Beginning of Day 6

SFFMuse Summer Fun Run: [ 1831/60,000 | 5 days down | 55 days left]
Uneditted roleplay: 311
Writing-heavy roleplay: 1520

While I was posting my progress at SFFMuse, I noticed that the sig doesn't stay static. So if I want to track my progress, I should paste it in here each time I post about it.

The weekend was very unproductive in terms of writing. (But very productive in terms of house-related chores.) Basically that last post killed me. I had to reach deep to get anything at all, and I mined myself out. Even thinking about putting in a minuscule amount of effort to write something else, was enough to make me go into an endless tailspin of housework alternating with Diablo II.

On the bright side, my car has new rear brakes now (for $500 :p), and I bought and assembled a rack for my CDs. As the only piece of blond wood furniture I own, it doesn't match any other furniture, but it didn't come in any other color. Oh well. I did a bunch of dishes, actually cleaned the stovetop, and sharpened a couple knives. I also made a vat of chili, a big pot of rice to go with it, and a vegetable dish that was supposed to be a frittata except I didn't have enough eggs. (Did y'all know that eggs can desiccate? I sure didn't before this evening...). I have enough food to last me all through next week, which is a rarity these past few years. I used to be a lot more into cooking than I am now. Now I habitually have to get emergency takeout. :p

Anyway, back to writing. Where was I?

So it seems that if I expend so much effort into writing something that I essentially sacrifice myself to it, well, apparently there are consequences. :p I couldn't get myself to write much of anything all weekend. Not even think about plots or anything. The whole notion of working up any mental effort toward creative endeavors was exhausting, all by itself.

This left me feeling rather bored for most of today. I didn't want to do anything, and I was tired of not doing anything, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. I haven't felt like that in years, but it seems to be cropping up with increasing frequency these past few weeks.

Luckily, I started working on a different post (same game, different character), and that got me back into the swing of things. I love that character. He's awesome. :)

The inspiration-succubus posted within 12 hours of my crummy poem. I was tired before I even started reading it, and halfway through the first paragraph I already wanted to stop and do something else instead. I think I might need to talk to her about this. Her posts are horrendously long, and as far as I can tell, she writes in every single thought that ever occurs to her as she's thinking about the scene.

It's sort of like wading through a first draft. There's interesting bits in amongst the dreck, but it desperately needs to be trimmed down and polished up to have any sort of impact. Also, this is supposed to be roleplay. The girl does not know when and where to pause to allow the other players to respond and react to things that her character is doing. She just blows right past it as if we're sitting there doing nothing. It kills impact, and it also renders meaningless all subsequent posts that probably would've responded if she HAD paused.

I don't know. I have noticed a pattern in my own reactions to things in roleplay. Namely, that if that Dylan Thomas refrain begins to repeat itself in my head, over and over, it means that something has gone badly awry. Basically, any effort I expend in the endeavor is going to be pointless, so I should probably just not even try. Last gasps just aren't worth it. If I can't come up with a tactful way to get her to stop doing it, I'm going to have to go the way of one-liners. Throw in the towel, give up, and just grit my teeth and hope that the scene ends soon so we can all move on to something else.

Apparently I'm in desperate need of doing some freewrite ranting, too. I guess it's sort of my warmup for trying to figure out what to say to her, and how to say it so that it won't make her mad. Tact has never been one of my strong points, unfortunately.

So to sum up. Two writing-heavy roleplay posts totalling 640 words, that I'm counting for 1520 (240 words 3 times, 400 words twice). Another 311 words for other roleplay (everything counted once). So far no words related to any novels. I'm going to have to fix that this coming week. And also try to catch up, as it's now the beginning of Day 6 and I'm over 4k words behind. :/