End of Year Summary

(I wrote this over on SFFMuse, and then decided to put it here as well, since it covers everything. And then I added more to it too.)

Well, for starters I need to finish Nano 2006 - Amulet I. I managed another 2k words this month, and every time I pick it up it sings to me again. I just need to find the time and motivation to start each time. As Uncle Jim (Macdonald) would put it, Butt in Chair. ;)

The second Nano 2006 novel - Janis - turns out to be on the backburner for a while, until I figure out the rest of the backstory behind it. Also it has occurred to me that I've got my plotlines reversed. The side plot should be the main plot and vice versa. If that's the case, though - if the main plot is really about the plague - then what I'm really writing is the sequel to Triangle. (I haven't written Triangle yet.)

Then of course there's the minor problem that I've yet to finish any of my prior projects. Amulet II has at least a third left to go (probably around 30k more words). Temple, meanwhile, is rapidly falling apart as I shift around the backstory while writing Amulet I. Approximately a third of the original Temple setting is obsolete at the moment.

Outside of Fortress Launne, Stranger on a Bus still has a couple chapters left to go. Dragonfly needs to be revised.

I suspect what I most need to do is finish something. Anything.

Beyond that, I've been spending a lot more of my time learning about the industry in general, and ruminating on nonfiction things I might be able to do. The problem there is, I'm not convinced I have anything worthwhile to say. But I do have the 2007 edition of Writer's Market, bought after reading some advice from John Scalzi's blog, and I've been browsing through it while reading things like Miss Snark.

So, what about 2007 then? Well, for starters, I'm trying to come up with a project that I could use for Zette's 2-Year writing course at Forward Motion, which will be starting up in January. I haven't officially signed up yet since I don't have any workable ideas (now I wish I'd written down all the plot bunnies from back in October, while I was getting ready to write Amulet I and Janis). She wants people to start out with something that's not had any development to it yet. Just basic plot premise. Which means I can't use anything I already have.

While reading back over some of my past blog entries last night, I came across the whole debacle with RPoL's move to a new server. The migration disaster with the Russian mafia and all that. Apparently the Russian mafia is cliche' according to Miss Snark, but in this case it really was them... Anyway. At the time it was happening, I noticed that it would probably make for a good fictional story, so maybe Zette's thing would be a good chance to try turning it into one.

And while I'm tossing around links willy-nilly, the other main site I've been reading regularly in the past several months: Making Light. A lot of it is liberal politics, but they talk about writing, publishing, and a variety of other interesting topics as well.

Meanwhile, over on roleplay, I'm currently playing 10 characters in 7 games, running one game, and helping run another. Theoretically. However, in practice all of them are dead. This may just be due to Christmas though, as everything tends to slow down in December and not pick up again until mid-January, so I'm not too terribly worried overall about most of the games.

My game is slightly more worrisome. As far as I can tell, I really only have one active player right now, out of nine. There's two more in active chargen but they haven't said anything in a few days. If things don't pick back up by the end of January, I might just let it end. It had a good run of things, about a year and a half or so, a year of which was very active and fun. I'm a bit burnt out with roleplay in general anyway, so it would be somewhat of a relief to not have to keep running it. Really, at this point it almost hinges on whether one particular player finishes up the last of his chargen or if he's already disappeared to greener pastures (as I somewhat suspect he has).

In other news, I've started reading the first book I've opened in months. (That whole reading thing, heh. I used to be a voracious reader in my youth; now I don't read hardly at all. It's a little strange....) This one is a science nonfiction about the history of animal life on Earth. Out of Thin Air by Peter D. Ward, a professor at the University of Seattle. The author purports that the observed history is due in large part to levels of oxygen in the atmosphere (and oceans) and how this has fluctuated up and down over the eons. I've only just read through the introduction so far, but it looks interesting.

The reason I'm reading it is because one of the regular customers at the chinese takeout where I work gave it to me yesterday. Or well, lent it to me. Basically, as I understood things, he tried to read it, couldn't understand it, and now wants me to read it and tell him what it says. This could be interesting, because one of the comments he made was something like "did you know we came from the sea?" So it possibly means that I have to explain the basics of evolution to him. Which, I suspect, is going to be chock full of the creationism debate. Fun fun fun...

I guess that pretty much sums up where I am at the moment.