SFR 2006 Final Count: 51,960 / 90,000 words
Dragonfly: 1841 (916 final count) +1012
Stranger on a Bus: 2673 (301 edit words)
What is it to be Human: 726
Temple: 2813
general roleplay: 13,732
Blogs: 28,125
RPoL: 1038
Well ... I did more than half my stated goal. That's a step up from how I do in most of these challenges. Yeah, I think I'm really only good for one big challenge a year, and that would be Nanowrimo. The rest of the time, I'm better off just plodding along at my slow but steady snail's pace.
I wouldn't say my three months were unproductive. Although I didn't write that many total words, I did get myself educated somewhat better about the whole publishing industry. I've started reading Miss Snark regularly, and paying attention to the blogs of other writerly type people (John Scalzi and Making Light, in particular). And thinking about writing in general beyond Fortress Launne. There's probably a lot of nonfiction short things I could do, if I knew about them.
Of course, on the flip side, I may be better off trying to focus on only one project at a time. Everything slows to a crawl when I'm doing lots of different things.
Oh well. Onward with the whole learning thing. Upward. :)
2006/07/29
SFR winding down...
02 / 90 days to go | 89 / 90 days gone
50,229 / 90,000 words done | 38,771 words behind
Dragonfly: 1841 (916 final count) +1012
Stranger on a Bus: 2673 (301 edit words)
What is it to be Human: 726
Temple: 2813
general roleplay: 12,903
Blogs: 27,223
RPoL: 1038
Yeah. I've basically given up. And I don't think I'm going to sign up for any more non-Nanowrimo writing marathons. All they tend to do is make everything stressful instead of fun. I haven't eliminated Labor Day Novel from consideration this year, but at this point I'm not real sure how well that's going to go, considering I do have to work three hours a day on Saturday and Sunday, right during the middle of the day, which will probably kill my flow. But we'll see...
The game What is it to be Human? took off like a rocket after I nudged three people into joining. The GM suddenly started taking an interest in the game again, and has been doing a lot of admin housecleaning - removing obviously-gone players, changing the way we do things threadwise, etc. He's around to post quite a lot more now than he has been for months. He hasn't paid this much attention to the game since he first started it back in 2003.
And in the process, I'm pretty stoked again too. There's a couple posts I need to write for one of my characters, and I'm a tad stuck, but I'm still having a good time reading everyone else's activities and recognizing all the plot bits everywhere. Being able to actually talk about the game to other people helps a lot too (the aforementioned three people).
On the downside, however, it means that my own plans for a fanfic has screeched to a halt. I can't write an alternate storyline while the "real" storyline is still in progress. I detest contradictions from canon, and it's the main reason why my Star Trek paperback collection is 90% TOS. I didn't want to buy any of the novels from the other series while those series were actually still on TV. The same applies to fanfic in general, and is why I don't read it.
So now I'm planning to write down a much-reduced version of the hunter story, turn it into a single standalone scene of not more than 20 paragraphs, and use that to explain 5 hours of Rumen's evening where he's got nothing else going on. After I do that, I can get on to the important part - just before dawn where there's a whole lot of stuff going on to other people in the game, that he's going to know about and want to react to.
What all this means, of course, is that I'm throwing myself wholeheartedly back into roleplay. I need to take a break from writing for a while. I need to get back to writing just to write, the way I breath - and not look at it as some sort of monumentally important task. I write quite well when I don't think about it at all, as my roleplay posts demonstrate to me quite clearly.
I'll still blog, of course. The takeout blog gets entries whenever I can think of anything to talk about, though most of the time all I need is a starting point, and I end up finding an entire iceberg under the tip.
Dragonfly isn't ready to be finished yet. I don't know what the entire story is, and there's a part of my subconscious that tells me it's still baking. There are pieces that I don't have yet. So I'm going to ease back and take my time, and try for having it finished by next summer.
Fortress Launne continues to recede from my mind, though there are vague twinges here and there all the time. Maybe it means that I'll get a nice tsunami at some point, but it's not here yet.
At the same time, I recently read a "how to become a writer" article on John Scalzi's Whatever blog, and in it he suggests getting a copy of Writer's Market. Poking on Amazon a bit, I note that they put out a new edition every year, and the next edition will be available in early August. I'm planning to pick up a copy, just to see what's in it, and whether there's anything non-fiction I can do with it.
Meanwhile, roleplay is going well. My game is still moving along, though still slowly. I'm in the process of kicking out a problem player - one that was cheating a few months back, and whom has since then been remarkably aggravating about just how much he can possibly get away with doing. Having him in the game isn't fun, and I want to have fun in my game, so out he's going. I'm looking around for someone to replace him - not necessarily his specific character, who is well positioned to die horribly at the moment - but someone who can take up getting entangled in the same subplots. I've managed to interest the GM of What is it to be Human? so far; he's working on a character as we speak.
And I'd like to get the mage stuff kicked off during August. That's primetime for player recruitment. I just need to finish working out the character sheets a bit more, and then start advertising in a number of key games.
Guess I'll hold off on any final thoughts about how I did with SFR until the beginning of August. I'll still be writing a lot of roleplaying posts until then.
50,229 / 90,000 words done | 38,771 words behind
Dragonfly: 1841 (916 final count) +1012
Stranger on a Bus: 2673 (301 edit words)
What is it to be Human: 726
Temple: 2813
general roleplay: 12,903
Blogs: 27,223
RPoL: 1038
Yeah. I've basically given up. And I don't think I'm going to sign up for any more non-Nanowrimo writing marathons. All they tend to do is make everything stressful instead of fun. I haven't eliminated Labor Day Novel from consideration this year, but at this point I'm not real sure how well that's going to go, considering I do have to work three hours a day on Saturday and Sunday, right during the middle of the day, which will probably kill my flow. But we'll see...
The game What is it to be Human? took off like a rocket after I nudged three people into joining. The GM suddenly started taking an interest in the game again, and has been doing a lot of admin housecleaning - removing obviously-gone players, changing the way we do things threadwise, etc. He's around to post quite a lot more now than he has been for months. He hasn't paid this much attention to the game since he first started it back in 2003.
And in the process, I'm pretty stoked again too. There's a couple posts I need to write for one of my characters, and I'm a tad stuck, but I'm still having a good time reading everyone else's activities and recognizing all the plot bits everywhere. Being able to actually talk about the game to other people helps a lot too (the aforementioned three people).
On the downside, however, it means that my own plans for a fanfic has screeched to a halt. I can't write an alternate storyline while the "real" storyline is still in progress. I detest contradictions from canon, and it's the main reason why my Star Trek paperback collection is 90% TOS. I didn't want to buy any of the novels from the other series while those series were actually still on TV. The same applies to fanfic in general, and is why I don't read it.
So now I'm planning to write down a much-reduced version of the hunter story, turn it into a single standalone scene of not more than 20 paragraphs, and use that to explain 5 hours of Rumen's evening where he's got nothing else going on. After I do that, I can get on to the important part - just before dawn where there's a whole lot of stuff going on to other people in the game, that he's going to know about and want to react to.
What all this means, of course, is that I'm throwing myself wholeheartedly back into roleplay. I need to take a break from writing for a while. I need to get back to writing just to write, the way I breath - and not look at it as some sort of monumentally important task. I write quite well when I don't think about it at all, as my roleplay posts demonstrate to me quite clearly.
I'll still blog, of course. The takeout blog gets entries whenever I can think of anything to talk about, though most of the time all I need is a starting point, and I end up finding an entire iceberg under the tip.
Dragonfly isn't ready to be finished yet. I don't know what the entire story is, and there's a part of my subconscious that tells me it's still baking. There are pieces that I don't have yet. So I'm going to ease back and take my time, and try for having it finished by next summer.
Fortress Launne continues to recede from my mind, though there are vague twinges here and there all the time. Maybe it means that I'll get a nice tsunami at some point, but it's not here yet.
At the same time, I recently read a "how to become a writer" article on John Scalzi's Whatever blog, and in it he suggests getting a copy of Writer's Market. Poking on Amazon a bit, I note that they put out a new edition every year, and the next edition will be available in early August. I'm planning to pick up a copy, just to see what's in it, and whether there's anything non-fiction I can do with it.
Meanwhile, roleplay is going well. My game is still moving along, though still slowly. I'm in the process of kicking out a problem player - one that was cheating a few months back, and whom has since then been remarkably aggravating about just how much he can possibly get away with doing. Having him in the game isn't fun, and I want to have fun in my game, so out he's going. I'm looking around for someone to replace him - not necessarily his specific character, who is well positioned to die horribly at the moment - but someone who can take up getting entangled in the same subplots. I've managed to interest the GM of What is it to be Human? so far; he's working on a character as we speak.
And I'd like to get the mage stuff kicked off during August. That's primetime for player recruitment. I just need to finish working out the character sheets a bit more, and then start advertising in a number of key games.
Guess I'll hold off on any final thoughts about how I did with SFR until the beginning of August. I'll still be writing a lot of roleplaying posts until then.
2006/07/20
SFR: 10 Days Left
10 / 90 days to go | 80 / 90 days gone
47,474 / 90,000 words done | 32,526 words behind
Dragonfly: 1841 (916 final count)
Stranger on a Bus: 2673 (301 edit words)
What is it to be Human: 726
Temple: 2813
general roleplay: 11,326
Blogs: 27,057
RPoL: 1038
Actually there's 11 days left, because July has 31 days. One freebie day isn't going to help me much, though.
I've added a new category of "RPoL." For the past week or so, I've been doing category descriptions - which take a lot of thought and editting. Since they are, in fact, intended for eventual publication, by the SFR rules they do count. The final arbiter of whether they're used will be jase, the RPoL admin. While I was at it, I also snagged the portion of the RPoL wikipedia entry that I wrote back in May. It's not much, but every little bit helps...
For my next trick, I should finish editting Dragonfly. But I'm not going to stress about it. If it doesn't make deadline, I can always submit it next year instead.
The What is it to be Human? game has two new players, and I've been pimping it to more. It's coming back to life, and I need to write posts for my characters soon. So far nothing is coming to mind though.
47,474 / 90,000 words done | 32,526 words behind
Dragonfly: 1841 (916 final count)
Stranger on a Bus: 2673 (301 edit words)
What is it to be Human: 726
Temple: 2813
general roleplay: 11,326
Blogs: 27,057
RPoL: 1038
Actually there's 11 days left, because July has 31 days. One freebie day isn't going to help me much, though.
I've added a new category of "RPoL." For the past week or so, I've been doing category descriptions - which take a lot of thought and editting. Since they are, in fact, intended for eventual publication, by the SFR rules they do count. The final arbiter of whether they're used will be jase, the RPoL admin. While I was at it, I also snagged the portion of the RPoL wikipedia entry that I wrote back in May. It's not much, but every little bit helps...
For my next trick, I should finish editting Dragonfly. But I'm not going to stress about it. If it doesn't make deadline, I can always submit it next year instead.
The What is it to be Human? game has two new players, and I've been pimping it to more. It's coming back to life, and I need to write posts for my characters soon. So far nothing is coming to mind though.
2006/07/17
Keeping up for the moment
13 / 90 days to go | 77 / 90 days gone
46,185 / 90,000 words done | 30,815 words behind
Dragonfly: 1841 (916 final count)
Stranger on a Bus: 2673 (301 edit words)
What is it to be Human: 726
Temple: 2813
general roleplay: 11,326
Blogs: 26,806
I blathered a lot in the takeout blog this weekend. It's sort of like my freewrites. Once I get started, I just keep going, and soon I've written a couple thousand words.
Of course, today I had a lot to blather about. We had a customer come in that is known to steal from the tip jar when she thinks no one is looking. I spent an hour watching her like a hawk (albeit out of the corner of my eye). Eventually I ended up moving the whole jar under the counter, when she finally figured out a clever way to get me away from it and my attention off her and onto a different customer. The manager is way too nice. I, on the other hand, can be quite the rude bitch when I'm annoyed.
In other news, I've started working on Dragonfly a bit. It's not reflected on the stats above because I'm not done yet, and somehow it feels like cheating to count the whole thing multiple times when it's a single edit spread over multiple sessions.
And in non-writing news, Comcast sucks. My connection was glitchy for basically the entire day. It seems to have finally stabilized now though.
46,185 / 90,000 words done | 30,815 words behind
Dragonfly: 1841 (916 final count)
Stranger on a Bus: 2673 (301 edit words)
What is it to be Human: 726
Temple: 2813
general roleplay: 11,326
Blogs: 26,806
I blathered a lot in the takeout blog this weekend. It's sort of like my freewrites. Once I get started, I just keep going, and soon I've written a couple thousand words.
Of course, today I had a lot to blather about. We had a customer come in that is known to steal from the tip jar when she thinks no one is looking. I spent an hour watching her like a hawk (albeit out of the corner of my eye). Eventually I ended up moving the whole jar under the counter, when she finally figured out a clever way to get me away from it and my attention off her and onto a different customer. The manager is way too nice. I, on the other hand, can be quite the rude bitch when I'm annoyed.
In other news, I've started working on Dragonfly a bit. It's not reflected on the stats above because I'm not done yet, and somehow it feels like cheating to count the whole thing multiple times when it's a single edit spread over multiple sessions.
And in non-writing news, Comcast sucks. My connection was glitchy for basically the entire day. It seems to have finally stabilized now though.
2006/07/13
Stuff
So I said in my last blog entry that everyone else seemed to be doing well, even though I wasn't ... and then I come back and see "Blocked!" and "Overwhelmed!" and "Something in the Air (I can't write)" ... and I'm thinking: NOOOOOOO!!!!!111!1!!11! I don't wanna be contagious! o.O
Okay, I guess upon thinking it over more, when I said "everyone" before, what I meant was Robert. He has put aside his Mariner trilogy in favor of a "throwaway side project" ... which I believe he mentioned in his last blog entry. Well...
6 days into it, he's managed to crank out 33,000 words per day every day and is approaching 200k words.
33,000 words per day. For 6 days. And he's not done yet.
I'm lucky if I can make 33,000 (fiction) words in a month. (I would say "year" but then there's my two Nano Winner certificates staring at me from the wall, so that would be untrue.) I'll just take comfort in knowing that he's been doing this for 4 more decades than I have, and that maybe when I'm his age (20 years from now), I'll be able to do that too. But good lord. :(
On the bright side though, my cable went out last night. This wouldn't normally be bright, but for me it was. It meant no Internet, and it cut me off from my Diablo 2 addiction. I decided to take it as a sign that maybe I should write something.
I'm 726 words into the What is it to be Human project. :) It came out pretty good, too, a lot better than my other intros, though it might also be confusing to people who haven't read the game. I sort of jumped right in where the last thread ended for Aaron, with Aniqa leaving the bookstore. My hunter guy, Craig, then picked up with that - Aniqa leaves in a huff and goes down the street, has an infodumpy conversation with her lackey about what had just happened in the bookstore, and now Craig has taken aim with his sniper rifle and is about to shoot her.
And that's where things are now. This would be the point where someone comes along and interrupts, and I haven't decided whether that should be Rumen or Hernando. Probably Rumen, actually. In the game, Hernando is at this point doing something else with Aaron and would be too busy to go gallivanting around town. And much as I had intended to depart from the game plots, I find that I can't. How it's written in the game is how it has happened, and I can only go forward from that without changing anything.
Rumen, however, isn't actually doing anything in the game right now. With Damisa gone, and no signs of ever coming back, he's just kind of wandering around aimlessly.
Speaking of the game. It's come back to life. Suddenly the other two people in it are playing again, exchanging posts daily. Neither of my characters are active at the moment (Aaron is in bed, and Rumen is wandering aimlessly), but I'm reading along to their stuff and enjoying the plot twists coming out of it. There are very few games where I actively want to read along to the threads where I'm not involved, and at this point WIITBH is the only one that I read in detail, without skimming. (I make a lousy lurker of other people's games for this reason.)
So now I'm trying to think of people to coerce into joining the game, and see if we can make the thing rise from the ashes. I'll be by to nudge Robert back into it too, just as soon as his life is settled down again in a couple months or so. ;)
The other big thing on my mind right now is a lengthy, detailed conversation with a conservative Christian woman I've known since high school. I'm in the process of outing myself to her. So far we're in the middle of Gender Dysphoria 101 and how it's a birth defect and not a choice. She's mostly in the "but you are too a girl! for reasons XYZ!" phase and well ... I guess I'm going to get lots of detailed practice in coming up with good responses to all of that. Which is good, even though it's also painful, because eventually I need to have this conversation with my brother again. I take comfort in having watched way more extreme FTMs meet with the exact same thing and knowing that if they can still get accused of being girls even while they're practically neanderthals, I'm definitely not alone. It's easier to not take it personally that way.
And that's where I am at the moment. Hope all of your blocks dissolve soon and the words begin to flow! :)
Okay, I guess upon thinking it over more, when I said "everyone" before, what I meant was Robert. He has put aside his Mariner trilogy in favor of a "throwaway side project" ... which I believe he mentioned in his last blog entry. Well...
6 days into it, he's managed to crank out 33,000 words per day every day and is approaching 200k words.
33,000 words per day. For 6 days. And he's not done yet.
I'm lucky if I can make 33,000 (fiction) words in a month. (I would say "year" but then there's my two Nano Winner certificates staring at me from the wall, so that would be untrue.) I'll just take comfort in knowing that he's been doing this for 4 more decades than I have, and that maybe when I'm his age (20 years from now), I'll be able to do that too. But good lord. :(
On the bright side though, my cable went out last night. This wouldn't normally be bright, but for me it was. It meant no Internet, and it cut me off from my Diablo 2 addiction. I decided to take it as a sign that maybe I should write something.
I'm 726 words into the What is it to be Human project. :) It came out pretty good, too, a lot better than my other intros, though it might also be confusing to people who haven't read the game. I sort of jumped right in where the last thread ended for Aaron, with Aniqa leaving the bookstore. My hunter guy, Craig, then picked up with that - Aniqa leaves in a huff and goes down the street, has an infodumpy conversation with her lackey about what had just happened in the bookstore, and now Craig has taken aim with his sniper rifle and is about to shoot her.
And that's where things are now. This would be the point where someone comes along and interrupts, and I haven't decided whether that should be Rumen or Hernando. Probably Rumen, actually. In the game, Hernando is at this point doing something else with Aaron and would be too busy to go gallivanting around town. And much as I had intended to depart from the game plots, I find that I can't. How it's written in the game is how it has happened, and I can only go forward from that without changing anything.
Rumen, however, isn't actually doing anything in the game right now. With Damisa gone, and no signs of ever coming back, he's just kind of wandering around aimlessly.
Speaking of the game. It's come back to life. Suddenly the other two people in it are playing again, exchanging posts daily. Neither of my characters are active at the moment (Aaron is in bed, and Rumen is wandering aimlessly), but I'm reading along to their stuff and enjoying the plot twists coming out of it. There are very few games where I actively want to read along to the threads where I'm not involved, and at this point WIITBH is the only one that I read in detail, without skimming. (I make a lousy lurker of other people's games for this reason.)
So now I'm trying to think of people to coerce into joining the game, and see if we can make the thing rise from the ashes. I'll be by to nudge Robert back into it too, just as soon as his life is settled down again in a couple months or so. ;)
The other big thing on my mind right now is a lengthy, detailed conversation with a conservative Christian woman I've known since high school. I'm in the process of outing myself to her. So far we're in the middle of Gender Dysphoria 101 and how it's a birth defect and not a choice. She's mostly in the "but you are too a girl! for reasons XYZ!" phase and well ... I guess I'm going to get lots of detailed practice in coming up with good responses to all of that. Which is good, even though it's also painful, because eventually I need to have this conversation with my brother again. I take comfort in having watched way more extreme FTMs meet with the exact same thing and knowing that if they can still get accused of being girls even while they're practically neanderthals, I'm definitely not alone. It's easier to not take it personally that way.
And that's where I am at the moment. Hope all of your blocks dissolve soon and the words begin to flow! :)
2006/07/12
This is starting to get rather depressing
18 / 90 days to go | 72 / 90 days gone
41,121 / 90,000 words done | 30,879 words behind
Dragonfly: 1841 (916 final count)
Stranger on a Bus: 2673 (301 edit words)
Temple: 2813
general roleplay: 10,711
Blogs: 23,083
The end of the month is only 18 days away, and I'm a month behind on the SFR wordcount. :( I suck. I suck I suck I suck. Everyone else seems to be going great this month, but I'm stuck in the mud.
Logistically speaking, I ought to work on Dragonfly.
Dragonfly is just about the last thing on my mind right now. Instead, I'm still banging my head against Amulet I. There's more backstory to be built before I can figure out what the frell I'm doing with that, but it won't leave me alone until I figure it out. :(
[members-only cut]
Basically, the question is, how does Iorli and Aliacorba fit into the grand scheme of things, cosmology-wise? The reality of the world consists of layers of overlapping planes. Most people are only aware of the physical plane - and are quite able to live out successful, happy lives on just the physical plane alone, completely oblivious to all the other ones.
Then there's people like Aliacorba, who is aware of the other planes. He can speak to the spirits and non-physical beings who dwell there. This makes him a shaman.
What about Iorli? Iorli can traverse the other planes, where Aliacorba can only look. But he isn't simply a plane-walker. The real way to look at it is that he's aware of the whole of reality, and not just a small part of it. And he can go to the other places that the mortals wouldn't even think about.
The outlanders are completely unaware that there's anything other than the physical plane, by and large. The native folk are aware and more in tune with the spirits of the lands. And they revere their shamans.
How do the shamans get to be the way they are? And what is Iorli, exactly? How does he fit in? He's not a spirit. He's Aliacorba's uncle. Somewhere along the way he became half-spirit - either by birth or later on - and if it was later on, why? how?
There's something fundamental I'm missing about all this, and I can't quite put my finger on it.
Meanwhile, I'm slogging through roleplay at the same glacial pace as I've been going for months. My paladin on USWest is now 25 and about to hit the Council in Travincal. And I've been doing a lot of non-fiction writing instead.
For starters, jase is about to roll out the next version of RPoL, and there's some odds and ends he needs help with. The part that caught my interest was a need for category blurbs. Descriptions and definitions of what each genre is for. They're harder to write than it first appears, but I've contributed six of them so far. There's 24 of them total. (And two of those are also already written up, by others.)
Also, I've been doing a ton of philosophical rantings, helping people find their paths. Teenagers needing to be thwacked over the head with clue-by-fours, mostly. But I'm making some progress, I think, with one of them. Another is in some serious denial, but I keep trying anyway. Writing isn't one of the main callings of my life. Teaching people how to live is. I feel good when I manage to do that.
That's what I've been doing for the past half-week or so. Guess I'll continue until something breaks loose and I can write something fictionlike again.
41,121 / 90,000 words done | 30,879 words behind
Dragonfly: 1841 (916 final count)
Stranger on a Bus: 2673 (301 edit words)
Temple: 2813
general roleplay: 10,711
Blogs: 23,083
The end of the month is only 18 days away, and I'm a month behind on the SFR wordcount. :( I suck. I suck I suck I suck. Everyone else seems to be going great this month, but I'm stuck in the mud.
Logistically speaking, I ought to work on Dragonfly.
Dragonfly is just about the last thing on my mind right now. Instead, I'm still banging my head against Amulet I. There's more backstory to be built before I can figure out what the frell I'm doing with that, but it won't leave me alone until I figure it out. :(
[members-only cut]
Basically, the question is, how does Iorli and Aliacorba fit into the grand scheme of things, cosmology-wise? The reality of the world consists of layers of overlapping planes. Most people are only aware of the physical plane - and are quite able to live out successful, happy lives on just the physical plane alone, completely oblivious to all the other ones.
Then there's people like Aliacorba, who is aware of the other planes. He can speak to the spirits and non-physical beings who dwell there. This makes him a shaman.
What about Iorli? Iorli can traverse the other planes, where Aliacorba can only look. But he isn't simply a plane-walker. The real way to look at it is that he's aware of the whole of reality, and not just a small part of it. And he can go to the other places that the mortals wouldn't even think about.
The outlanders are completely unaware that there's anything other than the physical plane, by and large. The native folk are aware and more in tune with the spirits of the lands. And they revere their shamans.
How do the shamans get to be the way they are? And what is Iorli, exactly? How does he fit in? He's not a spirit. He's Aliacorba's uncle. Somewhere along the way he became half-spirit - either by birth or later on - and if it was later on, why? how?
There's something fundamental I'm missing about all this, and I can't quite put my finger on it.
Meanwhile, I'm slogging through roleplay at the same glacial pace as I've been going for months. My paladin on USWest is now 25 and about to hit the Council in Travincal. And I've been doing a lot of non-fiction writing instead.
For starters, jase is about to roll out the next version of RPoL, and there's some odds and ends he needs help with. The part that caught my interest was a need for category blurbs. Descriptions and definitions of what each genre is for. They're harder to write than it first appears, but I've contributed six of them so far. There's 24 of them total. (And two of those are also already written up, by others.)
Also, I've been doing a ton of philosophical rantings, helping people find their paths. Teenagers needing to be thwacked over the head with clue-by-fours, mostly. But I'm making some progress, I think, with one of them. Another is in some serious denial, but I keep trying anyway. Writing isn't one of the main callings of my life. Teaching people how to live is. I feel good when I manage to do that.
That's what I've been doing for the past half-week or so. Guess I'll continue until something breaks loose and I can write something fictionlike again.
2006/07/08
SFR: still not doing so great
22 / 90 days to go | 68 / 90 days gone
39,256 / 90,000 words done | 28,744 words behind
Dragonfly: 1841 (916 final count)
Stranger on a Bus: 2673 (301 edit words)
Temple: 2813
general roleplay: 9453
Blogs: 22,476
Well... my paladin is now 20 and in the Arcane Sanctuary in Act II. :p
I've been spending the last few days recuperating from having houseguests. Oddly enough, I never did get as sore all over as I expected, from doing 9 straight hours of cleaning on Monday. Also I've noticed that I have more upper arm muscles than I used to. Maybe that's related...
I've been doing a lot more brainstorming than actual writing. Mostly for Taint and Amulet I. Basically, Amulet I is unworkable as-is. I spent yesterday's worktime doing a lot of hard thinking on the backstory, and who the main characters are, how they're related to each other and why, and what went on in the immediate vicinity of the abandoned fort just before they showed up (which was a few years before the actual story). I think I know who Edward Duchene is now. I didn't before - he was the guy that turned out stillborn. Well, I know who he is because of how Iorli views him, and from there I can extrapolate who he is to himself. They're nothing like how I originally imagined them, nor the people they're based on.
And reading back over my game, the scenes where Lord Duchene appears, it turns out that he does have a distinct personality after all. I didn't get him right all the time, but enough that it shows through as I'm seeing him now.
Which doesn't make the plot work out any better, really. There's just too many key differences between what happened in real life between my two friends who argued over the Diablo 2 amulet, and how I adapted it in a quick, shoddy fashion when I needed to come up with a roleplay character's backstory in a hurry. It worked well enough at the time, for its original purpose, but not so well now that I'm trying to turn it into a full-fledged novel-lengthed story.
As for Taint. That one is a lot more difficult. Basically, the protagonist comes to an unfortunate end, which doesn't make for a very happy story. When one roots for the protagonist to 'win' and he ends up losing everything by the end of the story, well, somehow I don't think that's going to fly well with the average reader... and yet it's necessary for everything that happens later in the series. It's what happened to him. But whenever I try to write about it, the character fights me too, so I know it isn't right, but I don't know how to make it right.
But I'll keep bashing my head against it until it turns into something workable. I think it will happen eventually.
Meanwhile I've taken Robert's approach to Diablo 2 lately. My paladin is named Craig Turner, who would also have been a paladin if he'd been in the D2 world. I play slower, and I ruminate while I play. It does turn out to be useful in small doses, and not played to excess like I did before. USEast is back up, but I'm kind of hooked on my USWest paladin now and might not go back there anytime soon.
Eventually I'll rotate through my various WIPs back to Dragonfly. It needs to get done, and has an actual deadline if I still want to submit it. Hopefully this weekend I'll get around to looking at it again.
Oh. My houseguests are coming back. They've discovered that they're not going to manage to drive from Pittsburgh to Orlando in a single day after all, and so they're staying over tomorrow night. Somehow I'm not particularly surprised.
39,256 / 90,000 words done | 28,744 words behind
Dragonfly: 1841 (916 final count)
Stranger on a Bus: 2673 (301 edit words)
Temple: 2813
general roleplay: 9453
Blogs: 22,476
Well... my paladin is now 20 and in the Arcane Sanctuary in Act II. :p
I've been spending the last few days recuperating from having houseguests. Oddly enough, I never did get as sore all over as I expected, from doing 9 straight hours of cleaning on Monday. Also I've noticed that I have more upper arm muscles than I used to. Maybe that's related...
I've been doing a lot more brainstorming than actual writing. Mostly for Taint and Amulet I. Basically, Amulet I is unworkable as-is. I spent yesterday's worktime doing a lot of hard thinking on the backstory, and who the main characters are, how they're related to each other and why, and what went on in the immediate vicinity of the abandoned fort just before they showed up (which was a few years before the actual story). I think I know who Edward Duchene is now. I didn't before - he was the guy that turned out stillborn. Well, I know who he is because of how Iorli views him, and from there I can extrapolate who he is to himself. They're nothing like how I originally imagined them, nor the people they're based on.
And reading back over my game, the scenes where Lord Duchene appears, it turns out that he does have a distinct personality after all. I didn't get him right all the time, but enough that it shows through as I'm seeing him now.
Which doesn't make the plot work out any better, really. There's just too many key differences between what happened in real life between my two friends who argued over the Diablo 2 amulet, and how I adapted it in a quick, shoddy fashion when I needed to come up with a roleplay character's backstory in a hurry. It worked well enough at the time, for its original purpose, but not so well now that I'm trying to turn it into a full-fledged novel-lengthed story.
As for Taint. That one is a lot more difficult. Basically, the protagonist comes to an unfortunate end, which doesn't make for a very happy story. When one roots for the protagonist to 'win' and he ends up losing everything by the end of the story, well, somehow I don't think that's going to fly well with the average reader... and yet it's necessary for everything that happens later in the series. It's what happened to him. But whenever I try to write about it, the character fights me too, so I know it isn't right, but I don't know how to make it right.
But I'll keep bashing my head against it until it turns into something workable. I think it will happen eventually.
Meanwhile I've taken Robert's approach to Diablo 2 lately. My paladin is named Craig Turner, who would also have been a paladin if he'd been in the D2 world. I play slower, and I ruminate while I play. It does turn out to be useful in small doses, and not played to excess like I did before. USEast is back up, but I'm kind of hooked on my USWest paladin now and might not go back there anytime soon.
Eventually I'll rotate through my various WIPs back to Dragonfly. It needs to get done, and has an actual deadline if I still want to submit it. Hopefully this weekend I'll get around to looking at it again.
Oh. My houseguests are coming back. They've discovered that they're not going to manage to drive from Pittsburgh to Orlando in a single day after all, and so they're staying over tomorrow night. Somehow I'm not particularly surprised.
2006/07/05
Independence Day
Today went pretty well. Even the part spent downtown. I'm quite pleased. :)
I got up at around 1pm and did a few last-minute household chores. They called around 2pm and had apparently decided that they wanted to go straight downtown instead of stopping at my place first, and so I ended up joining them there. We parked on the island across the river and took the ferry in order to avoid parking; I'd expected that we'd pay $1 per person, but it turned out to be free. Not sure if that was special for today or if they've decided to do that all the time.
Then, because we were there rather early, it wasn't that crowded. No more so than usual at the height of tourist season, anyhow. We walked around the historic riverfront district and did the usual "windowshop browse" routine that seems to happen every time I get together with anyone from another town, theirs or mine, for any reason. I had lunch at a newly opened Wild Wings Cafe (it's a chain that I've known since my college days back in Indiana, except it was called BW3's there), while my guests watched. They'd already eaten and weren't hungry, but ate a few of my wings after I encouraged them repeatedly. The place didn't have curry wings, which bummed me out a bit, since that was my favorite flavor back in Bloomington.
We then left the downtown area just as the crowds were really starting to pour in. People were setting up their blankets or lawn chairs, and getting ready for the evening fireworks that we were planning to skip.
My friend wanted to find Bonaventure Cemetery. That's the big famous one that everyone has heard of due to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Except we didn't have any good maps. Well... we did eventually find it. But first we got seriously lost, and ended up in a completely different cemetery instead. By the time we found the right one, it was 6:30pm - and the place had closed to the public at 5.
We then came back to my place. I showed them to the bedroom, my friend settled in for a bit of last-minute web browsing to plan her day tomorrow when she visits a school in Atlanta (the purpose of her trip is to visit potential grad schools), and we picked a restaurant. My friend's SO was pretty set on a seafood place, but it had to serve fish and not just shellfish, which eliminated my top choice from the list. He then decided on a place that was closer to home, and it was one I'd not been to, but I'd heard good things about it.
Dinner was excellent. The restaurant turned out to have been voted "Best Restaurant View of 2006" - and it did indeed have a great view of a saltmarsh river through big windows on three sides. The food was excellent as well. And through those big windows, we could see fireworks.
They were bunches of individual private shows, all along the horizon, visible to us for 180 degrees, especially after we finished eating and took advantage of the expansive balcony that extended even farther over the water. The restaurant is near some fairly wealthy communities, and they could afford some spectacular stuff. All of it highly illegal of course, but I've yet to run across anywhere that actually enforces fireworks laws (at least on the 4th and at New Year's).
We also saw a raccoon foraging in an oyster reef at the water's edge during low tide. That made for some good entertainment during the pauses between rounds of fireworks.
Then we came back here and they turned in pretty early. They have to get up early too. I should get up with them to see them off, though it's nearly 3am right now and I just spent the last 3 hours playing Diablo 2. My paladin on USWest is 14.5 now, and I'm building him to be a holy freeze guy. He's just before the point of killing Andariel. USEast was still down tonight. Not sure what's going on with them. But I don't mind much, since I've got my paladin on USWest, and if need be I can just keep making more characters there.
Anyhoo... I'm really quite tired. Time for me to head off to bed too.
I got up at around 1pm and did a few last-minute household chores. They called around 2pm and had apparently decided that they wanted to go straight downtown instead of stopping at my place first, and so I ended up joining them there. We parked on the island across the river and took the ferry in order to avoid parking; I'd expected that we'd pay $1 per person, but it turned out to be free. Not sure if that was special for today or if they've decided to do that all the time.
Then, because we were there rather early, it wasn't that crowded. No more so than usual at the height of tourist season, anyhow. We walked around the historic riverfront district and did the usual "windowshop browse" routine that seems to happen every time I get together with anyone from another town, theirs or mine, for any reason. I had lunch at a newly opened Wild Wings Cafe (it's a chain that I've known since my college days back in Indiana, except it was called BW3's there), while my guests watched. They'd already eaten and weren't hungry, but ate a few of my wings after I encouraged them repeatedly. The place didn't have curry wings, which bummed me out a bit, since that was my favorite flavor back in Bloomington.
We then left the downtown area just as the crowds were really starting to pour in. People were setting up their blankets or lawn chairs, and getting ready for the evening fireworks that we were planning to skip.
My friend wanted to find Bonaventure Cemetery. That's the big famous one that everyone has heard of due to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Except we didn't have any good maps. Well... we did eventually find it. But first we got seriously lost, and ended up in a completely different cemetery instead. By the time we found the right one, it was 6:30pm - and the place had closed to the public at 5.
We then came back to my place. I showed them to the bedroom, my friend settled in for a bit of last-minute web browsing to plan her day tomorrow when she visits a school in Atlanta (the purpose of her trip is to visit potential grad schools), and we picked a restaurant. My friend's SO was pretty set on a seafood place, but it had to serve fish and not just shellfish, which eliminated my top choice from the list. He then decided on a place that was closer to home, and it was one I'd not been to, but I'd heard good things about it.
Dinner was excellent. The restaurant turned out to have been voted "Best Restaurant View of 2006" - and it did indeed have a great view of a saltmarsh river through big windows on three sides. The food was excellent as well. And through those big windows, we could see fireworks.
They were bunches of individual private shows, all along the horizon, visible to us for 180 degrees, especially after we finished eating and took advantage of the expansive balcony that extended even farther over the water. The restaurant is near some fairly wealthy communities, and they could afford some spectacular stuff. All of it highly illegal of course, but I've yet to run across anywhere that actually enforces fireworks laws (at least on the 4th and at New Year's).
We also saw a raccoon foraging in an oyster reef at the water's edge during low tide. That made for some good entertainment during the pauses between rounds of fireworks.
Then we came back here and they turned in pretty early. They have to get up early too. I should get up with them to see them off, though it's nearly 3am right now and I just spent the last 3 hours playing Diablo 2. My paladin on USWest is 14.5 now, and I'm building him to be a holy freeze guy. He's just before the point of killing Andariel. USEast was still down tonight. Not sure what's going on with them. But I don't mind much, since I've got my paladin on USWest, and if need be I can just keep making more characters there.
Anyhoo... I'm really quite tired. Time for me to head off to bed too.
2006/07/04
Well, it's clean in here now
26 / 90 days to go | 64 / 90 days gone
37,355 / 90,000 words done | 26,645 words behind
Dragonfly: 1841 (916 final count)
Stranger on a Bus: 2673 (301 edit words)
Temple: 2813
general roleplay: 8602
Blogs: 21,426
Well, my place is clean now. I pretty much spent the entire day vacuuming, or preparing to vacuum, or putting furniture back into place after vacuuming. Also I swept both bathrooms again, swept and mopped the kitchen, and scrubbed out the tub and cleaned a couple other things in the kitchen. It took 9.5 hours. That was basically my entire day.
Then I tried to play Diablo 2 for a while, but USEast was having serious issues, so I made a paladin in USWest instead. Had to start from the bottom, with a broke, naked character and no friends. I got him to level 7 and midway toward the Cain quest when my connection started going bad. It's not much fun to play during severe disconnects, and eventually it disconnected me from my game and wouldn't let me join any other ones. USEast was still down by the time USWest stopped liking me, so I stopped.
Tomorrow afternoon I'll have houseguests. We're planning to visit downtown Savannah, though that'll be a nightmare because the place will be packed for July 4th festivities. I wish they'd picked a less busy day for this. I don't really have that much of a clue what exactly we'll be doing, so hopefully things will go well and I won't somehow manage to offend them. I have rotten luck with hosting and being a houseguest. :(
After they leave Wednesday morning (presumably), I'll have a full day of work to look forward to - probably while sleep deprived and unable to move.
And after that, I'll finally have time to get back to writing. The plan is still the same. Look at Dragonfly first, and when I'm either done with that or stuck, get started on the Rumen/Craig story.
Guess I better go to bed. I need to be awake and ready by the time they get here, whenever that is...
37,355 / 90,000 words done | 26,645 words behind
Dragonfly: 1841 (916 final count)
Stranger on a Bus: 2673 (301 edit words)
Temple: 2813
general roleplay: 8602
Blogs: 21,426
Well, my place is clean now. I pretty much spent the entire day vacuuming, or preparing to vacuum, or putting furniture back into place after vacuuming. Also I swept both bathrooms again, swept and mopped the kitchen, and scrubbed out the tub and cleaned a couple other things in the kitchen. It took 9.5 hours. That was basically my entire day.
Then I tried to play Diablo 2 for a while, but USEast was having serious issues, so I made a paladin in USWest instead. Had to start from the bottom, with a broke, naked character and no friends. I got him to level 7 and midway toward the Cain quest when my connection started going bad. It's not much fun to play during severe disconnects, and eventually it disconnected me from my game and wouldn't let me join any other ones. USEast was still down by the time USWest stopped liking me, so I stopped.
Tomorrow afternoon I'll have houseguests. We're planning to visit downtown Savannah, though that'll be a nightmare because the place will be packed for July 4th festivities. I wish they'd picked a less busy day for this. I don't really have that much of a clue what exactly we'll be doing, so hopefully things will go well and I won't somehow manage to offend them. I have rotten luck with hosting and being a houseguest. :(
After they leave Wednesday morning (presumably), I'll have a full day of work to look forward to - probably while sleep deprived and unable to move.
And after that, I'll finally have time to get back to writing. The plan is still the same. Look at Dragonfly first, and when I'm either done with that or stuck, get started on the Rumen/Craig story.
Guess I better go to bed. I need to be awake and ready by the time they get here, whenever that is...
2006/07/03
Drat. Hold the Presses
I've run across a fairly sizable plothole in my plans for the July Novel Dare.
The idea was to have Craig cross paths with Rumen. Craig being the sole survivor of a grief-driven rampage that Rumen executed after Craig's relative killed off his human servant. There is only one problem with this ...
Craig was 4 when it happened. He's at most 40 now. That means that it happend 35 years ago.
Meanwhile, in Rumen's timeline, it happened 150-200 years ago.
Unless I want to add time-hopping to the story, or other Stupid Sci-Fi Tricks, this just isn't going to happen. :(
In other news, my living room and dining room are uncluttered now. The kitchen is clean except for the floor, and the only thing left to do in the bathrooms is a tub (and the floor). I'm down to floors, more or less. Lots of vacuuming tomorrow. It will take me all day to do that, just because of how slow I am at housework. So I've scheduled it in for a full day, during the day, wherein I'm taking the day off from work for the purpose.
The guests arrive Tuesday afternoon. The only thing I'll be doing on Tuesday is changing the bedsheets as soon as I get up. They'll get the bed with my only clean blanket, while I sleep on a foam mattress in my storage room, with all the boxes. I wasn't organized enough to make it to the laundromat with all the other blankets. I also didn't get a new lamp. However, she liked being in the dark anyway, so that hopefully won't be too terrible...
Hmmmmm. Wait. I could just say that Craig has an extended lifespan, since he's not actually entirely human anymore. Maybe he can live 200 years! Without having to make it so that all humans do! It could work! *dashes off to brainstorm that angle*
The idea was to have Craig cross paths with Rumen. Craig being the sole survivor of a grief-driven rampage that Rumen executed after Craig's relative killed off his human servant. There is only one problem with this ...
Craig was 4 when it happened. He's at most 40 now. That means that it happend 35 years ago.
Meanwhile, in Rumen's timeline, it happened 150-200 years ago.
Unless I want to add time-hopping to the story, or other Stupid Sci-Fi Tricks, this just isn't going to happen. :(
In other news, my living room and dining room are uncluttered now. The kitchen is clean except for the floor, and the only thing left to do in the bathrooms is a tub (and the floor). I'm down to floors, more or less. Lots of vacuuming tomorrow. It will take me all day to do that, just because of how slow I am at housework. So I've scheduled it in for a full day, during the day, wherein I'm taking the day off from work for the purpose.
The guests arrive Tuesday afternoon. The only thing I'll be doing on Tuesday is changing the bedsheets as soon as I get up. They'll get the bed with my only clean blanket, while I sleep on a foam mattress in my storage room, with all the boxes. I wasn't organized enough to make it to the laundromat with all the other blankets. I also didn't get a new lamp. However, she liked being in the dark anyway, so that hopefully won't be too terrible...
Hmmmmm. Wait. I could just say that Craig has an extended lifespan, since he's not actually entirely human anymore. Maybe he can live 200 years! Without having to make it so that all humans do! It could work! *dashes off to brainstorm that angle*
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