I improve myself? Self assessment is definitely valuable, but aren’t a lot of us getting left to drown in the cultural quicksand? Are we just going to tell those people, “Sorry, you lost the game. Thanks for playing!” ?

And then we hear advice from smart, successful people, like our parents or our friends who have great careers, about how it’s not all that bad, how you just have to work hard and focus on your goals. These people are all generally older, and grew up in a different environment than we did. The advice has a lot of merit, certainly, but that’s not really what I’m getting at. It doesn’t address the deeper problems: the sea of distraction, the constant anxiety, the cloud of cultural dread. The advice generally deals with coping with the reality presented to you, and the coping skills don’t seem to work for everyone.

And “returning to nature and living simply” isn’t the answer either. Sure, it will work for a few enterprising people who make the decision to find a cheap plot of land and build a mud house and plant some potatoes. But the natural, rural world is shrinking all the time — if we all decided to pull an “Into the Wild”, the wild would be fucked. There’s a reason fantasy books and post-apocalptic movies have become so popular.

And that natural world, that rural world, is becoming more of a social commodity all the time, a way to demonstrate to others that you have the mental and financial capacity to leave the city and enjoy nature and travel whenever you please. And we look at their pictures on Instagram, and think about how once we finally get our careers in order, maybe we can have a life like that, too. Nature is being reduced to a place we go to take pictures of ourselves.

So yeah, pretty bleak stuff. But I think it’s important to be honest about both sides of the coin. For every “close your browser, work harder” message, there’s someone standing in the shower, trying to grasp for a moment of peace and clarity, wondering how the hell they’re going to change the trajectory of their life.

I don’t have any answers for these problems. Are there any real answers?

But hey, did you see that trailer for Zelda: Breath of the Wild? It looks great!

[nathanberna-blog]

Day 3: A modern kind of fantasy...

As a reader, I’m not as deeply steeped in fantasy as many authors in the genre appear to be. See, for instance, Patrick Rothfuss’s massive list of recommended fantasy for an example of what I’m talking about. I have a lot to learn...

I feel strongly that if I want to participate in the genre, I need to be well read in it. So, I’ve been working hard to expand my knowledge of Fantasy and Sci-Fi over the past year. The deeper I go, the more wonderful and expansive the genre becomes. There are so many hidden gems, and there's something for every taste or mood. I guarantee that if you view yourself as someone who doesn’t like fantasy, you could find something you’ll love just by looking past the genre titans.

For example, The Traitor Baru Cormorant was one of the best books I’ve read in the past two years, regardless of genre. Do you like Breaking Bad? If so, I’ll bet you’ll like Baru.

Into fleshed out characters and relationships? Check out Robin Hobb, and ignore the weak titles and covers. Her characters are some of the best I’ve read, Fantasy or no. 

Want something more literary, that stands on it’s own as a work of prose? Check out The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Kavriel Kay. You won’t regret it.

For my own work, I want to create a fantasy book that feels as immediate and accessible as any other modern fiction, while still respecting the rich history of the genre. I don’t want readers bogged down in chapters that take two hours to complete, and I don’t want readers to have to cross-reference a wiki to keep track of where they are. I want it to be accessible, but deep.

One of my big inspirations for these values come directly from Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicle. Reading those two books left me with one thought in my head: “I want to write fantasy books.” That book showed me that fantasy could be modern, gorgeously written, deep, and easy to read all at once. It’s somehow both internally consistent, plausible, and still conveys a feeling of wonder and mystery. It gave me my “castle in the sky” to shoot for. I can’t recommend the books enough, and I'm incredibly jealous of anyone who gets to experience them for the first time.

I can’t make any claims that my prose is anywhere close to the same quality as Rothfuss’s, but it has certainly been my barometer. When I feel stuck, I flip through a random section of Wise Man’s Fear for a few minutes. Regardless of which part of the story I choose, Rothfuss’s prose sucks me right back in and suddenly twenty minutes have gone by. It always leaves me feeling inspired, with a few clues how I might solve a problem with a scene in my own book. 

Few other fantasy authors have that effect on me, and it’s something I’ve tried to tease apart and analyze, to figure out why it’s delicious to my brain.

Part of the reason the Kingkiller Chronicle is so compelling to me is that it defies certain categorizations. It’s hard to pin it down with a specific sub-genre or story structure. Sure, it utilizes a few prominent tropes, but it handles them with realism and care, and even the cliches Rothfuss employs are elevated by the strength of his prose. Yes there is a central, ancient mystery that drives the larger narrative, but also life gets in the way for Kvothe. Friendships, jobs, money problems, realistic consequences to dumb choices, all these things gives layers of realism to the story that reminds me more of something like The Sopranos or The Wire than say... Lord of the Rings. 

Game of Thrones achieved something similar... its characters behaved like real humans, and realistic things happened to them as result, and that’s a huge part of why it rose to genre stardom. 

But the Kingkiller Chronicle is so different... it is realistic, but it also drips with mood and feeling and soul. It pulls me along with its prose in a way that Game of Thrones never has. It’s a marriage of language and story that elevates it above any other fantasy I’ve read.

The effect of these books on me has been so profound that it made me want to become a fantasy writer. It also left such a big void in my life after I finished them that I embarked on a quest to find other fantasy that captures a fraction of the same feeling. Luckily, I’ve found  plenty more delicious fantasy meals hiding just below the surface. 

But the Kingkiller Chronicle will always be my gateway drug, it will always be the series that helped me discover my passion and career, and a book that I return to year after year to remind myself why I started in the first place. It was both the gateway to the canon of fantasy, and my ticket to partake in the genre’s future in my own tiny way.

So thanks, Patrick Rothfuss. You don’t know me, but I owe you a great deal.

[nathanberna-blog]

Day Two!

Hello again! Thanks for checking out the blog. I hope that this is entertaining and interesting, but I also know it’s kind of strange to read a making-of for something that doesn’t exist in the world yet. I’ll do my best to expand this blog to other topics in the coming days, so stay tuned.

One of the things I’m trying to do with Sam is make her story part of a larger, interconnected world of books.

Personally, I love whenever creators try to do this sort of thing. I love all the little clues in Stephen Kings book that tie them together in the same reality, or the vast interconnected universe of Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere, or Joe Abercrombie’s stand-alone books that take place in the same world as his First Law trilogy.

I want to do something similar. I know it’s ambitious, but it’s also a lot of fun. It’s one of the things that gets me excited to get out of bed in the morning and write.

Two Heroines

The interconnected world focuses on two lead ladies: Sam and Wanda, who are lifelong friends. But their stories quickly lead them down entirely different paths.

Each character will get their own series. Sam gets her weird, dark trilogy, while Wanda gets a more expansive series of six books. Each series will explore two very different worlds that are connected in interesting ways, and my hope is that you will get a lot of enjoyment from the little ways that the worlds overlap.

That said, I want to make sure I do my best to make Sam: Book One stand on its own. I’m working hard to give it a satisfying, self-contained story arc. My hope is that if you never read another book in the series, you’ll still come away happy.

More Stories

And if that wasn’t enough to work on, I’ve got a few other stories in the works within the Wide World.

· A prequel novella for one of the major characters in the Wanda series.

· A stand-alone detective novel that takes place after the Wanda series.

· A stand-alone novel about two brothers that takes place after the Wanda series.

Of course, a lot of this material might get integrated into the main books, or scrapped altogether. Who knows? It’s still early days. The main thing is that I want to keep pushing and exploring, and finding out what it is that makes the world unique, and something that people would really like to sink their teeth into.

I’ve also found that I like working on lots of stories at once. For one thing, it helps me experiment and try new ideas without tampering with the tone of Sam. For another, it allows me to see which tropes I reuse and lean on too heavily, allowing me to push myself to find unique spins on them. It’s also just nice to have something to work on when I get sick of Sam, which seems to happen at least once a week.

And that’s it for today! I hope you’ve enjoyed it. Please let me know if there is anything you would like to know about or see on this blog.

-Nate

[nathanberna-blog]

Hello World

 Hey there. 

This is way overdue, but it’s time for me to officially start a development blog for my book.

I’ve gotten to the point where my book is far enough along that I feel comfortable talking about it openly. Also, I kinda just want a space where I can... publicly exist... in the world? Ya know? That’s important for us authors, I hear.

So I had this idea that I would do a daily blog, where I talk about writing the book, and about writing in general, and whatever else I find interesting on a daily basis. 

So, the book so far: what is it? Why write it? What’s next? These are good questions.

What it is:

The book is currently titled Sam: Book One, because I haven’t thought of a cool title yet. I’ve found that it’s really easy to come up with good names for chapters and parts, but for some reason naming the book itself has been an exercise in futility. So, for now, it’s Sam: Book One.

It’s Book One because it’s the first book of a weird, dark fantasy trilogy. I like trilogies a lot. They allow room to breathe, but also have a clear endpoint. And it has always felt like Sam’s story would fit perfectly in three books, each one darker and weirder than the last. 

My hope is that I can draw you in with a familiar-feeling first book, and then you’ll jump with me off the deep end in Book Two.

Okay... so what's the book actually about?

That’s a surprisingly tough question. Sometimes people ask me this in person, and I stumble over my words and mumble something about how it’s supposed to be a modern fantasy book for people who don’t read a lot of fantasy. And then I say,"But it’s also for fantasy fans! It totally makes sense if you read it!” Sometimes they try to say something really nice like, “Oh, like magical realism!” and I say, “Yeah... sorta.” even though it’s not at all.

Yeah, I need to work on my sales pitch.

It’s a little bit like Alice In Wonderland on a superficial level, because it’s about a young woman who gets sucked into another world and then goes on an adventure. But that’s about where the similarities end.

A closer parallel would be Now And Then, Here And There, which is a really good anime about a boy who gets sucked into another world, but the world is horrible and sad and brutal. It’s weird and poignant, and you should totally watch it if you haven’t. I haven’t seen it since I first saw it seven years ago, but apparently it left a book-sized impression on me.

And really, Sam is just kind of it’s own thing. It’s kinda like David Fincher meets Studio Ghibli, or at least that’s what I’m shooting for. It’s nice to have dreams, you know?

Most of all, it’s about Sam. It’s about how she goes from a normal, listless 21-year-old woman, into... well, something kinda horrible.

But I want you to read it and experience it for yourself.

Okay, why write this book though?

The simple answer is that I was writing a bunch of 1st chapters to random stories a little over a year ago. I had only recently decided I wanted to pursue writing as a career, and I was trying to write as much as I could and get my tiny baby writer feet beneath me. Sam was the first story that clicked, and actually felt like it could be a book. So I started fleshing it out, and pretty soon I had a real, living, breathing book taking shape. 

Sam: Book One is also a sacrificial lamb to the writing gods, a total crash course in novel-writing, and an enormous amount of time has been spent just fixing my newbie mistakes. I was learning everything as I went: tense, dialogue, perspective, pacing, chapter length, all the basics. At certain points, like when I finally figured out which tense I wanted to write in, I had to spend an entire week going back and making everything limited-third-person and past-tense. 

And it was so much fun, learning about writing has been one of the most enjoyable things I’ve ever done in my life, and the process has only solidified my decision to become a writer.

But at the end of the day, I wouldn’t have kept writing Sam if it was just a learning experience. It turns out that I really like the weird, sad book that has taken shape. And I want to keep after it until it’s finished. 

Current Progress

The first draft is done, as is a soft 1.5 draft that includes all the feedback I’ve gotten from my lovely partner and friends who have been kind enough to read it.

And now, I’m about 25% finished with the 2.0 draft, and it’s going smoothly. If I’m being extremely optimistic, I hope to get it done by the end of March.

After that, I plan to send it off to people who have kindly volunteered to Alpha read the book. I’m most excited to send it to my dad and brother, who are responsible for my lifelong interest in fantasy books. I hope they like it. And I hope you all like it, too. 

Stay tuned for more updates, hopefully, maybe, probably not daily.

[nathanberna-blog]

REVIEW: The Traitor Baru Cormorant - by Seth Dickinson

This is one of the best books I've read so far in 2016, Fantasy or otherwise. I would say it's the best, except I also read To Kill a Mockingbird this year. I loved that it was short (relative to genre norms) and tightly focused. There is a clear arc to this book, and everything extraneous was left out, to the book's benefit. There's no system of magic or magical creatures to be found; the only monsters in this book are of the human variety. If you aren't a reader of Fantasy, I'd still urge you to check this book out - it's a good novel, period. It tackles some heavy, interesting themes - particularly the roles of complicity and responsibility when you partake in a system of oppression. I don't want to spoil anything, because the sense of discovery is half the fun of this book. All I will say is that it is absolutely worth your time. A note about the prose: This book is tightly written and well-paced. The balance between dialog, inner monologue, and exposition is near-perfect for my tastes. The language and description is evocative and effective without being tedious. You are given exactly what you need to move forward, and I found myself unable to budge from my chair as I finished up the last 200 pages of this book. Handy tip: there are some hard-to-pronounce names in this book. Any name that has an 'X' in it is pronounced 'sh'. So, Duke Lyxaxu is pronounced Duke Ly-sha-shu. It helped immensely with getting into the flow of the book.

Buy the book on Amazon HERE: The Traitor Baru Cormorant