Author: Jeff Deck

Author and administrator of this site.

12/9 (and spoilers)

The Shadow over Portsmouth: unchanged
Player Choice: 104,525

I finished A Dance with Dragons the other night, and though I feel enriched as a person just by reading it, and worship George R.R. Martin as the world-building, word-slinging, merciless god that he is, I do have many questions, perhaps more than when I started the book.  So many unfinished pieces of business.  So here you go… and if you haven’t finished the book, do not read on. Spoilers.

I said, SPOILER ALERT.

SPOILERS FOR A DANCE WITH DRAGONS!

Okay, everyone good now?  So…

*Who the eff is Coldhands?
*Who the eff is Robert Strong?
*What happened to Brienne? Why did we only glimpse her offhand for one chapter, when she was supposed to be dead?
*What’s the deal with Manderly?
*What’s the deal with the “perfumed seneschal”?
*Where the eff did Osha and Rickon go?
*Where the eff is Victarion?  Why even bother getting into his storyline if he wouldn’t reach his destination by the end of the book?
*What was the point of the Quentyn material? There had to be an easier way to spring the big lizards…

Player Choice moves only a little.  Shadow over Portsmouth moves not at all, but I was able to sketch out a map of the town that should help somewhat with future installments; I’d been starting to lose track of where my pieces were on the board.

12/8

The Shadow over Portsmouth: 58,555
Player Choice: 104,352

Confession time: I can have a difficult time with social interactions, including but not limited to public speaking.  I’ll focus on the speaking angle today, though.  Each speaking gig that I have takes a lot of preparation beforehand to get into the proverbial “zone.”  Writers today are supposed to be enthusiastic performers as well, sort of like how musicians today must tour and no longer have the option of just hiding in the recording studio.  It’s the harsh voice of economic reality.  If you write, you have to be able to talk about the book, to the media and particularly to eager audiences.

So I joined the local chapter of Toastmasters a little while ago.  I went to a few meetings to just check out the scene first, and I did a couple of brief, impromptu speeches, amazed in spite of myself at how easily my tongue would tie itself into knots.  When The Great Typo Hunt came out last year, my epic book tour included countless radio and TV interviews, including ABC World News, CBS Sunday Morning, and the Today Show (see below), for cryin’ out loud.  Yet I couldn’t come up with “someone I’d like to meet from history” off the top of my head, for God’s sake.  I guess I’ve always done better with prepared lines and canned points, which was largely what the Great Typo Hunt interviews were all about– well-practiced answers to the same questions over and over again.  I did a little acting in high school and college.  I can memorize a monologue.

But extemporaneous speaking– pretending like you’re a persuasive or at least interesting human being– that’s tough, man.  For me, it’s tough.  While we’d gotten a positive response from the audience for our Great Typo Hunt talk last month at the Wonderful World of Words weekend, and Will Shortz seemed to enjoy it, he still did mention that my delivery reminded him of Norm MacDonald.  It wasn’t what I was going for, but it did make me think.  Jane mentioned something about figuring out how well-known people with my type of dry speech use it to their advantage, which is something to keep in mind.  I know I’ll never be the most energetic communicator, but I could certainly settle for dryly funny.  It worked for Bill Murray, yes?

Side note: totally not feeling the Player Choice side of things tonight.  Think it’s time to abandon ship.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

12/7

The Shadow over Portsmouth: 56,760
Player Choice: 104,150

Started off with Player Choice today.  I could suddenly see a good amount of what was going to happen in the end.  There’s going to be a considerable amount of ugliness, but that’s a positive thing in the world of narrative, yes?  Today’s number for Player Choice is somewhat deceptive, as it includes some text that was already there but destined for the virtual wastebasket until I repurposed it.  So what you’re not seeing is some shameless recycling, or as George R.R. Martin calls it, “The Law of Conservation of Prose.”

All around a pretty poor showing, though.  The rain and gloom kept me off today, but tomorrow I will have to return to the library and chain myself to the carrel.

RPG Your Life

I keep coming back to the idea of making some kind of RPG program that functions as a task organizer/address book/grand unifier for one’s professional and personal life.  I’ve had proto-systems in place before for productivity and reward, and Benjamin is still using a modified version for his own work, but to have an actual game that you could jump into would be pretty awesome.

Will work on some prototypes.