Tag Archives: live writing

The Semester’s End & Things to Come

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

So yesterday I had my last final. I’m really glad it’s done but I’d also like to kick the person who decided to hold finals and graduation on the same day. Seriously stupid. Why not have graduation on Saturday instead? Makes way more sense. Whatever, it’s done and I’m pretty sure I did well on both of the finals I had to take. My hand is still mad at me though. Nothing like having to hand-write a five page essay in under an hour. Fun times. Now though it’s time to move on to super fun things!

Starting Monday, barring any life events, I will be starting my new Fuzzy Adventures series. All of the gear I needed to make it happen came in on Thursday. Took me a good day or so to get everything set up as well. Still have to do a few things on the software end but that shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Tested out the video capture card by hooking up my trusty old PS2 and booting up the first game I’m going to use for my Adventures series: Castlevania – Symphony of the Night. I wasn’t sure I was going to start with that one but the Kickstarter for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night decided me. For those who haven’t heard it is a gothic-themed side scrolling action adventure RPG made by the same guy who co-directed Symphony of the Night (SOTN). In his opening video he says that he’s wanted to do another game like SOTN for a long time but the AAA publishers say there’s no demand for such a game. Considering the campaign is already at $2.1 million with 27 days left to go I’d say the AAA have their heads up their asses. That’s not news though. Personally I’m really glad crowdfunding has allowed game developers to give AAA pubs the finger and do what they and the gamers want: make awesome games without publisher oversight and interference. Just look at what happened to Maxis and Simcity. EA took a beloved franchise and forced Maxis to limit and monetize the game to the point that it was a huge failure. Then EA blames Maxis and closes them down. Fuckers. But I digress.

I’m excited that I’ll be using my Twitch channel quite a bit more. I still plan on doing Live Writing sessions since I have plenty of writing to get done this summer. Each Fuzzy Adventure will entail quite a bit of writing per episode. I haven’t decided how long each finished video will be since I don’t know how long it will take me to do the writing for every 15 minutes of game play. I suspect that will vary greatly from game to game. SOTN isn’t exactly plot or dialogue heavy so I’ll be making a lot of stuff up to tell an interesting story. If and when I get to games like Final Fantasy 6 or Crono Trigger though I’m sure the writing portions will be much, much longer with less deviation from the game plot & dialogue. Either way I’m super excited to get going on this!

Brainstorming for Summer

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!

Changing Schedules

This entry is part [part not set] of 5 in the series Live Writing

It’s always a bit tough to change schedules once you’re used to your old one. Yet sometimes it is necessary. This is the case with my Live Writing events. I was doing them most Tuesdays and Thursdays at 1:30 PM CST but this ended up being a really bad time for me. In the past two months I’ve had to push back the time more often than I was able to stick with it. I originally picked that time and those days because of my class schedule. It gave me plenty of time to get home from my only morning class and then get down to some writing. Unfortunately these times also turned out to be best for very important things like appointments with my doctor or business that can’t wait until later in the day.

To that end I ran a short survey here on my blog asking when I should move these events to and 8 PM was the time voted for. This actually conflicts with a few things during this month but will work fine in May. So next week, barring any problems, I will be moving my live writing event temporarily to 6 PM. When May rolls around I’ll need to reassess my times anyway since classes are done in early May. I’m thinking of increasing Live Writing to anywhere from three to five days a week. If I do that though I’m thinking I need to make themes for the various episodes. Not just novel writing but maybe something like super fast short story writing. I’ve got a lot of ideas and I’m looking forward to playing with my Live Writing format to see what works best and is the most fun.

A Time for (Non-Epic) Change

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

As most will be unaware, I do two Live Writing events every Tuesday and Thursday at 1:30 PM CST. This is where I write for about an hour or so while streaming to my Twitch channel. Afterwards I upload the resulting video to my YouTube channel for archival viewing. It’s not the most exciting thing ever conceived to watch but it really helps keep me writing at least twice a week on something other that school work. Yet for the past couple of weeks it has been impossible to keep to this schedule due to intrusions on the part of real life. Now it is apparent that my selection of 1:30 PM for the starting time was in error. It also got me to thinking about my schedule, for this semester I’m in, over the summer, and next fall. I knew my Live Writing would change over the summer but I hadn’t anticipated the multiple conflicts that would arise. It turns out that I regularly need my down time in the afternoon on Tuesdays and Thursdays for medical appoints and other things that have to get done. Thus I am led to posting my first ever poll!

What time do you think my Live Writing should take place on the T-days of the week? I’ve put in some time possibilities but left an open answer you can fill in as well:

[polldaddy poll=8747366]

 


 

If you like these and other posts, feel free to check out my other work:

My Fiction on Tumblr: http://fuzzynerdcorner.tumblr.com/

My Fiction on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fuzzynerd?ty=a (Some activity requires Patron Status.)

My Live Writing, Editing, and other videos: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFZHBRlGb3-RFEr2BXQPi-Q

If you’d like to help a budding author you can also support me on Patreon:

kaGh5_patreon_name_and_message


 

The Novel Continues

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

Another week of class just about done with another two live writing sessions complete. Finished up chapter 15 of my NaNoWriMo 2014 novel Avatars & Identity today. The past three days have seen more writing on my part on the book than I’ve managed to do in the last month. I’ve muddled past another difficult story section and I only have a few major plot points left to hit. I’m not holding myself to the 50k word target for NaNoWriMo for this story though. It will be how ever long it ends up being.

The physical proofs for Transformation came in today. I’ll finish reviewing tomorrow, a last check to make sure everything is good before approving the book to go live. Very excited to finally have the second book done!

The Quest for the Perfect Streaming Site

This entry is part [part not set] of 5 in the series Live Writing

Now that I’m all settled into my weekly routine with college I feel like it’s time to get back to writing. To that end I’m planning on restarting my live writing sessions and doing them at least twice a week. The only problem is figuring out which streaming site to use. My basic requirements are thus:

– Must support at least 720p streaming. Anything less and you can’t read the text as I’m writing

– Must support live chat. There’s no point doing live writing if people can’t chat to you about it as you’re doing it. Also would prefer chat to be enabled whether or not a user has an account with the site.

– Prefer support for streaming my audio output along with my microphone. This enables people watching to listen to my writing playlist live and negates the need to add a soundtrack to the video later.

– Prefer free or inexpensive services. I’m a poor student now so I can’t really afford to pay for some fancy streaming service.

– Prefer the site to not be primarily a game streaming site.

 

That’s it really. So with those requirements I’ve been checking every streaming site I could get my hands on. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

 

Google+ Hangouts On Air:

Very easy to use and you can stream individual application windows rather than all or parts of your computer screen. You can schedule events and invite people from your circles to join. This would be my ideal streaming service/tool if it weren’t for two HUGE flaws. It doesn’t let you stream you audio output (i.e. the music you might be listening to) and it’s chat function doesn’t function. I’ve tested this numerous times and no matter what I do people who join the Hangout can’t see the chat window. Just the video. This pretty much defeats the purpose of doing a live writing stream in the first place.

 

YouTube Live:

I have the XSplit streaming software that I picked up some time ago to stream my World of Warcraft multiboxing sessions and these both work quite well together. The only problem is there’s no chat interface at all. None.

 

Twitch.tv:

This actually hits all of my requirements and is the service I used during the 2014 NaNoWriMo event to live stream my writing. My only concern here is that it’s nominally for live streaming gaming. This is definitely not gaming and thus wouldn’t be of interest to people browsing the site. Right now it’s my only real option though I’m hoping to find a better one. Twitch also lets people chat without an account, so bonus there.

 

Livestream:

I had quality issues with my stream coming from XSplit. They also want you to upgrade to a paid account if you want to use chat or any other basic feature beyond streaming.

 

FC2Live.us

Looks like it might work but appears to be used mostly by folks outside of the US. I definitely want a US-based site at this point.

 

UStream:

Another paid streaming site, this one geared towards enterprise or business users. Not for me.

 

hitbox:

Gaming site again. Le sigh.

 

UVlog.com:

This might be an alternative to using Twitch.tv but so far there isn’t much there. I’ll be keeping an eye on it to see how the site evolves.

 

 

So there it is, the list so far. I’m going to keep searching for the best site for my purposes but for the moment it looks like I’m stuck with Twitch. I’ve had some thoughts for fixing at least one of the Google Hangouts issues but the chat one is a total deal-breaker. If they got that fixed I could find a work-around for the whole audio streaming issue. I might send a message or two out to some folks I follow who stream regularly. They might have some ideas. Either way my goal is to start live writing again this Thursday!

NaNoWriMo Live Writing Month Playlist!

This entry is part [part not set] of 5 in the series Live Writing

So after finishing my second live writing video I realized I needed to have a semi-permanent place to put the playlist I’ll be using for the whole month. Pasting the playlist in the Twitch chat box was a complete mess and I definitely want the artists who made these amazing remixes to get the credit they are due. All of the songs are available for free at OCRemix.org! So here it is, the playlist:

EDIT: As promised I have linked all of the songs to their demo video on YouTube for your listening enjoyment! This list will likely change a little as I add songs once I get permission to use them.

Adam Dachis – Final Fantasy VI ‘Little Painter Girl’ OC ReMix (2:58)
AmIEviL – Castlevania ‘Castlemania’ OC ReMix (4:34)
Avitron, Chris | Amaterasu – Chrono Cross ‘A Dream Between Worlds’ OC ReMix (3:07)
BogusRed – Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past ‘Into the Golden Sunset’ OC ReMix (3:47)
BogusRed – Chrono Trigger ‘Gale of Ages’ OC ReMix (2:33)
bustatunez – Final Fantasy VI ‘Prologue’ OC ReMix (5:28)
Christian Pacaud – Baldur’s Gate ‘Child of the Murder God’ OC ReMix (3:32)
Danimal Cannon – Blaster Master ‘Fear My Lowering Coefficient of Friction’ OC ReMix (4:25)
Derek Oren, Jeremy Robson – Final Fantasy VI ‘Cantata for Dancing: I. Mors ego sum mortis’ OC ReMix (6:31)
Derek Oren, Jeremy Robson – Final Fantasy VI ‘Cantata for Dancing: II. Fuga Kefka’ OC ReMix (6:24)
Dhsu – EarthBound ‘Nirvana’ OC ReMix (4:15)
Diggi Dis – Mega Man 2 ‘Wily and the Deep Forest’ OC ReMix (5:16)
Disco Dan – Mega Man 2 ‘Bubble Man (wants to get) Funked Up’ OC ReMix (4:17)
djpretzel – Super Mario 64 ‘Sunken Suite’ OC ReMix (2:47)
djpretzel – Chrono Trigger ‘Jethro and Vash at the Fair’ OC ReMix (3:21)
Freemind, GrayLightning – Battle of Olympus ‘Eros’ OC ReMix (3:39)
goat – Castlevania II ‘No Flesh Allowed’ OC ReMix (3:01)
Gux – DuckTales ‘The Amazon Session’ OC ReMix (3:06)
Gux – Little Nemo ‘Nemo for Strings’ OC ReMix (3:37)
Harjawaldar – Chrono Trigger ‘By the Old Mill’ OC ReMix (3:31)
Jennerstein – Final Fantasy VI ‘City Corner Lullaby’ OC ReMix (3:02)
Jillian Aversa, some1namedjeff, XPRTNovice, zircon – Final Fantasy VI ‘A Fistful of Nickels’ OC ReMix (3:28)
John Revoredo – Final Fantasy IV ‘The Flying Machine’ OC ReMix (2:27)
K. Praslowicz – Blaster Master ‘Der Überfrosch’ OC ReMix (3:34)
Kassi, Mustin – Secret of Mana ‘Cry from the Forest’ OC ReMix (2:27)
Kelly Andrew – Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past ‘Justice for All’ OC ReMix (3:49)
kLuTz – Final Fantasy IV ‘Tale in Piano’ OC ReMix (2:53)
kLuTz – Chrono Trigger ‘600 A.D. in Piano’ OC ReMix (2:57)
Lelion – Megaman (Dubstep Remake) (6:24) (Not yet on the list. Request in progress.)
Level 99 – Mega Man 2 ‘Coiled Copper Wire’ OC ReMix (3:18)
Level 99 – Kirby’s Dream Land ‘Gliding on a Silver Lining’ OC ReMix (3:18)
Level 99 – Final Fantasy VI ‘A Simple Flip Can Change Fate’ OC ReMix (4:04)
Lifeformed – Chrono Trigger ‘Behind the Sealed Door’ OC ReMix (4:26)
Mazedude – Chrono Trigger ‘Island of Zeal’ OC ReMix (2:45)
Mazedude – Deadly Towers ‘Quest for Conan’ OC ReMix (2:13)
McVaffe – Final Fantasy VI ‘Back to Towne (Arranged)’ OC ReMix (2:08)
McVaffe – Final Fantasy VI ‘Gau’s Lament’ OC ReMix (1:34)
McVaffe – ActRaiser ‘Fillmore Freestyle’ OC ReMix (3:21)
McVaffe – Secret of Mana ‘Fear of the Flava’ OC ReMix (3:30)
MetalvaniaX – Castlevania II ‘A Belmont’s Curse’ OC ReMix (5:24)
Minibosses – Castlevania II ‘Mini Mayhem’ OC ReMix (4:39)
mp – Lufia II ‘Time Preserved ~ April Showers’ OC ReMix (2:36)
munky – Guardian Legend ‘Big and Blue and Round’ OC ReMix (3:31)
Neil Benjamin – Chrono Trigger ‘Far Away Memories’ OC ReMix (4:54)
norg – DuckTales ‘Harden the Duck Up!’ OC ReMix (3:37)
Project X – Mega Man 3 ‘X Intro’ OC ReMix (1:26)
prozax – Guardian Legend ‘8-bit Rox’ OC ReMix (2:30) (This song appears to be missing from the site. Inquiring.)
The Rabbit Joint – Legend of Zelda ‘Rabbit Joint Cover’ OC ReMix (1:01)
Russell Cox – ActRaiser ‘Thy Followers’ OC ReMix (4:31)
Russell Cox – Dragon Warrior ‘Journey of Solitude’ OC ReMix (4:18)
Russell Cox – Guardian Legend ‘Naju Overture’ OC ReMix (3:00)
Russell Cox – Dragon Warrior III ‘Flight of Destiny’ OC ReMix (4:12)
Russell Cox – E.V.O. ‘Evolutionary Means’ OC ReMix (5:10)
Ryan8bit – Crystalis ‘Calming the Angry Sea’ OC ReMix (2:39)
Ryan8bit – IronSword: Wizards & Warriors II ‘Sword Foundry’ OC ReMix (2:47)
Ryu7x – Guardian Legend ‘Liquid Corridor (Clean Mix)’ OC ReMix (2:03)
Scott Buckley – Baldur’s Gate ‘Hero of the Heartlands’ OC ReMix (7:05)
Scott Peeples – Chrono Cross ‘Another Inspiration’ OC ReMix (5:19)
sephfire – Kingdom Hearts ‘Above the Rising Falls’ OC ReMix (4:35)
Shadow – EarthBound ‘Bus!’ OC ReMix (1:39)
Shnabubula – Alundra ‘Dreamwalker’ OC ReMix (5:16)
Sixto Sounds – Mega Man 2 ‘Dokuta Wairi, Rival to the Light’ OC ReMix (4:46)
Thumper – Chrono Trigger ‘Times of Distortion’ OC ReMix (4:46)
Vic Viper – Castlevania II ‘DownTown’ OC ReMix (3:12)
The Wingless – Guardian Legend ‘Rosenthorne’ OC ReMix (4:29)
zircon – Chrono Trigger ‘Calamitous Judgment’ OC ReMix (5:11)
zylance – Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past ‘A Link to the Piano’ OC ReMix (5:07)

 

 

A big thank you to all of the artists here and all of those who provide some amazing music for the whole world to enjoy!

 

(I will be editing this post to link each song to its counterpoint on YouTube once I have some free time.) – Done and done!

NaNoWriMo and Live Writing

This entry is part [part not set] of 5 in the series Live Writing

So I decided as a way to both motivate myself and get the word out about National Novel Writing Month I would do a series of live writing events in which I would live stream as much as possible while I write my NaNo novel. I had originally planned to start early this afternoon (11/3/14) but ran into a whole bunch of issue.

First up was my music playlist. A lot of the music I have on my old writing playlist is commercial and I plan to post all of these videos to YouTube. That meant making a playlist that wouldn’t get my videos flagged. So I spent a couple of hours downloading the music library for OCRemix.org (a most amazing video game music remix site) and then selecting tracks for my streaming playlist.

Once that was done it was time to set up the Hangout. Unfortunately while it was extremely easy to stream my writing window it was a complete pain in the ass to stream my music at the same time. I ended up installing a piece of software that created a virtual sound device that I could send my music player’s audio stream to and then select that as my microphone in Hangouts. At that point I thought I was done. Then I discovered Hangouts audio quality is pretty terrible. I could have just stuck with it but I really wanted the whole experience to be as good as I could make it. That meant switching venues. On to Twitch.tv!

Twitch is typically used to live stream someone playing video games. I’ve used it for this before and it’s actually easier to work with than pretty much any other streaming site I’ve used (including LiveStream, YouTube Live, Justin.tv (RIP), and Hangouts on Air). The audio quality is excellent, I don’t need any special software, and I already have a stream casting program from my video game streaming days. Viola!

So now everything is set though it took FAR longer than I wanted it to. It’s been a long and frustrating day but my work has paid off. It is now time to do my very first live writing event for NaNoWriMo!

If you read this in the next hour or so you can join the live stream on Twitch here:

http://www.twitch.tv/fuzzynerdcorner

Once the stream is done the video will also be uploaded to the FuzzyNerdCorner YouTube channel here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGJ__pNL7A3BFsbRBJEmCKg