Sick Quickie

Journal 89 24-30 April 2023

I fully intended to get up this morning and go to the office and get back to the chapter 29 (was I on 29? My records say I was—Kurt). Then I woke feeling like a broken old man and my whole head was a stuffed-up nightmare.

Now, I’m still down here writing this blog… and perhaps after I finish, I will open the file and get to work on it anyway. May is normally when I would be beginning the next novel. Ha! I talked about made up schedules in last week’s post.

In any case I’m sitting at my desk with my back out of alignment, my sinus nearly clogged shut, and an itch in my throat that already has me coughing. Normally this would be perfectly fine for sitting with a cup of tea and writing the day away. Especially as it’s raining right now as well.

Just perfect.

But instead, I’m thinking of those same comforts (blanket, tea, snacks) and watching old Universal Horror movies all day, or curling up with a book for half the day and movies for the other half. I freely admit that my need for comfort is outweighing my need to write right at the moment.

Bad Habits

And this brings us right around to last week’s main topic: Bad Habits. I don’t know how universal this is, but I do know several other writers who experience the same thing. That is: You have almost a dread—a revulsion—to putting your fingers to the keys. Obviously, I’m comfortable with typing right now as I’m writing this and I have a few other little things I need to write. But at the same time there is this “revulsion” to opening the Scrivener file and working on the novel. It is habit forming to just push it off to a later date. But those days add up and soon you’re sitting here looking at a list of dates and the ton of time you could have finished things.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this subject (not on this post—I’ve already spent a lot of time on it over many others).

I’m just getting mad at myself even though I could very easily finish this blog and just double click the icon for my novel and get to work. To hell with head colds, to hell with being lazy and watching movies, etc.

I finished the side job that was eating a lot of my free time.

And by “free-time” I mean the pool of time that I use for writing, hobby, art, etc. It’s always full of something, just some of it is easier/lazier than the rest.

Writing, Just not the Novel

I talked about writing more world notes and designing Campaign/Role-Playing material. Including the work-around that said material would be used for the next novel anyway. I haven’t worked on any of that in a while.

In case you didn’t know I have no real outline or script for this blog, I just have a loose list of topics to touch on as I got down a checked list.

Right now, I’m forgiving myself for not working on the novel because I’m going to take my notebooks for my world with me and go write a bunch of that material.

But this does remind of me a terrible post I saw on Twitter where a DM was saying that backstory, and character RP were problems created by Critical Role and that the forefront of the game should be THEIR world-building. As far as he was concerned all players should be emersed in his world and the current situation and not taking time to explore their character, background, or relationships.

His whole point didn’t make much sense to me at all.

First of all, I strongly believe that World-Building and Character are two sides of the same coin. I have several posts (and if I were smarter, I would have figured out a way to collect them ages ago for easier reference) where I talk about my ideals on world-building.

But the firmest point is that characters are shaped by the world (and vice versa). Accent, culture, beliefs are shaped by geography. It all goes hand-in-hand.

I can’t fathom how this “DM” could say that players delving into their pasts, forming relationships, etc. could ruin his world building. Or specifically, how it was pulling their attention away from his “running of the game.” He doubled down that feats and building your character (ie having plans for future levels was also a problem). Basically, he wanted people to just be in the moment and only improv in that moment. No pasts and time spent relationship building, but also no planning on your next levels and how you were going to become something in the future.

To be honest, looking back on these last paragraphs I feel like I shouldn’t have even mentioned it. I was just so baffled that someone could divorce character from world-building and be such a A-hole tyrant at his table.

This is what happens when I sit down with no idea what to write and start a post. Ha ha.

Complaining Anyway…

Since I’m already complaining. Has anyone else noticed in the last three weeks that Roll20 has shit the bed completely?

They recently updated the system to some improved features and for a few weeks they were alright. But now the video features are broken. Whatever they’ve done has become a super resource hog. I have a pretty powerful and still newish laptop (barely 5 years old) and as soon as roll20 opens my CPU hits 99% and everything goes to hell. I have to turn off the video feed to even open my character sheet now.

Just utter garbage.

I usually don’t take the time to complain about things like this. But it is a major problem with so many people using the app to play games.

Universal Horror

I’ve been working my way through all of the Universal horror movies and it’s been fun going back to old movies.

I’m watching them in chronological order. Starting at Dracula and ending with the Monster Walks Amongst Us. Its 30 films over 26 years.

I’m currently finished the 1941 Wolfman. The movie is beautiful, I mean I only have it on DVD and it is so crisp and clear that it’s like watching a Blu-ray. Later today I should get to the next 2 or 3 movies. Ghost of Frankenstein (been told this is silly movie, never seen it), The Invisible Agent (these movies have gone silly with the last one, also never seen), and the Mummy’s Tomb (the mummy movies have been my favorites so far, also never seen this one).

It’s been a heck of a good time watching a few of these movies every couple days.

I think the rest of my day is sorted.

Tea, good lunch, horror movies and working on world-building and characters in my game/novel world.

Outro

I want to thank you all for reading. I don’t get many comments and I don’t get to interact with any of you. But I do have numbers for readers, subscribers, and where they come from (twitter and Facebook links mostly). I do see the handful of you that constantly return and it makes me feel good to see that.

So, thank you again for reading.

Also, thank you to one of my friends who did comment (on my Facebook) and also shared the link. I noticed a spike in reads that day and it was nice to read your words.

Everyone have a great day, and remember if we can’t write, we can jot notes/outline/characters sketch… and if we can’t do that, then we can THINK about writing and maybe improv some dialogue while doing something else during the day. Head writing is still writing, but eventually we need to get the words down on the page.