Month: December 2011

12/22

The Shadow over Portsmouth: unchanged
Player Choice: 125,046

Christmas is nigh.  And so is the end of this Player Choice draft, I can smell it.  The 6th draft will have to be devoted to making the story make sense, filling in a lot of the details that I fudged about corporate management, game design, economics, and any number of other things.  But first this 5th draft must come to its crescendo and then drop.

It was quite a run today– 3300 words for Player Choice.  And I’m afraid I have nothing left for Shadow over Portsmouth.  I can’t switch gears.  I think it may be grinding to a halt until the other is done.

 

12/21

We’re trying a little experiment here today.  It goes something like this– struggle to get a cover letter done all day while putting my once-strong novel writing on hold.  Answering the serious call of resuming cash flow.  Results:  getting a grand total of squat done today!  Congratulations to me!

Update: A little more than squat accomplished. I did draft a pretty fine cover letter.  And Jane and I were wrapping heroes.

12/19

The Shadow over Portsmouth: 62,459
Player Choice: 120,080

The day’s first thousand words are always the hardest.   At least for me. I’ve been reminded of this over the past several weeks.  It’s something that you can easily forget, but that you shouldn’t– because knowing that fact gives you power.  You then know that once that 1K has been achieved, the rest of the day’s count will flow easier and faster.  You know that you do want to keep going, keep riding that train of word-lovin’, because the next day you’ll be back to the difficult task of the first 1K again.

 

 

12/18

The Shadow over Portsmouth: 62,209
Player Choice: 116,957

These stories of mine inevitably turn out to be grim, don’t they?  Even the ones that are initially conceived as lighthearted.  I ought to challenge myself someday specifically to write something comedic that will, under no circumstances, turn out to have a dark and foreboding heart.  Right now, though, we’re stuck with a grim horror story and a grim near-future sci-fi story.  I guess I can’t apologize, because I believe that they will turn out to be good… but then again, I suppose I am a person that (enjoys?) the darker things in life.

Today we were shopping and I found myself getting angry at the mechanisms of the holiday, the forced commerce and the fact that we all have to guess at the proclivities of each other, because we’re judged by how we gift.  And it’s like, lighten up, man, it’s fucking Christmas.  Jane said at one point that I was bringing her down with my grimaces, and I was.  There are multiple selves that I identify with, but sometimes the despairing one elbows its way to the forefront and just sucks the air out of the place.