Category Archives: Balance

Method, Gaming, General, Life, Publishing, Stuck in my Head, Writing, Balance, Live Writing

Brainstorming for Summer

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

With just two finals left this semester will be done before I know it. This has been making me anxious. Mostly because it means that my schedule next week and going forward will be up to me and it would be nice if I could manage to not waste this free time. After all how many 30 something’s get a real summer break? I know I never thought it would be possible once I was neck deep in the soul sucking 9 to 5 grind. To that end I’ve been thinking that it’s time to brainstorm and come up with a list of goals for this summer. So without further ado (and in no particular order), here is the list:

  1. Write book 3 of Stephen’s trilogy
  2. Do my own Let’s Play series with the Terraria 1.3 patch
  3. Do video readings for some of my short fiction
  4. Finish re-edits for Transformation & Induction
  5. Edit and publish Avatars & Identity
  6. Complete at least one Let’s Play + VG Writing Series (Fuzzy Adventures)
  7. Compile, edit, and publish the class fiction and poetry book
  8. Find and check out local writing meetup and social groups
  9. Design BFG Publishing website
  10. Shampoo the carpet
  11. Move my desk
  12. Re-organize this blog
  13. Write more short fiction & poetry (At least 1 poem & 1 short story/flash fiction per week)
  14. Send stuff to magazines/publishers every week
  15. Continue the Live Writing series or combine with some of the above

 

Whew. Looking at this list I realize that I have my work cut out for me this summer. This to-do list is in addition to the usual goofing around and just having fun that will be required to stay sane. I’m also going to have to prioritize if I want to get even half of this done. The Fuzzy Adventures series is something I’ve been thinking about most of this semester. I love video games and I love writing & reading. I wanted to combine those somehow. That’s when I struck on the idea for re-visiting some of the games that I loved so much as a kid and doing a combination let’s play with an episodic writing series. The basic idea is that I’ll play a game in sections and write a story to go along with it, also in sections. Basically I’d have a separate area of this blog devoted to these series with each game getting it’s own sub-section. Each blog entry would be an episode of the story and video both. I’ve got a short list of games I’m considering, but I’ll probably start with something short like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night instead of an epic length game like Final Fantasy 6.

I’m thinking the other thing I’ll need to help keep me on track is some kind of daily schedule. I’m not very good at sticking to schedules that I come up with on my own but I might need to give it a shot. Anyway, glad I finally got all of these thoughts down. The list reminded me that I’m missing a couple of key pieces of hardware that I’ll need for a number of these ideas. Amazon ho!

Unemployment, Writing, Balance, Changes, Imagination, Inspiration, Method, Career, Gaming, General, Life

Done and Done

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

It’s been a couple of quiet weeks as far as posts here go. That was mostly due to being ill. Picked up a nasty little bacteria that took up residence in my sinuses and chest. It was a lot like a mild flu mixed with a head cold. Got the fever, cough, congestion, and sore throat combo going so that was a lot of fun. Probably could have cut my sick time in half with a little antibiotic love but that requires expensive doctor visits and medicine so no joy there. Future illnesses like this shouldn’t be a problem if the VA comes through though so here’s hoping on that front.

As far as writing goes I didn’t let a little thing like being sick stop me from writing. I certainly slowed down but I’m very happy to report that book 2 was finished early today. I was working on Chapter 21 when I realized I was just dragging out the story and could easily cut it at the end of Chapter 20 plus a short epilogue. So that’s what I did. My second novel ever clocks in at just over 92k words and took an unfortunate 5 months to write. Book 1 was 4k words longer and took 3 months all while I was working 40 hours a week. Funny how it’s been harder to write when I have so much more free time. Of course moving threw a big monkey wrench into my writing time/energy so there’s a good month lost to that. The real problem was making the time and space for it. For the first book I was in a lull as far as my gaming went so it was no big deal to devote an hour a night to getting some writing done. Still, done is done.

This second book was much harder to write for me. I think part of it was just the amount of world-building that went into this one. For the first book I could get away with vague references and hints until the big reveal at the end. Book two though is all about getting down and dirty with this new world. It’s a first for the protagonist, the reader, and me. 🙂  Fun fact: I used a short story that I wrote to build a lot of the details in book two. The short story takes place in the same world and focuses on a day in the life of a secret agency office worker. I ended up going through the short story again to jot down all of the details and filled an entire legal pad with notes. I will definitely be writing more of these kinds of stories to help flesh out my world. I think it takes the huge task of world-building and breaks it down into smaller, more manageable chunks. I’m actually itching to get going on another short story. It’s nice to know that I can start a project and get it done in a week or less. Finishing a novel feels great but the slog getting there can be rough.

Gaming, General, MMO, Writing, Balance

No Country for Old MMO’s

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

One of the things that has been helping me stick to my writing project is the complete lack of interesting MMO’s on the market currently. I’m a long time player of World of Warcraft, but I’ve pretty much come to the end of my rope on that one. The ridiculous daily grind introduced with the most recent expansion pretty much killed any desire to continue playing. That and I’ve leveled almost every class to max. Not much left to do except grind for raiding or Arena gear. No thanks.

Still, just because there’s nothing I want to play that’s out right now doesn’t mean I don’t want to play at all. I’ve definitely been missing the ever-present entertainment of an MMO. The knowledge that there’s a game I enjoy that always has something new I can try. For a long time that was WoW for me. I’ve tried other games from time to time. Conan. Rift, Star Trek, Star Wars, Age of Camelot, LOTRO, and so on and so forth. Honestly I’m pretty tired of the WoW copies. It’s just frustrating  knowing that most of what’s out there are all variations on the same basic theme. Of course, there are some sandbox type games coming. Everquest Next is supposed to be such. Free to play as well. As a player of the original when it first came out back in 1998 (dating myself here), I do hope they’ve come up with something different. I am very interested in CCP’s take on the World of Darkness. The concepts they’ve talked about would definitely lead to a different type of MMO.

Sandbox games have certain grown on me as well. While I don’t care for Minecraft, Terraria is a game I just keep coming back to. Super excited about the hopefully near-future release of version 1.2 that’s going to add a massive amount of content. Starbound is a similar game that’s in the works and supposed to be released this year. Not sure if they’ll hit that time frame. Either way we’ll just have to be patient.

Overall this lack of games that I want to play has coincided happily with my finally getting off of my butt to start writing. When any of these games do arrive, it’s going to be tricky to balance the unfortunate necessities of work and sleep with my writing and games. There are much worse problems to have though, so I’d best keep my perspective. In the meantime, Writing Week 3 ho!