11.30.08

Traveling Man

Posted in Bailout, NaNoWriMo, Rants, Site News, Writing at 7:53 pm

So I’m back in Pittsburgh. I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving… Really, I’d have more to say but right now I’m just a little tired. The weekend was good, with a few hiccups, but I’m ready for bed already. Oh, and for the record, I did hit my 50K goal for NaNo on Saturday night, so there’s that– I’ll probably spend the rest of the week finishing up the last four chapters before I get even more distracted by Chrono Trigger. I swear, that game is so good it’s bad for me. Anyway, catch you all… eventually. Oh, I have game and anime reports due on the LJ at some point this week… so I suppose I’ll see you there.

11.22.08

Setting Up Shop

Posted in NaNoWriMo, Shameless Self-Promotion, Writing at 3:26 pm

I seldom make blog posts “in the field”– the fact that I use the WordPress app for the phone makes me glad it was free– but right now I’m sitting in a Panera Bread in Monroeville, my usual writing place, and I’ve just hit the halfway point of the new draft of Blueberries. I still haven’t figured out a new, more appropriate title for the book yet (Blueberries stemmed from a conversation near the middle of the original draft), but that’s later. Right now, the halfway point is as good as any to give the usual update on how things are going.

( Beyond this cut there exist spoilers. Read at your own risk… » )

Overall, I’m looking forward to being able to present this to you guys when the time comes. With Thanksgiving coming up, I’m certainly not going to be able to get the whole thing done before the first of December, but I’ll definitely hit the 50K mark; I’m just barely under 40K right now (and I really ought to get back to that, in point of fact) but I’m planning on getting a couple thousand more each night before I head back to the homestead on Wednesday morning. Trust me, you’ll know when I hit 50.

Oh, and once this writing is all done (and the thing is formatted properly), I’ll be doing quite a bit of catching up; I’m looking forward to announcing my 30/30/109 list. Ciao, kiddies.

11.11.08

An Embarassing Rash

Posted in NaNoWriMo, Site News, Writing at 5:18 am

Don’t know if you guys saw it on the forums this morning, but there was a little bit of a spammer’s streak. This hasn’t happened in a very long time, and I was a little surprised; but the offending accounts and posts have been removed, and all is well again. So, yeah.

I’m halfway through the word count requirement for NaNo, but in point of fact I’ve only gone through a third of the plot that I wanted to do. I’ve also pulled that plot slightly off the rails, too, so I’ve got to do some revising of the outline to this point. Ultimately I’m still in good shape; with any luck I can get a little bit more hammered out in the next few days and have another chapter done by the end of the week. (Of course, I say that heading into what’s probably the hardest chapter to write well… and I can’t really skip around on this project.) We’ll see how things work out.

Ciao for now, folks.

11.09.08

The Little Things

Posted in Gaming, NaNoWriMo, Rants, Writing at 7:43 pm

I don’t want to obsess over this too much since there’s nothing more that I can do, so I promise you that this is the last you’ll hear about the mouse. Until the situation changes. Or the little bastard shows his face again. Yeah.

Beyond that, the novel writing continued fairly well– I’m only half a chapter behind where I wanted to be (after schedule slip), and I’m sure I can pick up the slack over this week. I was worried that I was going to hurt my hands more, but using the wrist brace helped tremendously to a point where I don’t think I’m going to have any trouble tomorrow. So there’s that.

And yeah. I like Burnout Paradise. I was going to write up a lot about it but I figure that it would mostly just be preaching to the choir right now. A choir of screeching tires, shattering glass, and squealing twisted metal. Fun fun crashy.

Catch you folks tomorrow. Maybe. Don’t count on daily updates just yet, but I’m trying to get back into that habit, I really am.

11.02.08

Knuckle Up

Posted in NaNoWriMo, Rants, Shameless Self-Promotion, Writing at 6:54 pm

So, a fifteen-grand-word weekend. Not a bad start, if I say so myself. Of course now my hands feel like they’ve been stomped on repeatedly by the Incredible Hulk. While he was wearing golf cleats. Do they even make cleats in his size? If they do, they fell on my hands.

So I’m calling it a night fairly early; I got to bed late last night, the time change has screwed my time sense up beyond all salvation, and I want nothing more right now than to collapse into my warm comforting bed. So yeah.

I might just be able to swing daily blog posts this month, too. Don’t count on it, but I’ll do my best.

10.26.08

The November Plan

Posted in Gaming, Rants, Writing at 8:12 pm

I realize that I’ve been, well, more than a little lax about getting stuff up onto the blog lately. When you look at it, though, October has seen more posts more frequently than this summer had probably led you all to believe, so I think that even given my sporadic update schedule, this is slowly sliding back into daily updates. Which I think we all could get used to once more, hrm?

Anyway, with regards to the titular plan, as most of you know, November is National Novel Writing Month, and I’m heading into it with a full new outline for Harvesting Blueberries (which, incidentally, will probably get a new title). My time for gaming will be dramatically reduced, so I don’t expect to have much of anything in the way of Game Clear notices for the month. As it turns out, it might be that R-Type was the last game to be cleared in 2008 anyway– I don’t know if the writing will run long for “Blueberries 2.0″, and if it does how much of December it will take. Furthermore, even if I get done early, most of what’s left on the Backlog for ‘08 are long-form RPGs, and Mega Man 9 (which I’m increasingly convinced was done a grave disservice by my putting it on hold during October). Still, regardless of what game might get started in December, there’s no guarantee that I’ll be finished with it before New Year’s. So, it’s likely that thirty games will be the 2008 total… not bad, considering, but I do want to try to push that even further if I can.

As for what I am playing now, you might have noticed I made a little progress with Disgaea. I’d been holding off on advancing the plot any further than Chapter 2’s final mission, but gave that a run just to see what would happen and was pleasantly surprised. There were still some hiccups, yes, and Flonne came in just in the nick of time to (however temporarily) become the lowest-level member of the team. More grinding, fun wow. In all honesty, Disgaea is starting to feel like the “new” Super Robot Taisen: a game I like and enjoy, but that punishes me for playing it and therefore makes me turn to it only sporadically. I’m considering keeping it on just the “when I get to it” list and turning my active attention to something more recent and a bit easier… like Star Ocean, or a Tales game.

I’ve done some reflecting on the 2009 List, as well, and have decided to “de-prioritize” games from it so as to make it a bit more manageable. There’s 16 GBA games on the list, all of which I’m moving to the back-burner: most of those were picked up for the Reclamation Project, with only a couple of exceptions. (More to the point, three of them are Pokemon games (Ruby, Emerald, and FireRed), and I’m probably going to try either a speedrun or another Poketoberfest in ‘09.) There’s also a handful of games for other, older systems as well, plus a few Virtual Console titles I’ve picked up and set aside. The thing is, though, those are games I’ll be looking to play later on. Right now, I have a lot of very interesting current games that I want to try to get through. Ultimately, by relegating those older titles to the ‘later’ column, I’ve shifted my 2009 backlog from 71 titles down to 35 (this counts Luminous Arc 2, which isn’t out yet, but not Chrono Trigger DS, which isn’t changed sufficiently for me to count it as a “new” game). The ultimate goal is to have everything cleared out by the end of 2009, but 71 (or more!) games is a bit much. Assuming all goes well in the year ahead, I’ll be lucky to get through even 30.

That’s all mostly irrelevant to many of you. Much like, well, everything else on this blog, but eh.

We’ll see just how this month shapes up. Tomorrow, on the LJ, I’ll have the October gaming report, and Wednesday I’ll have the anime report. If I get anything for this side up, I’ll be surprised, but here’s hoping. Ciao.

10.20.08

Waggle Fest ‘08

Posted in Gaming, Rants, Writing at 6:58 pm

If you were wondering how I’ve been keeping myself since ending my trip to Hyrule, let me warn you right now that this post contains graphic descriptions of me dancing. And not in the DDR “lol, arrow-stomping” sense that I’ve traditionally used, either. I mean it. This is not for the kiddies. Put ‘em to bed, ’cause it’s time to get down. Last warning, for srsly.

( I played We Cheer today (And Samba de Amigo)… » )

Anyway. The novel outline is progressing nicely; I’ve divvied up most of the plot pacing into scenes just about as long as this post, and I’m shooting for roughly 75,000 words this time. I’m sure I can handle it, given that I’ve got a far stronger sense of how I want to handle the story– I’ve taken an axe to great swatches of plot, and eliminated at least three useless characters while introducing several far more important ones. I will get this book written and published if it’s the last thing I do… which I kinda hope it isn’t.

Going to watch a little bit of Kanon now, and then off to bed. Later, folks. (I’m not making promises as to when the next blog post is gonna be, but let’s shoot for Wednesday again and see what happens.)

09.06.08

Heroes And Thieves

Posted in Anime, Gaming, Rants, Writing at 7:43 am

For lack of a better title, I’ll just use the song stuck in my head right now.

Anyway, as you might have expected, things are relatively quiet here. I’m (slowly) continuing my grind through FFTA2 (I have roughly 10 story missions left to go), and similarly slowly making my way through the hiragana practice. What has been keeping me from all of these has been the wonderfully addictive Space Invaders Extreme, which wound up being far too much fun for its low price tag. Granted, it’s hard enough to keep me engaged, so it’s not like I’ve paid for a cash-in on a game that’s older than I am. Think about how Pac-Man Championship Edition was updated compared to its original, or Galaga Legions (that one is actually a far more apt comparison) and you’ve got an idea of how SIE works, silly usage of “Extreme” notwithstanding. (Like I’m really one to talk there.) I’m also liking Castle Crashers, but that’s not getting as much time due to wanting to get through A2.

In terms of anime, I’ve been catching bits of Cromartie High School and Moon Phase, trying to see which one will grab my full attention first; I think it’s Cromartie, just by virtue of being sillier and shorter. After that, I’ll probably take a re-watch of something I haven’t seen in a while; maybe Kino’s Journey, but more likely it could be Risky Safety or Kare Kano. I’m honestly not sure.

And as for the writing that I supposedly do? Well, I do have a rough outline for the ‘08 NaNo, but given that even-numbered years tend to be bad for noveling, I might not wind up writing it this year. I’ve been distracted by too many things and I’ve been getting this urge to work on an XNA game of all things, so I might spend November doing that instead– but at least I’ll have this outline ready for when I do start writing again. Incidentally, the outline is the backstory or prequel to last year’s NaNo, which might wind up taking its title. How to refer to the “second” book, then, is going to get interesting.

I’m kinda hungry, so I’m going to get breakfast. Catch you all later.

07.31.08

We’ll CGI That Out Later

Posted in Bailout, Writing at 7:30 pm

Work combined with Otakon prep meant I got almost no writing done this week. I wasn’t prepared at all to get back into the novel and I was distracted by thoughts of, y’know, getting out and seeing friends. So what’s going to happen? I’m going to focus on having fun at Otakon for the foreseeable future, and when I get back, I’m going to make an effort to finish up the draft. I already thought of a way I need to re-write certain scenes to make the story a bit more well-rounded, but it’s going to take some doing. …a lot of doing. I’ll keep you guys updated.

07.28.08

Dedication Effect, Take Three

Posted in Anime, NaNoWriMo, Writing at 8:58 am

It might be a little out of the blue, but this week I decided that, given everything going more or less smoothly and given that I’m ahead of schedule on the Backlog project, I’m going to try to get back into the swing of writing the second draft of Harvesting Blueberries. It’s been a month since I last touched it, and probably two or three months since I was seriously setting time aside for it. Most of the Otakon preparation is complete (or not able to be handled until the start of next week) and most of the usual daily-drama stuff is on auto-pilot this week, which provides me with the ability and the opportunity. So, we’re going to do that.

The jury is still out on whether or not I’m going to have to get the ‘humpy’ MS Ergo keyboard. I may have to take a trip out at lunch to see about it first.

On a completely unrelated note, Laura Bailey was announced over the weekend to be a guest at Otakon this year. Which presents me with the problem as such: do I want her to autograph a Fruits Basket disc, or do I want her to autograph FMA? Because unless the session conflicts with, say, the JAM Project concert, I’d like to be there.