Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

Update 36 7-13 Feb. 2022

Ok, last week I hated on myself and wrote the shortest post in a long while. This week I will try to be brief but I’m doing this one without an outline. Ha ha.

I have been floundering in my work ethic. Barely getting in the write time this year, and definitely not replacing that time with more “other work.”

But this week I buckled down and I wrote a LOT.

Let’s get to it.

Words

Three sessions this week. The normal allotment. I knocked out three chapters and a long interlude. And over those three sessions I logged 13,185 total words for the week. Which is double my minimum. I did the math and in 7 weeks I managed almost 38k words… which if I divide by those seven weeks comes out to just under 6k a week.

6k is my goal… so over all I feel like I’m on track, but I have three weeks in there were I wrote less than 3k words. So, I still feel like I let myself down on those individual weeks. I just managed overall to only fall behind a meager couple hundred words.

That kind of brings us around to what I’ve been talking about over the last few weeks. About getting mad at ourselves for not making goals. For feeling like an imposter or a loser, or whatever other negative image we have for ourselves. The point is, I still made an effort, and in the overall scheme I’m still on track.

I know I’m getting close to a full year on working on this draft, but I also know that I stopped and restarted this thing two times over that year. In total I’ve written more 300k words across those three files. I’ve revised, I’ve worked two part time jobs, I had to deal with medical problems for both myself and my family.

Point is… I’m still moving forward.

What’s Happening in the Story:

The third interlude introduces the main villain of the entire series. It reveals some secrets, and throws out a bunch of clues of things to come in the next couple books of the series. I am in the final act of the book. The main storyline of this volume is rushing to its end and I’m setting up for the next volume.

If you never read the first posts in this series the way these books are divided in the series we have a storyline that arcs over all the books and there are a set of heroes who are following that main line in each of the books. Each volume then has its own characters who are in the middle of their own story that intersects the overall plot.

At the end of this book, some of the characters from this book will join those moving to the next book and then that large group will break into smaller groups heading after different goals in various volumes.

Mid-way through this book I realized that my main cast would have to change up and divide into two groups. The book evolves as I go. The outline demanding changes.

Other Goings on…

I’m working on a new character idea for a game. I have this image in mind instead of a bunch of stats.  In other words, instead of going into a game saying “I want to play the wizard.” I’m going into this game saying I want to play a character who looks like A, acts like B, and is inspired by a mash up of several movie/comic/literary figures.

Once I have that mash up in my mind, I keep playing with how I will stat this person. Is he a warrior or wizard? How does he fight, why does he fight, and who is he? I often start with a picture or an idea, but also usually a class for D&D when I play a character. Usually I know that I’m going to play a ranger or a rogue or a whatever and THEN I find the picture and then I come up with the lifestory.

In this case I came up with a visual… and that visual was skewed by what one of the other players was creating. But then that player changed their mind, and the DM asked us to fit certain parameters, and my image needed to change.

But I decided to keep the image… and try to tweak everything else so that the personality and past of the character fit the parameters instead.

Outro

I’ll talk about this whole concept in more depth in a couple weeks after I get to create the character and start the game. I don’t want to start talking about it openly right now and then end up changing everything, or letting my DM or other players see the thought process until he’s already “living and breathing in the game.”

I know I should talk about other things, but I’m writing this a couple hours before the super bowl, and despite the fact that I no longer watch football as much as I used to it… it is still a social occasion in my house to gather round and watch the game and eat together.

See you all on the other side, and hopefully I will have another large chunk of writing done next week. This is the end of the story. The ramp of the action. I’m super excited to get everything into my final fights and my crazy reveals.