All Fury and No Storm

Journal 84 27 Feb- 5March 2023

A little double meaning with this title.

Both real world; we had a snow storm and a bunch of ice but it was followed by warm, rainy days. Therefore, the snow was erased almost as fast as it showed up, but I did end up with a snow day from work. And metaphorical, in that I had a week of tons of writing, but it will be followed by a week of less writing.

I wish that I could maintain huge word outputs and momentum. But invariably when I write I a lot I find that I neglected other things. Those things always catch up to me. I seem to be terrible at balancing things out.

But, this journal is about this week, not next, and I got a hell of a word count in.

Word Count

I knocked out four sessions with the day out of work completing two chapters.

Total: 10,094 words for the week and the novel sits at 148,102 words.

It really helped that both of these chapters were all action. Running through haunted streets, invaders, ghouls, vampires, and airships overhead. A street-to-street race for freedom. It was a hell of a lot of fun and I introduced a bunch of “villain” characters. Besides the chase, and fighting, I have added more tension and in-fighting amongst the heroes as well.

First off the heroes have been in reaction mode for the longest time. Running away from problems, trying to stay ahead, but not once actually have a singular goal. Now, one of them sees the goal and has put it out there. But one of the other characters, doesn’t really want to be a “hero,” he just wants to survive the damn invasion and get the hell away from the war.

I’ve also had a “normal” character—by normal I mean someone without magic, powers, or any other real “special ability”—thrust to the forefront, who finally tapped into something unexpected.

Part of me second guessed this. He was the only member of the group that was just a normal person. I really smart and physically competent person, but without magic, powers, or any other obvious edge. Though he survived the events of my thesis novel, The Ashlands, and I have repeatedly stated that all who survived were changed by the experience.

So, I just pantsed a whole scene into the story where I nearly killed one of my characters and he survived through the awakening of this power.

Progress.

This is the moment where I get into the end game of the novel. Where the writing suddenly takes off and the chapters get shorter and start moving even faster.

Except I wrote myself into a corner with the end of chapter 25, the A-Team. I was supposed to have them escape from a near encounter, but I ended up having them run into a fortified area and make a stand.

Looking at my outline, chap 28 is supposed to take up five days after the end of chap 25 with A-Team arriving in the final location of the novel. Oops. Now I have to either add in another chapter… or I need to wrap up the whole thing in only a couple pages at the beginning of chapter 28.

A quick wrap up could be unsatisfying… whereas another whole chapter might just bloat word count. Then again I often feel like I’m rushing through things because I’m trying to keep my novels under 200K.

It’s a struggle. I think I’m going to try wrapping it up in the first half of the chapter and then using a scene break to shift to the other half.

Hobby Time

I didn’t get much else done this week. Between shoveling snow and then writing during four marathon sessions (one session was 4000 words by itself)… I just didn’t do much else (other than my three gaming nights… more on those below).

I read two more chapters of Eagle’s Conquest, Simon Scarrow. Perhaps I need to just curl up with a hot tea and read for an afternoon. That would be nice. I haven’t read any comics this week either. Though I have been excited by the books coming out this week and last. A new Cosmic Ghost Rider, Amazing Spider-man has been pretty good….

(though I still hate how they start each series, and they’ve really pissed off a lot of readers with the slow drag out of all the “mysteries,” at least at my store.)

Podcasts

I have been listening to a lot of podcasts and actual plays. I like to take breaks from Critical Role so I always have a bunch of episodes to read. I’ve managed to watch/listen to 6 episodes of Dimension20 (Of Mice and Murders), the first 12 episodes of Glass Cannon Podcast (Pathfinder Giant slayer, enhanced video on YouTube).

I started a Spotify so I could listen to the rest of Glass Cannons podcasts, the rest of Giant Slayer, and also, Androids and Aliens (3 epi in).

Of course, all of these are listened to while working (either at the comic shop or writing in my office) and instead of watching any TV or movies.

Gaming (TTRPGs)

All three sessions happened this week, despite Roll20 trying very hard to ruin online gaming. I don’t know what the hell they’re doing… other than supposedly upgrading the “Video Experience.” But this upgrade has rendered the site nigh unusable for three weeks now.

I had to try and download a separate browser to make it work and now that browser just crashes over and over again. Meaning I wasted my time getting it in the first place. We have repeatedly tried to find ways to work around it.

In any case, all my games happened this week, for the most part. The Tuesday game ended up having to be run on both roll20 and discord, but we managed to move the story along and arrive in the new location.

My Thursday game is in person, as gaming really should be and it was a great game. My brother took the DM role again (if you haven’t been reading these posts, the thur. game has rotating DMs). He brought a bunch of our previous adventures around together, joining up a bunch of disparate strands.

We now feel like we’re on a singular story line… though he also muddied the waters about who our true enemy are and who exactly we’re working for. In any case, I took nearly 8 pages of notes, a personal best for a non-first game.

And the Saturday game was game 2 of a new campaign and the DM is still testing the waters trying to get the tone right for the game. The players are all trying to figure out their characters as well. I’m a low wisdom, high charisma character. So I might dumb choices but smile my way through them.

Wrapping Up

The gaming was the highlight of the week, add on top the snow day (extra day of writing), and I started reading up on Pathfinder 2e. I never loved 1e, other than the art and some of the background/flavor of the unique classes. But the second seems better, the customization of the characters feels a lot nicer (but the number of bonuses and huge numbers, and all that, feel a little regressive after 7 years of streamlined 5e).

(Which I acknowledge is funny because I have always complained that 5e was too simple, and now that I’m reading things that move away from simplicity I complain about that as well. Ha. What an asshole I am. It’s the nature of the beast.)

Anyway, I’m spending more time talking gaming and less time talking writing, but my gaming is all about storytelling (worldbuilding and characters as well).

These are the things that I enjoy in life, such as they are. Thank you for reading this far.

Next week, expect a low word count, but I’ll be trying.