Dan Scholes spends his days at UF, armed with lawn equipment — usually a lawn mower — tending to the landscaping that students walk over every day on their way to class.
Every day he goes to a new place to perform the same tasks.
Though the job entails repeatedly doing the same things, and he sometimes finds himself wishing for a new job, he doesn’t mind so much when he thinks about it.
“It can be almost artistic,” he said. “You’re almost sculpting the ground.”
By night, the 44-year-old groundskeeper sits at his computer, sculpting the ground, the sky, and everything in between as he creates the world for his novel, tentatively titled “Star Tender.”
It is the story of a man who discovers he can communicate with stars. In the world of the novel, stars are sentient beings responsible for the creation of the universe.
Throughout the story, which is still unfinished, the main character is able to create new building supplies and biotechnology with the help of the stars.
“Stars have created everything,” Scholes said. “I figure, well, stars should be able to create anything.”
Scholes started the project as part of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, in which participants challenge themselves to complete a 50,000-word novel in the month of November.
Scholes only completed 17,000 words of “Star Tender” over the course of the competition, but said he intends to complete the book anyway.
“I’ve been kind of a slow writer,” he said.
Scholes is also a slow reader.
He said dyslexia has plagued him throughout his life — he described reading text as “physically painful” — and he has relied on his ears to do his reading with audiobooks.
He remembered a time in 2006 when his brother gave him a copy of Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” It took him two months to process two chapters of the book before he put it down in favor of the audiobook version, which he found much more effective.
Despite his dyslexia, he still wants to write.
“I don’t really understand it,” he said. “It’s just one of those things I’ve gotta do.”
Despite dreading the editing process that will require him to pore through at least 18,000 words, Scholes sits in silence in his one-room apartment, stationed at his desk that he nicknamed “Command Central,” typing away.
He finds that he can’t write when the TV is on, or when music with lyrics is playing. So for him, it’s instrumental jazz or nothing but dead silence.
When he’s got writer’s block, he just stares at the screen until something comes to him.
“It’s kind of like the idea blender,” he said. “I start kicking around ideas until the blender starts going. And then eventually, things just start coming out.”
Or if it gets too frustrating, he goes and plays a little “World of Warcraft.”
When things are going well, Scholes says he can sit there and write for up to six hours at a time before taking a break.
So far, Scholes describes his work-in-progress as “18,000 words of world-building and character development,” but he’s working on the story’s conflicts. Scholes hopes to have the book finished by the time the next NaNoWriMo rolls around. However, if he doesn’t finish it by then, he will use it as his project for the next go-round.
He’s unsure of how long the book will end up being, and he has no set goal. He just wants his book to “not suck.”
That, or to get published.
Scholes’ writing is inspired heavily by the science fiction stories he gets on free podcasts.
One of his favorites is “Metamor City,” an urban fantasy podcast that features voice-acting, a score and sound effects much like an old radio show.
Productions like this gave Scholes his start in writing. He started with a series he called “The Chronicles of Megadan,” named after his “World of Warcraft” character, a Level 85 Warlock.
He even does his own sound effects for the podcast. He said he once sat with a friend for two hours just to make one sound effect for an episode.
“Once I came across all these people putting out their work for free trying to get noticed, I just started consuming voraciously that content,” he said. “It’s its own little community that I’m trying to be a part of.”
NaNoWriMo caused him to put “The Chronicles of Megadan” on hold and write his novel.
Though he didn’t finish the novel during the allotted period, he was in the majority of NaNoWriMo participants.
In 2009, only 19 percent of people were able to complete the challenge.
Scholes said the contest served as a way to get him motivated to write, especially with the support of fellow NaNoWriMo participants, several of whom formed a writer’s group that continues to meet to this day at Books Inc.
He said he valued the camaraderie and support he got while furiously trying to get to the 50,000-word mark and the opportunity to commiserate with other writers who were going through the same thing.
All in all, Scholes said he found the process to be a rewarding experience.
“It’s work,” he said. “It’s not easy, but it’s usually rewarding when you start with a blank page, and by the end of the night hopefully you’ve filled it up with words. And if I can read them and they don’t suck, then I’ve done all right.”
