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I know the point of National Novel Writing Month is to create a countering pressure to all the reasons why everything else is more important than getting any writing done. and yet, I still get frustrated, stand up from my keyboard, try to do something else, realize I'm overwhelmed by my never-ending to-do list and unable to prioritize what to do first or next. I think about calling someone for a reality check, some reassurance, something, but can't decide who to call. I spend several minutes just feeling worthless and stupid and pissed at myself for being so frigging emo, and then I sit down at the keyboard again. I did this at least six times tonight, just writing that last blog entry.
Halfway through the month, I'm 10,000 words in on my story (ie, a fifth of the way) and I'm been feeling less than impressed with this story since Day 2. I don't know enough about most of the stuff in here, the setting, the characters, how psych wards are constructed, whether it's too 'occult', ... this was supposed to be just the warm-up before all the stuff I planned out started to happen, and now I probably won't even get to the parts I did all the planning for in November. I can't seem to make myself prioritize the writing. I can't seem to let go and just write as if I were speaking it to an empty room, making it up as I went along. ...which was its natural state, since it was originally a game scenario.
I had been writing every day, but not enough each day. One night, I fell asleep pressing a key and had to delete a page and a half of the letter 'd'. Then, that stopped. I've missed three days. Today, I decided I'd write one of the occupy posts I've been wanting to write but unable to because of using all my keyboard time for my stunted novel. One of them. There are more. I thought if that went easier, I'd shift to those for a while to get writing in while buying time to figure out why I'm so uneasy with this story. ...however, as noted, my spurts of rapid typing were still interrupted by guilt that I wasn't doing more for the church, more to get my holiday plans untangled, more to clean this place, and I wasn't doing the novel. Whatever. I don't know. It's 980 words. maybe I shouldn't count it. Maybe I'll only count it if it makes a difference at the end of the month. I doubt it will, so it doesn't matter.
Halfway through the month, I'm 10,000 words in on my story (ie, a fifth of the way) and I'm been feeling less than impressed with this story since Day 2. I don't know enough about most of the stuff in here, the setting, the characters, how psych wards are constructed, whether it's too 'occult', ... this was supposed to be just the warm-up before all the stuff I planned out started to happen, and now I probably won't even get to the parts I did all the planning for in November. I can't seem to make myself prioritize the writing. I can't seem to let go and just write as if I were speaking it to an empty room, making it up as I went along. ...which was its natural state, since it was originally a game scenario.
I had been writing every day, but not enough each day. One night, I fell asleep pressing a key and had to delete a page and a half of the letter 'd'. Then, that stopped. I've missed three days. Today, I decided I'd write one of the occupy posts I've been wanting to write but unable to because of using all my keyboard time for my stunted novel. One of them. There are more. I thought if that went easier, I'd shift to those for a while to get writing in while buying time to figure out why I'm so uneasy with this story. ...however, as noted, my spurts of rapid typing were still interrupted by guilt that I wasn't doing more for the church, more to get my holiday plans untangled, more to clean this place, and I wasn't doing the novel. Whatever. I don't know. It's 980 words. maybe I shouldn't count it. Maybe I'll only count it if it makes a difference at the end of the month. I doubt it will, so it doesn't matter.
Accumulated Debris from the workshop
Jul. 18th, 2011 03:36 am1. My Twitter was blank for, like, five days, and today it took me hours to catch up, partly because of the sheer volume of tweets and links to articles on sites that had other stuff, and pics, and so on; but partly because twitter is radiating lag for as long as it's up in any window.
2. Saw in a newsletter from DriveThruRPG that illustrator and indy game designer Jeff Freels and his wife _both_ need kidney transplants, and if they can't afford at least one, they'll be in no shape to do anything beyond struggle to survive at all, so please buy their stuff (company name Fabled Worlds) (and donate) so they can afford needed medical services etc. This hits me where I live. More accurately, it hits me where I used to live, i.e. with my Dad, now passed away due to kidney trouble due to reasons similar to Mrs. Freels. Once my PayPal is stocked again, I'll buy two packs of Stock Art (illustrations on a theme, purchase grants a license to use the art in private or commercial projects, with proper attribution. I've never bought a license for IP before. It seems odd, but childishly intriguing. What would I use it for? Lacking any real business plans or skills to make such plans, where can I paste up said art plus text such that it will drive net-traffic back to the Freels' storefront? maybe the Icons Wiki could use some trolly characters? Is there a t-shirt site that would allow fundraising for a good cause?), some Adventures and comicstrip compilations, and a minimalist rpg called _Bean! the D2 Roleplaying System_, designed for teaching newbies and children the art of RP. Inspired by Tunnels & Trolls, and furthermore _endorsed_ by the creator of Tunnels & Trolls, which makes it somewhat odd that the negative review it received accuses it of being a ripoff, nay, a "plagiarism" of T&T. Maybe this is like in 'Finding Forrester' where Sean Connery has to come out of hiding to give public permission for his protege to use his work? Honestly, I wasn't impressed by Tunnels & Trolls, and yet I assume Bean will be far better and am already plotting what settings to subject to Rule Minimalization. Gritty Street Crime? Shadowrun? Occult Conspiracy? Space Opera? It will probably come down to the quality of the puns. Expect a city called 'Beantown', or Mean Bean Space Marines (actually, they're Navy Beans), or a future post about the Unbearable Lightness of Bean.
3. Taking lots of notes for lots of little creative projects that someday may see the light of day. Wrote two pages today about a game scenario I might run if a certain combination of players are present for an Icons game before that party falls apart or gets recast as different characters or whatever happens. The notes took all lunch hour. I'm not sure why time races while I'm writing. Maybe it's like a trance. all manner of tomfoolery slowly coalescing in my notes: the surreal steampunk fantasy novel, the superhero board game, the gritty realist variation of Welcome Back Potter ( a mashup, not a typo), a letter for the future about what's it like to be living in America now, Christian poetry, superhero poetry, social commentary, a Generic Universal Do-It-Yourself Trading Card Game, geeky song lyrics (eg. what if Voltaire the musician did a song based on my favorite quote from Voltaire the philosopher?), angelic secret agents, three paranormal romances (Martian Kisses, Her Name is Mystery, and Judith & Joshua), a story about a man trapped in a single minute of time, a Die Hard in Orbit / family feel-good action tale, plus the Glory novel, various cartoon scenarios, and the usual vampire/werewolf/panda-bear situation comedies. I haven't entirely abandoned other projects. Maiden Pink lives... somewhere. It's possible when she gets her big rewrite of existing material, I should think in terms of webcomic (page by page serial) instead of 22 pages in a clump. Also, the car music death story at least has a working title now: 'A Pattern in Red and Black'. still unsure what it needs in order to be properly fleshed out.
4a. Arkham Horror is Call of Cthulhu without the Keeper/GM. Munchkin is D&D without the DM/GM. WoW is D&D without the DM/GM. Thing is, as product, they sell; as entertainment and social interaction/quality time, they work. (So does Monopoly, under optimal circumstances, but there is no Wall Street rpg, so put that aside for now.) As a GM, I feel a bit redundant now. Is Instant Mix Gaming the wave of the future, or is that what they said when Magic: the Gathering came out?
4b. AH and Munchkin also seem part of the larger trend of .... let's call them Metaclones. New but with definite nods to old, or newfangled ways of doing old games, or bridging the threefold gamer paradigm by simulating the gameplay of gamist ancestors while leaving space for narrative. Icons and Savage Worlds being examples that are not GM-free Zones. ...and don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to this at all. Icons is my Champions now. However, I wonder where all the nostaliga is coming from. Is the customer base for comics, rpgs, etc. getting older? or has geek culture always relied on pop culture to fuel its evolution, and now that geeks themselves are cool, geek culture must feed on itself: new comics are reinvented old comics, new rpgs are reinvented old rpgs, new movies are old tv shows and new comics based on old comics, and the cutting edge internet frontier is full of geeks talking about new comics, old comics, and movies.
4c. I now understand, by the way, that not only can I _not_ read the entire internet, I can't even keep up with the Net's coverage of one narrow topic. comics? zillions of blogs and news-sites. plus gazillions of webcomics. Heck, it would take me hours to keep up with "what Neil Gaiman did yesterday".
2. Saw in a newsletter from DriveThruRPG that illustrator and indy game designer Jeff Freels and his wife _both_ need kidney transplants, and if they can't afford at least one, they'll be in no shape to do anything beyond struggle to survive at all, so please buy their stuff (company name Fabled Worlds) (and donate) so they can afford needed medical services etc. This hits me where I live. More accurately, it hits me where I used to live, i.e. with my Dad, now passed away due to kidney trouble due to reasons similar to Mrs. Freels. Once my PayPal is stocked again, I'll buy two packs of Stock Art (illustrations on a theme, purchase grants a license to use the art in private or commercial projects, with proper attribution. I've never bought a license for IP before. It seems odd, but childishly intriguing. What would I use it for? Lacking any real business plans or skills to make such plans, where can I paste up said art plus text such that it will drive net-traffic back to the Freels' storefront? maybe the Icons Wiki could use some trolly characters? Is there a t-shirt site that would allow fundraising for a good cause?), some Adventures and comicstrip compilations, and a minimalist rpg called _Bean! the D2 Roleplaying System_, designed for teaching newbies and children the art of RP. Inspired by Tunnels & Trolls, and furthermore _endorsed_ by the creator of Tunnels & Trolls, which makes it somewhat odd that the negative review it received accuses it of being a ripoff, nay, a "plagiarism" of T&T. Maybe this is like in 'Finding Forrester' where Sean Connery has to come out of hiding to give public permission for his protege to use his work? Honestly, I wasn't impressed by Tunnels & Trolls, and yet I assume Bean will be far better and am already plotting what settings to subject to Rule Minimalization. Gritty Street Crime? Shadowrun? Occult Conspiracy? Space Opera? It will probably come down to the quality of the puns. Expect a city called 'Beantown', or Mean Bean Space Marines (actually, they're Navy Beans), or a future post about the Unbearable Lightness of Bean.
3. Taking lots of notes for lots of little creative projects that someday may see the light of day. Wrote two pages today about a game scenario I might run if a certain combination of players are present for an Icons game before that party falls apart or gets recast as different characters or whatever happens. The notes took all lunch hour. I'm not sure why time races while I'm writing. Maybe it's like a trance. all manner of tomfoolery slowly coalescing in my notes: the surreal steampunk fantasy novel, the superhero board game, the gritty realist variation of Welcome Back Potter ( a mashup, not a typo), a letter for the future about what's it like to be living in America now, Christian poetry, superhero poetry, social commentary, a Generic Universal Do-It-Yourself Trading Card Game, geeky song lyrics (eg. what if Voltaire the musician did a song based on my favorite quote from Voltaire the philosopher?), angelic secret agents, three paranormal romances (Martian Kisses, Her Name is Mystery, and Judith & Joshua), a story about a man trapped in a single minute of time, a Die Hard in Orbit / family feel-good action tale, plus the Glory novel, various cartoon scenarios, and the usual vampire/werewolf/panda-bear situation comedies. I haven't entirely abandoned other projects. Maiden Pink lives... somewhere. It's possible when she gets her big rewrite of existing material, I should think in terms of webcomic (page by page serial) instead of 22 pages in a clump. Also, the car music death story at least has a working title now: 'A Pattern in Red and Black'. still unsure what it needs in order to be properly fleshed out.
4a. Arkham Horror is Call of Cthulhu without the Keeper/GM. Munchkin is D&D without the DM/GM. WoW is D&D without the DM/GM. Thing is, as product, they sell; as entertainment and social interaction/quality time, they work. (So does Monopoly, under optimal circumstances, but there is no Wall Street rpg, so put that aside for now.) As a GM, I feel a bit redundant now. Is Instant Mix Gaming the wave of the future, or is that what they said when Magic: the Gathering came out?
4b. AH and Munchkin also seem part of the larger trend of .... let's call them Metaclones. New but with definite nods to old, or newfangled ways of doing old games, or bridging the threefold gamer paradigm by simulating the gameplay of gamist ancestors while leaving space for narrative. Icons and Savage Worlds being examples that are not GM-free Zones. ...and don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to this at all. Icons is my Champions now. However, I wonder where all the nostaliga is coming from. Is the customer base for comics, rpgs, etc. getting older? or has geek culture always relied on pop culture to fuel its evolution, and now that geeks themselves are cool, geek culture must feed on itself: new comics are reinvented old comics, new rpgs are reinvented old rpgs, new movies are old tv shows and new comics based on old comics, and the cutting edge internet frontier is full of geeks talking about new comics, old comics, and movies.
4c. I now understand, by the way, that not only can I _not_ read the entire internet, I can't even keep up with the Net's coverage of one narrow topic. comics? zillions of blogs and news-sites. plus gazillions of webcomics. Heck, it would take me hours to keep up with "what Neil Gaiman did yesterday".
Happy Epiphany to all you magi out there!
Jan. 7th, 2011 02:40 amAn atheist (possibly named Deena Dobkins) asks: What did God do before he created the universe?
The logical answer is: pretty much the same thing the total energy of the entire universe did before the Big Bang. it probably involved wondering if it was too early to get up and make coffee.
The C.S. Lewis answer is (i think): creating other, older universes. God probably has a whole workshop full of them, and when one ends, he builds a new one for that spot on the shelf.
The Mal answer is: Volleyball. Mal will demonstrate this point by playing a betamax videocassette of an animated movie you've never heard of, wherein a child Jesus is playing volleyball with His white-bearded father, while the Holy Spirit referees...
and Jesus says, "hey, Dad, you know what would be good with this? What if we had a beach? We could separate those waters over there from the dry land.....and, um, maybe some other people to play? not that it's not fun with just the three of us."
and the Father smiles and says, "sure, son. knock yourself out."
and the son goes over and says, "okay... let's have some light."
and the father gestures and there's light, and the son says "thanks, that's good." and he packs the cloud of yellow glowing stuff into a yellow glowing ball-shape and moves it closer like a lamp.
....creation of man, fall of man, ("now it's all ruined!" "it's okay, son, maybe we can fix it."), the covenant with Abraham ("wait! ....we changed our mind. Don't kill your son, Abraham. We'll find someone else."), the Incarnation ("You made them male and female. If you're going to become one of them, you need to have a mother. So, look closely. choose carefully. Who will it be?") and the Resurrection ("I know I can't fix everything for them. but let me go back and make sure they understand.") At each point, it's clear to the viewer that the father is using the son's world-building as a learning experience for the son.
Although the movie appears to have been taped off tv, the only commercials are for the Church of Latter-Day Saints (circa early 80s, "Don't let the magic pass you by" ad campaign) and Sea Monkeys.
The logical answer is: pretty much the same thing the total energy of the entire universe did before the Big Bang. it probably involved wondering if it was too early to get up and make coffee.
The C.S. Lewis answer is (i think): creating other, older universes. God probably has a whole workshop full of them, and when one ends, he builds a new one for that spot on the shelf.
The Mal answer is: Volleyball. Mal will demonstrate this point by playing a betamax videocassette of an animated movie you've never heard of, wherein a child Jesus is playing volleyball with His white-bearded father, while the Holy Spirit referees...
and Jesus says, "hey, Dad, you know what would be good with this? What if we had a beach? We could separate those waters over there from the dry land.....and, um, maybe some other people to play? not that it's not fun with just the three of us."
and the Father smiles and says, "sure, son. knock yourself out."
and the son goes over and says, "okay... let's have some light."
and the father gestures and there's light, and the son says "thanks, that's good." and he packs the cloud of yellow glowing stuff into a yellow glowing ball-shape and moves it closer like a lamp.
....creation of man, fall of man, ("now it's all ruined!" "it's okay, son, maybe we can fix it."), the covenant with Abraham ("wait! ....we changed our mind. Don't kill your son, Abraham. We'll find someone else."), the Incarnation ("You made them male and female. If you're going to become one of them, you need to have a mother. So, look closely. choose carefully. Who will it be?") and the Resurrection ("I know I can't fix everything for them. but let me go back and make sure they understand.") At each point, it's clear to the viewer that the father is using the son's world-building as a learning experience for the son.
Although the movie appears to have been taped off tv, the only commercials are for the Church of Latter-Day Saints (circa early 80s, "Don't let the magic pass you by" ad campaign) and Sea Monkeys.
Money is still tight, the car still needs repairs. Being a starving artist, I've found, means that the "starving" part tends to rob time and attention from the "art". My final word count for NaNoWriMo was 11,123 words, approximately six days' worth of actual typing spread across a month.
I'll keep plodding along to finish my novel. It may take five or six months, but I'll at least get to 50,000 words and see what I've got. I figure I owe Glory at least that much. (Probably far more)
I'll keep plodding along to finish my novel. It may take five or six months, but I'll at least get to 50,000 words and see what I've got. I figure I owe Glory at least that much. (Probably far more)
Perversions of Game Design
Dec. 3rd, 2010 02:12 am1. Having read Steve Kenson's blog, where he's enthusiastic about narrative cards as an rpg play element (eg. Torg's Drama Cards, Marvel Saga's FATE Deck, the new Gamma World's Alpha Mutations and Omega Tech), I wonder if my Fudge Rifts rules, which continue to evolve even though I've only actually run one session, would benefit from rules that would allow random objects from my toy & game collection (or my overall collection of nifty but nigh-useless things, a designation from which my comicbooks are not exempt) to become story elements. Let's say I had an Odds Box into which I had, pre-game, placed an assortment of pictures, trading cards, figurines, lapel buttons and/or index cards with non sequiturs written on them; said assortment being chosen solely because they match the theme of the game scenario to be played; then, once per scene, say, I draw one out and it can be used by the players to their advantage (if they pay fudge points from their pool and explain how it enters the story) to their disadvantage (in order to gain fudge points for the added challenge) or, if not by them, then the villains may use it (again, giving the players fudge points for an added challenge) or it can just hang there, making the players wonder if the villains are suddenly going to work it in somehow. In Icons terms, it's an Aspect that anyone can tag. If an Odd is used in such a manner that it enters play and then leaves play before the scene ends, (eg. instant spell effects, or a weapon that gets destroyed) then a new Odd is drawn and hung out as a potential story element.
Sample non sequitur for a silly dark future game: "Cannibal Sorority Girls Want to Eat your Brain". Sure, they could be enemies, or contacts you call on the phone from a safe distance, or it's a code phrase for something else. Maybe it's just a bizarre classified ad that acts as a clue to a conspiracy.
1. That one session of Fudge Rifts that I ran? I reworked it into a more elaborate story form and posted it on Facebook, hoping to impress The Girl. (No such luck, but it was worth a try.) You're welcome to a copy of the file if you're interested.
Sample non sequitur for a silly dark future game: "Cannibal Sorority Girls Want to Eat your Brain". Sure, they could be enemies, or contacts you call on the phone from a safe distance, or it's a code phrase for something else. Maybe it's just a bizarre classified ad that acts as a clue to a conspiracy.
1. That one session of Fudge Rifts that I ran? I reworked it into a more elaborate story form and posted it on Facebook, hoping to impress The Girl. (No such luck, but it was worth a try.) You're welcome to a copy of the file if you're interested.
9/10ths Perspiration
Oct. 25th, 2010 12:58 pmDid I mention that I'm planning to do National Novel Writing Month this year? and my warmup to writing 100+ pages in November (a story with no middle right now) is to write a short story in a week (most plot already there, it's a juiced up recap of a game session) the motivation for the latter being that I'm doing it to impress a girl?
Two hours last night got me two short-ass scenes. I have got to learn faster* someday.
ETA: By 'learn faster' I meant to type faster, or write faster, or be faster, and by short-ass scenes I mean basically two paragraphs. one more (about five sentences) today so far. One plot hole still looms but at this rate I'll be three days getting to it.
Two hours last night got me two short-ass scenes. I have got to learn faster* someday.
ETA: By 'learn faster' I meant to type faster, or write faster, or be faster, and by short-ass scenes I mean basically two paragraphs. one more (about five sentences) today so far. One plot hole still looms but at this rate I'll be three days getting to it.
There is SO much I'm supposed to be, need to be, doing. phone calls, household chores, appointments, emails, social engagements to rsvp, birthdays to acknowledge, ... but when Thymewind asked me to look over the FoxCon website, I saw that 'DoddNK' (my GMing Sensei) was running a superhero rpg at the Con that I didn't recognize. 'How could this be? Would DoddNK try something newfangled? Could something old exist I didn't know about by now?', says I, and google it. "The 4C System" turns out to stand for 'four color' and it's an open source retroclone (no, seriously, that's a word; a movement, even) of the original Marvel Super-Heroes Roleplaying Game. Yes, someone *paraphrased* the rules to create a version of the game that you can legally make supplements for, decades after the original company-owned version went out of print. (The original game rated success on a color-coded scale, but changing those colors into the four ink colors formerly used to print all comicbooks was a touch of genius. Likewise, 'column shifts' become 'row steps', which means the same with fewer letters.) This is so cool, in an unexplainable geeky way. It makes me want to write an adventure scenario entitled "Crisis on Earth-Red" (positing four parallel earths, wherein Yellow is Golden Age, Blue is Silver Age, and one of the other two is Dark Age.) However, despite its open source nature, my attempts to download a free e-copy of the 4C rules all fail, and I remain unsure about buying something I technically already have, just in different words. Maybe if it were cheap enough.
Anyway, in surfing about looking, I find out that Steve Kenson, the creator of M&M, has created _Icons_, a rules-light fast-playing generic superhero game inspired by old superhero rpgs, notably MSH, but with Fudge-inspired narrative mechanics. So, it's like my Marvel Fudge game, except ever so more so; those ideas, more fully developed, and made more stand-alone. There are times when I see someone else succeeding with a project based on ideas like mine that I haven't followed through on and get depressed; but there are also, perhaps more often, times when seeing that success find an audience vindicates my ideas and tastes and instincts, and I say to myself not "that could have been me." but rather, "That could be me, next time." Maybe if I can make Chicagoplex into something viable and self-supporting,* it could find an audience, too. In the meantime, I really want to snag a copy of _Icons_ and see what else he's done with those ideas.
[*or the Hudsucker Inception, or the All-Star Project, or any of the other fifty half-finished projects piled up in the workshop in the basement of my mind. It's looks like my grandfather's workshop did, but with more paper and clutter. maybe a blackboard.]
Anyway, in surfing about looking, I find out that Steve Kenson, the creator of M&M, has created _Icons_, a rules-light fast-playing generic superhero game inspired by old superhero rpgs, notably MSH, but with Fudge-inspired narrative mechanics. So, it's like my Marvel Fudge game, except ever so more so; those ideas, more fully developed, and made more stand-alone. There are times when I see someone else succeeding with a project based on ideas like mine that I haven't followed through on and get depressed; but there are also, perhaps more often, times when seeing that success find an audience vindicates my ideas and tastes and instincts, and I say to myself not "that could have been me." but rather, "That could be me, next time." Maybe if I can make Chicagoplex into something viable and self-supporting,* it could find an audience, too. In the meantime, I really want to snag a copy of _Icons_ and see what else he's done with those ideas.
[*or the Hudsucker Inception, or the All-Star Project, or any of the other fifty half-finished projects piled up in the workshop in the basement of my mind. It's looks like my grandfather's workshop did, but with more paper and clutter. maybe a blackboard.]
Is it typical in love stories to not bother explaining how the protagonists actually fall in love? as in, what causes the initial attraction that motivates them to overcome the various obstacles that then crop up to keep them apart, instead of shrugging and moving on to the next possible match? (Perhaps they do explain this and I miss it somehow?) This would make writing love stories exponentially easier; sort of like the difference between space opera and Hard Sci-Fi (where you have to explain how stuff works as if it really might).
Up and Down
Aug. 25th, 2008 09:49 pmPhysical Exam last week: bp 122 over 82; wt 174 lbs; ht 5'11 and a half" (am I getting shorter still?) Doctor was actually a Nurse, suggested Prilosec for my stomach trouble, seemed unable to see past that to notice any other minor problems, which hopefully means all other problems really are that minor.
asked a girl (for your records, call her "Miss M") at work out, after days of prep. result: I'm "sweet" but she has a boyfriend. *sigh* my prep kept it from being awkward, but it still feels like being kicked in the chest. Almost asked another girl out a day later just to get back on the proverbial horse while I was still sore.
Let's not talk work. Someone I trusted got fired. Those I don't trust didn't.
Finally submitted poems to 'Breath & Shadow'. 3 days later, they write back, saying they got the poems, love them, will take all three, ... "meager payment" (their words. I'm okay about the size as long it's money coming to me instead of away) and business / legal niceties to follow when they can fit it into their publication queue, which might take 6 months. They like publishing authors from Maine but "seldom get submissions of such high quality". Like, dude. accepted in less than a week. wow. Now I've got to write more.
audioreading Dan Brown's _Angels & Demons_. 15 min in, he's already bashing the Catholics, and I can tolerate that, but... y'know, the guy can't write... unless he was going for a melodrama with less realism than a Spider-Man comic. kind of a cross between Herbworld and something I read in a workshopped novella by a housewife at the Writers' Anonymous meetings back in Milltown. I've got to write more. I'll bet a novel about an elven love goddess would sell.
going to visit the blind rebel scholar tommorrow. gone early.
asked a girl (for your records, call her "Miss M") at work out, after days of prep. result: I'm "sweet" but she has a boyfriend. *sigh* my prep kept it from being awkward, but it still feels like being kicked in the chest. Almost asked another girl out a day later just to get back on the proverbial horse while I was still sore.
Let's not talk work. Someone I trusted got fired. Those I don't trust didn't.
Finally submitted poems to 'Breath & Shadow'. 3 days later, they write back, saying they got the poems, love them, will take all three, ... "meager payment" (their words. I'm okay about the size as long it's money coming to me instead of away) and business / legal niceties to follow when they can fit it into their publication queue, which might take 6 months. They like publishing authors from Maine but "seldom get submissions of such high quality". Like, dude. accepted in less than a week. wow. Now I've got to write more.
audioreading Dan Brown's _Angels & Demons_. 15 min in, he's already bashing the Catholics, and I can tolerate that, but... y'know, the guy can't write... unless he was going for a melodrama with less realism than a Spider-Man comic. kind of a cross between Herbworld and something I read in a workshopped novella by a housewife at the Writers' Anonymous meetings back in Milltown. I've got to write more. I'll bet a novel about an elven love goddess would sell.
going to visit the blind rebel scholar tommorrow. gone early.
