Elephant Ears & Corn Dogs

Been hitting it pretty hard this week.

The rate at which I am able to edit text is frustratingly slow. It's maddening in equal measure to how rewarding it has been. I've been moving quickly to generate content but it's clear I'm not so patient when it comes to going back and doing revisions. I want to eventually give this polish to all my projects.

I want to embody the patience that makes a good craftsman. Right now!

Livestrom and I went feature complete a couple weeks back and we're quickly approaching the completion of our initial offering of content. My Thinkpad e420 is probably confused as heck. It's seen more action than my Macs have this week. Live told me his sister was surprised that we were coming to the end of it. Given how hard it has been to hold that project together, I'm not surprised she's surprised.

We started with a half dozen folks committed to the project and eventually ended up with just Leaf and Live rocking the remainder. I love working with other people that possess the same work ethic I do.

I've done one complete edit on one of my novels and I'm slowly working through my Storytelling Sciences book. It's bigger than my first novel, pushing nearly 100k words. By far, the editing of that project has been the biggest mountain I've had to climb in the two years I've been doing this.

To everyone that has insinuated that self-published authors deserve less respect than commercially published ones... you don't know anything about anything. Writers that take on the task of writing, editing and promoting their own works are titans that come to the craft in the way it was meant to be.

Meanwhile, I have several ideas for novels I'll write next year. I've already done a couple 40 page outlines for each and the concepts are beginning to spawn dreams and impressions while I sleep. This is one of a few ways I know I'm ready to tackle a new piece of writing, when my subconscious is getting in on the game. There are so many landscapes I've had the pleasure and horror of visiting while I slumbered that made for great scenes in my writing.

By the end of the year I hope to have one Novella, one Novel, one RPG Book and one WP7 App (TBS Game) ready for the marketplace. I figure at this point that I've only got about 40 working days remaining. I feel a little bit better about my prospects for reaching my goals now than I did three or even two weeks ago. This week has been awesomely productive put in the proper perspective.

I was complaining to my wife the other night about how it seems like I've done so little in two years. Then I stopped and made a quick mental list of what I'd done and how many new skills and tools I had to reach out to along the way. I spent most of August being my own worst enemy, with an internal monologue that basically kept me going through the most difficult part of chemical depression, my old friend apathy.

My Hunter LARP has been kicked to one side, neglected for the last month. I've been told that the people participating are patient folks that are ready to play when I'm ready to run a session. I hate not being able to do everything I'd like to do. I've written what will probably be the beginning of an epic Classic (1983) D&D game when I shut my Primordium Table down for maintenance.

I have to begin serious play testing for my SS RPG next year and I'm already nervous about whether I'll be able to gather together enough of the right folks. My anxiety makes me feel worthless, and like I should just quit everything and find a nice safe job doing something for someone else that slowly kills my brain. Why are there so many people selling elephant ears and corn dogs beside the low road?

All the best and most noble things in life are the things we do for their own sake.

Old Staff Fighter verses New

Clickorz to emgiggen

Sadly, the older pic looks better when cut and diminished to 200 x 240 pixels for the fly-in graphic during combat. Dave and I have been talking about developing for a different platform that would give me more screen landscape to play with. Might not be a bad idea as my artwork outgrows our current 800 x 480 limitation.

Dear Me, Look Back Here In 112 Days

Looking in my Things App on my iPad this morning was pretty depressing. I'm writing this entry more to give myself something to look back on in four months than to illuminate anyone else that might read my blog regularly. Going into Fall and Winter my mental health generally suffers if I don't provide myself an even greater degree of focus.

I've got about 124,000 words left to write between two novels to make four total for the year. Collectively it's somewhere around 250,000 words that I'll have to edit and arrange for publish and make covers and such for. I've got a couple of people willing to help me with this but it will be a push to see it all happen before 2011 elapses.

Visting the Raging Rickshaw forums today made me realize just how much is left to complete our App for the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace. I think Dave and I have reduced the overall complexity of the game but added in several elements that will require a lot of additional artwork. I've got less than two months of real time to make that happen including the work that needs done on my novels into the equation.

I'm very close to completing several works for Storytelling Sciences and I'm not worried about the text required for that project. I've thousands of words waiting to go in and find a place. I've too much content if anything. I'd like to do some illustrations for the books though, something that might push the whole thing into next year. I need to find a play test table for the final form of the game, hopefully some folks that have never played it before.

I do a large amount of writing and creating for the purpose of recreation with my friends playing RPGs. It feels like a stretch to keep it all going and stay on schedule even after putting things into perspective with my Things App (awesome App btw). I would rather my work schedule suffered than my mental or physical health. My LARP crew has already stated that they want the game to continue after the first Chronicle is complete, and my RPG tables continue to contain interested folks.

Then there's the new Space Marine game. I will play through the whole thing on Normal mode before the end of the year. Somatic Dyslexia be damned.

Master & Student

Want to help me with my Windows Phone 7 project and collect some swag in the process? Clickorz.