A Week Off
Writing Journal Update 66 29 Aug-11 Sept.
So, a week off… and I know you’re rolling your eyes and saying I’ve taken plenty of weeks off from writing. You’ll probably point back only three or four weeks where I was barely even getting in my standard word count.
But, last week, was the first time in over two years that I took a week off from this blog.
Seriously.
In three years, I have only missed two posts. And in the first year my posts were on a completely different schedule. But since I started the Thesis Diary and then changed it to my Writing Journal I’ve only missed one single post.
The short answer is I went away for Labor Day weekend, and even though I brought my laptop with me… I just decided to relax and take the time off. And then I decided to do that for the rest of the week.
Words
I did still manage words in the week BEFORE Labor Day, just not much after that.
Let’s get that out of the way.
The novel is progressing with more and more speed (when I’m not taking time off, heh). I ended August with 9517 new words, over three sessions. The manuscript has hit 6-digits and sits at 103,166 total words. I’m most of the way through chapter 19 (of a planned 39).
I’ve been working on more behind the scenes material. Filling out blanks in my religious and cultural knowledge for parts of my world. Second, working on the history of events in the area. I also put together the idea for a new short/novella about a goblin highway man and his adventures. That’s what happens when you fall in love with random side characters while writing them.
Story So far
I feel like I might have made a section of the story a little sparse. I spent a bunch of time talking between characters, throwing in some exposition, and then bam! Events happen and they have to flee that scene and then we look back. But I probably could have spent a lot more time lingering in the attack on the city.
But after spending so much time with the back story and history lessons and such… would spending a dozen pages talking about events in the city and making their escape very difficult have dragged or been exciting? I think their rapid escape and then looking back and seeing everything in a detached manner kept the pace moving after the long section before.
But I could be wrong.
In any case, I’ve introed a very important character and I’ve aimed the characters to their final destination. (all puns and symbolism of that term intended). The B-story is also on track to intercept them, despite being weeks in the future. I’m smoothing over the timelines and working to make it feel like they’re on track. To be honest I believe most people won’t notice and on rewrites I will probably try to obsess less over the dates.
Hobby and Other things.
As this blog is covering two weeks, I have added a third weekly game to my schedule. It’s a little crazy to be in so many games and when you add in the rotation of Sat. games and my monthly games, I have a lot on my plate. Trying to keep half a dozen characters in my head and still get in my writing time with many more characters.
With my brother’s passing I was invited to join the group he was putting together but never got to start the campaign with them. So, I am gaming with people I have barely spent time with over the last decade and it feels great to be back with friends and see my other brother weekly.
We immediately created over the top characters and threw them into a Spelljammer/ space opera style game where all of the NPCs, situations, and other such are throwback caricatures to characters/events/things Tony loved. The first game was a blast, though I have to get used to gaming with other people again.
There is talk of everyone taking a turn at DM and it has been a very long time since I ran D&D… last game I ran was 3.5. I never ran 4th or 5th edition. So, over a decade. As we’re using Spelljammer to get to ANY setting, and only running one-shots or short arcs, I might just run something in my own world, perhaps a section of one of my novels or a past event.
I’m only worried about it dipping into my writing time. But everything dips into writing time. I’m debating getting painting done or writing once I finish writing this blog… and I don’t know which one will win.
Podcasts/ Actual Plays/Etc
I have fallen behind in a bunch of these, but still manage to stay on Legends of the Multiverse (which might have come to a season end? I’m unsure.) and Glass Cannon’s Masks of Nyarlathotep and Traveller game.
I need to catch up to Black Dice Society, and I have been powering through Crit Role’s Second Campaign, Mighty Nein… though the internet keeps exploding about things happening in the current campaign I have been avoiding spoilers as I will not watch the new stuff until I finish the old. I have a long way to go.
I have also been powering through Dimension20, switching between CritRole and Dim20 on a day-by-day basis. I’m about half way through Fantasy High Sophomore year and I’m doing Dim20 chronologically. (or at least how they have the seasons set on their website).
But perhaps I’m digressing.
There was not a lot of talk about writing in this one so far.
Storytelling
I bring up TTRPGs because they are the basis of much of my storytelling, and storytelling is what writing is all about. At least my writing.
I watch all of these games and get immersed in character and events. It reinvigorates my soul and also infuriates me when I see ideas for characters and events get used in someone else’s game. I love discovering someone who lives on the other side of the country is having the same thoughts as myself. But then I also have the problem that they’re on the internet with millions of views. Meaning when it shows up in my novel, I get people saying I took from them… despite the fact that my notes and ideas stretch back almost thirty years.
Believe me I’m ready for people saying my Shadow Elves were taken from “So-and-So” or are just Shadar-Kai… despite my Shadow Elf game first happened in the mid 90s.Years before “Shadar Kai” appeared as a creature in D&D. Though I will admit in the early 90s there was a Dragon Magazine article that had an Elven Glossary and Shadar was elf (I had a character with this name in 96) and Kai means Elf… so the terms were part of the game but there wasn’t a creature.
I think this is the eternal problem. Discovering that someone else beat you to an idea.
But I can only write what I NEED to write. This story is stuck in my head and won’t go away until get it all out. And with every novel I find more and more to write about. This is going to be my life going forward.
I’ll let you all go now. Thanks for reading.
