02.19.08
Posted in Gaming, Rants, Writing
at 5:10 am
The past couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to concentrate on writing a few short stories to shop around in support of Harvesting Blueberries, and not having much luck in the way of completing any of them. The struggles at the end of last month with the so-called “Emily Story” have been pretty much endemic to all of my writing since I put the final touches on Blueberries in December. I’ve got a couple of game reviews written (which reminds me, I need to update the review list on this site) and have managed to re-organize my USB drive at least four times. But in terms of fiction… it’s just been a huge blank.
Not that I’m feeling completely ineffectual. Quite the contrary– I’m catching up on my gaming and DVD watching, which despite the inactivity involved (in the DVDs at any rate) makes me feel quite productive. It’s not that I’m not producing anything tangible; what I am producing is impressions and opinions, and fodder for the idea mill. It’s fascinating, really, to find that I get just as much of a sense of accomplishment over completing a game or watching a series as I do for writing even just a little. Yeah, despite my complaining that it wasn’t going anywhere, the aborted attempts at the Emily story (and its shorter-lived successor, “the thunderstorm story”) all went on the scrap pile for later cogitation.
What it boils down to, really, is that I don’t think that this lack of output is necessarily a bad thing. I spent all of last year writing– sometimes intensively, sometimes lackadaisically. But there was a two-week stretch at the beginning, and a seven-week stretch at the end, where it was literally all I did, where it consumed me. That last blitzkrieg took a lot out of me, and I suppose I’m still recovering somewhat. It’s unreasonable to assume, also, that I should be expected to maintain NaNo-levels of output throughout the year, especially when certain periods are going to be more stressful due to work or other concerns (nothing life-altering is going on now, you can all relax and stop your heart attacks now).
Instead, this is a point in my… well, I don’t think “cycle” is the best word for it owing to the feminine-oriented connotations that word can hold, but there’s nothing else immediately coming to mind. Right, then, this is a point in my cycle of creativity where I’m in more of an “input” mode. When I am at a loss for words of my own, and instead seek to recharge my creativity and to discover a new story to tell, by reading and experiencing the stories of others. It might seem like what I’m doing is rationalizing an excuse to slack off, and on some level it is. It’s also probably a valid criticism that I’m probably just looking for new material to rip off, since apparently I’m incapable of originality or creativity to begin with, after having been raised on a media diet of video games and pop-culture television. But that last sentiment is a little too full of bile, cynicism, and just plain fail for me to take seriously for even a second.
But, “rationalizing slacking off”… I somehow think that might not be entirely accurate, either. It’s an unfortunate sign of the modern American culture and corroded work-ethic that leisure time is automatically seen as “wrong” or “decadent”. The phrase “too much time on my hands” is almost always negative in its connotations. Whatever happened to taking time and just relaxing? Why do people feel the need to work themselves to death, to grind away day after day without end to a point where they can no longer function– and then, when they go for the rest they so desperately need or deserve, they carry around stupid contrivances like Blackberries or laptops? Don’t get me wrong, I love my laptop, but that’s because I know when to leave it in the damn bag or leave it home altogether. People are vilified for taking breaks, people are seen as excessively weak for being far less weak than they actually are. This doesn’t seem right.
So, you know what? I’m going to just roll with this. For right now, I’m not going to worry about creating new fiction output just yet. I’m setting April 1st as a new “start” date for whatever project I want to do by the time that point comes up– it might be a rewrite of Blueberries, might be some short stories, we’ll see– but I’m not going to pressure myself to write anything at all before then. Maybe a couple of game reviews, and definitely I’m going to continue the daily posts and monthly query letter batches, but April 1st is when I get back to this whole “writer” business.
Until then– I’m catching up on my slacking.
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01.30.08
Posted in Gaming, Writing
at 8:22 pm
Re nevermind.
For anyone following the few measly tidbits of information that I’ve leaked out about the so-called Emily Story (recapped here: it’s a story about a girl named Emily), you can forget the majority of them. I’ve elected to scrap what I have and re-start once I have a different conflict; I found myself in serious danger of prematurely playing a plot card (so to speak). I’ll put that aside for now and see if something else comes up– a few different ideas are coming to mind. Just… well, what I have as of right now Is Not Working.
In the meantime, however, I’ll likely take February and adapt a fanfiction challenge to the world of Blueberries, using those as story seeds. We shall see.
Oh, and Touch Detective 2 1/2 was awesome, thank you very much.
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01.28.08
Posted in Rants, Writing
at 6:00 pm
No, this still isn’t my big emo bitchfest about fanboys and polarization. There probably won’t be one for a long time until I can get philosophical (and calm) enough to think my argument through beyond “polarization is bad, except for sunglasses”. Sorry. This afternoon I had the first chunk of a draft put together before finally saying “screw this” and giving up on the topic for now. By not having that over my head, I can move on to, y’know, life.
Anyway. I have a bit of anime and gaming news to relate tomorrow on ye olde LJ, so you folks might want to look into that. Also, I need to learn patience. Kind of. Maybe– it’s a long, long, long story.
Which, now that I’m not burdened to complain right freaking now, I have time to tell. But as it’s also a boring story, I won’t.
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01.24.08
Posted in Rants, Writing
at 6:05 pm
I have no idea why it’s been so hard for me to write stuff lately. I promised on Tuesday that I’d have something yesterday; that didn’t work out because what I wrote for yesterday was functionally identical to something I’d written months ago– and posted. No point in linking it because nothing’s changed– I just updated the references. I have this huge knot of tension– I want to write something– but I’m just full of fail when it comes to sitting in front of the keyboard and actually typing something.
This has even extended to The Emily Story, which still doesn’t have a title beyond that. Out of the ten outlined points, I’ve got three done, and I’m about 4500 words intot he story. It’s going to be a longer-form story, but right now it needs a little bit more work because the original outline has sort of become obviated. That’s part of why I’m stalling, too. It took me a huge amount of effort to rewrite the outline at lunch. What’s worse is going to be writing the synopsis for Blueberries proper, as I need that before I can finish sending out the first set of query letters. Which I’ve also been stalling on.
I’d probably best get back to those, then. Here I was, thinking I had everything all set, and now writer’s block so thick you couldn’t cut it with a diamond nails me. GAH.
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01.22.08
Posted in Bailout, Writing
at 3:48 pm
So, yeah. I have completely nothing to write about today. Sorry. There’s probably going to be more game drivel tomorrow but for right now, nothing of importance happened so far this week. Maybe on Thursday I’ll have more of “The Emily Story” written (a short story tying into Harvesting Blueberries). ‘Till then, ciao.
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01.18.08
Posted in Gaming, Site News, Writing
at 5:21 am
So, I’ve got a couple short story ideas that tie into the Harvesting Blueberries world. Some take place before the book, and some take place after it; if I want to publish any of these in advance of the novel, I have to make sure to concentrate on the ones that take place before. So I’m likely to do that here in the next few weeks, once I start writing hardcore again. Letters for the agents are getting put together this weekend, and the first set of ten should be out on Monday. Beyond that, everything’s peachy.
I also managed to pick up a couple of relatively old role-playing game manuals on the cheap. And here I thought getting back into RIFTS was going to be expensive.
Not much to say except that if I’m good with my time management, I might be able to get through more/most of Eternal Sonata over the weekend and can have that to talk more about on Monday.
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01.14.08
Posted in Appleology, Rants, Writing
at 6:32 pm
All right, I promised you guys that I would talk about GASP. The Gaming Association of Southwest Pennsylvania is a regional board and tabletop gaming group that meets monthly. We play obscure board games and on occasion roll a little of the polyhedra. Coincidentally, I tracked down an old module and have begun preparations to run a one-shot D&D session of my own during these times (there’s on the order of 50 of us, so it’s not like there won’t be people doing other stuff or I’d be monopolizing the event). So, that’s that; it’s pretty basic and nothing too spectacular.
I also said I’d talk about the whole ‘workout’ thing that I’ve been doing. To be honest, there’s not much to say– I’ve gone to the gym four times so far, today was the fifth, and I’m working on increasing stamina and maybe a little bit of ab definition and arm strength. The primary purpose is to just get me moving in a comfortable environment. I’m certainly not going to suddenly go overboard and work towards being an Arnold-like muscle mass. I’m about twenty years too late to want to do that.
There’s also my task of finding a literary agent for Blueberries; letters are going to be written and sent out, if not during the week, then on Saturday. I have my resolution to keep, after all, and a list of forty agents with more to come. I’m probably going to start sending out review copies to friends and family soon, so if you’re interested in giving it a look, please let me know.
Finally, MacWorld is tomorrow. I’m severely psyched for the show and the announcements, but the problem is that the odds are starting to swing away from an iPod/Touch refresh and more towards a MacBook announcement. Whatever “Air” is, it’s going to be ‘big’ but not for me. Moreover, it’s only been three months since the Touch was released, and I don’t think Apple would be willing to take that kind of a bath by dumping a new model this soon after Christmas. I’m looking forward to whatever’s up tomorrow, but for now my expectations are a little deflated.
Catch you folks tomorrow.
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12.29.07
Posted in Rants, Shameless Self-Promotion, Site News, Writing
at 9:51 am
(Quick Gaming Note: I’m aware of some problems with Xbox Live right now that are preventing the gamercard above from functioning properly. This all stems from a glitch with Soltrio Solitaire not properly giving me credit for an achievement, and it threatens to put me out of the running in the Achievement Race. Gah. More news as it develops.)
So, I might not have mentioned this, but I wrote a novel this year. (You may commence with the throwing of heavy objects to get me to stop bragging… now.) It’s not the first one, really, and that’s what worries me. Harvesting Blueberries is my second novel, but it’s not like I can go around and say “Oh, yeah, I’ve done this before,” because they invariably ask me about the first novel, and my response is usually a mumbled “we don’t talk about the first novel anymore”. So my second big resolution is going to be a stronger commitment to editing and submitting Blueberries for publication.
(side note: I realize, actually, that if I wanted to, I could write an FF8 fan novella remarkably similar to Blueberries… and the title would have to be “Sowing the SeeDs”. Yeah, not gonna happen.)
I only sent about seven query letters for Inconsequential. I really did mean to send more. Honestly. The problem is that that book was just such a weird niche title as to be almost unsellable as a first novel. (Or I could be rationalizing my crappy-ass writing, but I doubt that just enough to keep me out of Aerobic Brooding territory.) I did get some positive feedback from a couple of the rejections, though– particularly from a source I definitely would not have expected (Launchbooks sent me a personalized letter; I did indeed emit the squee of joy). So I figure that I just didn’t get it to the right people.
It’s the damnedest thing, honestly. I wrote Incon because I specifically did not want to write a fantasy story. So what should I find when I started leafing heavily through the 2007 Writer’s Market? “We want fantasy!”. That’s the other thing, though. I gravitate towards fantasy naturally anyway. I suppose Blueberries could be called “magical realism”, except that I certainly don’t get into any huge philosophical debates as Gabriel Garcia Marquez does. It’s not exactly “modern fantasy”, either, as there’s only the lightest of fantasy touches added in (I took great pains to not let the characters rely far too much on their less mundane aspects). Still, the fact that Blueberries is so wide open actually works in its favor, as opposed to how narrowly Incon was defined (”modern literary satire” wasn’t in terribly many agent listings).
So, the goal right now is to get ten letters sent a month, regardless of response times or rejections. I’m going to send letters based on this draft, as well, for January; editing will continue on it as I send out, but this is the biggest stumbling block I’ve had to deal with. Like yesterday, it boils down to laziness, but laziness of a different sort– I, previously, didn’t see the value in the whole endeavor. It’s a matter of risk versus reward, and blowing a couple hundred dollars on paper, toner, stamps and envelopes is a small price to pay to get published. Plus, well, the next one will be easier, or so I hear. And the next one might just be Incon… maybe.
Oh, I want to make 2008 a two-novel year, too. I’m thinking May or June as a writing month, depending on how the gaming goes. I’ve found that this dedication stuff works wonders for me, and putting enough pressure on myself to do it helps out quite a bit. So, I might take late spring or early summer to do up a novel, or more likely, write up some short stories. A 100K word novel is a rough job, but four or five 10K word short stories, with a handful of shorter ones, would probably be enough to spur me into remaining creative the whole year around. And I’ve got a ton of stuff on my scrap pile to look through; what I outlined as the ‘06 NaNo could probably be reworked into a longer-form tale.
Fair enough, I suppose; we’ll see how well this turns out. Tomorrow, let’s have a look at the gaming and anime plans for the new year.
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12.17.07
Posted in NaNoWriMo, Rants, Site News, Writing
at 5:22 pm
So maybe I lied a little when I said that I wasn’t going to type much. I’ve just been thinking a little bit about Blueberries and getting it ready for the first looks. It’s one of those strange things– I’m done with the story, yes, but there’s still a ton of work left to do with it. Even at about 114K, there’s still a few thousand words of detail that I’d want to put in– one of my original character sketches from September has the walkthrough of the house that I basically relied upon throughout the writing, but I realized last night that I sort of took it for granted that the reader would be able to visualize the house as well as I did.
It’s the strangest thing, really. The house is a composite of a number of places I’ve lived in, so I’ve never actually set foot in it. At the same time, I seem to have these strong memories of the walkthrough, and I can replay pretty much every step I’ve never taken in it. I feel like I’ve lived there for ten years. It’s quite an unusual feeling, really; I see all the details of the house– the study, the game room, the parlor and the foyer, and that’s just in the lower wing– and I realize that I will never actually see them, because they don’t exist. No other location I’ve written about has gotten into me so deeply, and it’s as awesome as it is frightening.
So now that the story’s over, it’s a little depressing to have to say goodbye to it. I really like that house. I might go back to it, might see how the characters are doing in five years or so, but really, it’s just a strange attachment. Ah well.
Speaking of the characters. I had a conversation with Rick last night about the traumas I’ve put them through. One of my big worries about the story is that I painted the events in an unrealistic light– either by having things be too rosy in the end, or by not getting into the horrible gory details of the actual troubles. I think I did a fairly good job of showing the aftermath– the main characters are really only involved on the periphery, are intervening– but I’m not entirely sure how it’s going to be received. That’s probably the crucible, in my mind– if the characters can make it through, can live through the disaster, then I’ll feel I did a good job.
Survival is not the same as living. Some characters merely survive trauma, but the most memorable ones are the ones who stay believable and don’t fall victim to becoming one-dimensional criers of woe when disaster befalls them. This does not necessarily mean they make it through the encounter with their life; some memorable characters live through their fatal encounters just by dying in a believable manner.
So what’s the next step? Obviously, I have some coding work to do that I’ve been neglecting. I intend to continue to neglect that until after Christmas. In truth, I’m probably going to hold off on the New Year’s Project until February (but will enact most of the changes on the 1st anyway). Trust me, things are gonna change around here, and hopefully for the better.
As always, new year’s resolutions are coming up, as well. I’ve already laid out a couple of them but some new ones have popped up as well, and I’m curious to see if I can accomplish one or more of them. I’ll still be keeping them mostly private, but if and when they get accomplished, you’ll know. Just as an example, Inconsequential was one of them. (It kinda still is… sort of. I figure it’s going to be like “Lifehouse”, “Duke Nukem Forever”, or “Chinese Democracy”… I keep talking about it but it never gets done.) Anyway, we shall see. It depends a lot on certain other factors, but I’ll be working towards most of these pretty hardcore throughout the year.
The only other interesting thing for the time being is my previously-stated goal of getting another Game Cleared notice up for 2007… with less than two weeks to go, the odds of that happening are increasingly small, but I could probably blast through Touch Detective 2 1/2 or maybe some other shorter DS game over the time before Christmas. We’ll see– I’m not likely to rush through a Rock Band campaign, but I do have four days alone with the 360 after I get home to hone the skillz (Guitar Solo Tour on Medium… that would count, right?). If I’m lucky– and I think I am– I might even be able to squeeze a third Clear in, bringing me to an even twenty for the year. I have no idea which one that would be, but odds are good for LocoRoco. don’t quote me on that, though.
That’s all I’ve got for this week, folks. We’ll definitely have Bailout tomorrow through until Friday, at least. Catch you folks soon.
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12.15.07
Posted in NaNoWriMo, Shameless Self-Promotion, Writing
at 5:48 pm
At 5:46p, I completed the first draft of Harvesting Blueberries. The final word count for this draft is 114,037 words according to OpenOffice’s word count tool. (A substantial blog post for the day is still forthcoming… just wanted to get this out.)
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