Daily Update: Ever have one of those days?
It hasn’t been one of those days. At least not yet. It’s been one of those weeks. Every time I think I’ll have a little time for sit and write, or record, or get something done on a project, the time evaporates and whoops, nothing got done. Not just nothing, but less than nothing. Sure I got my blog posts out (almost missed a day) but my production this week has lacked severely.
This week isn’t looking much better. With Easter weekend coming, my favorite daughter out of school for the week, and traveling up to Lemoore (a few hours north of LA) on Friday morning. This will also be a light week. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some meaningful writing done between now and them.
On the plus side, I spent a great deal of time with the Millicans, watched my favorite daughter have a couple awesome practices, took a great walk and will walk more from now on, and had some quality family time. I also got to see the Three Musketeers (awesome, go see it). So I don’t count the missed writing time as a loss.
What have I discovered about myself this week? That I’ve gotten into a writing groove. That it pains me when I cannot write. I get antsy. I tap my fingers on any surface thinking about what I’d be writing. I translate scenes in my head and try to add humor to them and how I would include it into a story. No matter how hard I try, I need to write, not just want to write.
I really do love writing. I love all aspects about it. Watching my word count pass me by is difficult at best. I struggle to get up early and write, and it has been a struggle lately. When I was walking I found it easier to get up. Now that the wife and I are walking, I’m hoping that I’ll sleep better and wake up more refreshed. As it stands, waking up is difficult.
Some of the funny things I did the past week. Yesterday, April Fool’s Day, The Millican and I took his son shoe shopping. His son joked “My two dads are taking me shopping.” So when we went into one store and a sales clerked came over and offered assistance I said “Oh, we’re just looking for shoes for our son.” She smiled, The Millican and his son both had to turn away because they were laughing. The girl looked a little puzzled and left. I went into the corner and burst out laughing. I’m not sure how I managed to say it with a straight face.
Second funny thing: I’ve got annoying neighbor dogs. One is blind and loves to bark. She’ll bark at the wind blowing through the trees, cars honking, the sound of a door opening. She’ll bark at darned near anything. The other dog isn’t blind and doesn’t bark nearly as much. One day I decided to remove the doggie door (there was a draft) and when I leaned it against the fence and peeked over at the two dogs, the sighted of the two dogs barked at me. I hid behind the glass of the doggie door and she cocked her head to the side. I peeked out, bark. Hid, cocked head. I was pretty sure she could see me and for some reason found this a game to play and did so several times during the day with the same result each time. Well, I was amused.
Even though it’s been a tough and low productivity week I’ve kept my humor level high and just had fun with it. I know I can’t stress out about goals. I’m ahead of my annual goal. I know I’ll make that one. So I missed on the Lent goal. I’m not even going to try and fight it at this point. I will still put down as many words as possible, but I’m not going to fight it. I will post my final Lent numbers next Monday. I’m still happy with the result even if I don’t produce another word. Speaking of producing words.
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
Daily Update: Had a great time yesterday.
You may have noticed from my extremely short post yesterday that I wasn’t around much at all. Let me give you a quick rundown.
Got up somewhat early and started doing a couple of errands and getting ready for the beach day my favorite daughter had planned. She had a friend stay over so we went to Starbucks, went to 7-11 to check our lottery tickets (I was a WINNER! $7 back in my pocket baby), got some gas, went back to the house and had breakfast.
Because we had cleaned the house there weren’t any laptops lying around and I hadn’t charged my tablet so no post happened. I figured I’d get to it later. I thought about starting one on my phone, but by the time I thought about it I figured I should start packing things into the Tahoe.
My favorite daughter had a volleyball clinic at her school held by the Varsity coach. She had an outstanding session and the coach even made several comments about how well she was doing. She didn’t want to go saying her hand hurt, but you’d never know that once she got going.
While I was there the wife went and did shopping to get snacks and whatnot for the beach. Since I had loaded the LARGE cooler into the Tahoe it was filled with a multitude of snacks and drinks. Then it was a matter of going and picking up all the kids and heading to the beach.
The Millicans joined us as their daughter was part of the semi-reunion my favorite daughter had planned and heck, let’s be honest, it just fun to have the Millicans around. There was eating of snacks, feeding of seagulls, a foot race that I started laughing during and nearly went face first into the sand, more snacks, more seagulls ,chasing of birds, poker…oh yeah, my favorite daughter and her friends spent as little time as possible around the grown ups. They had a volleyball, the water, and a lot of fun.
I posted a couple of pictures in twitter. It was cold, windy, and cold. The sun did make an appearance shortly before sunset and made its brilliance known. Knowing it was about to get cold we started packing things in. Our intention had been to have a bonfire on the beach, but all the fire rings had been removed. So much for roasting wieners over an open fire.
We dropped of one child and headed back to the Millican’s house. There we managed to clear the deck (literally) get the grill going, fire up the Jacuzzi and before you could say ‘it’s ready’ the Jacuzzi was full of kids, the hot dogs were ready, and we were a eatin. Because of the silly temporal shift that happens around this time of the year, it was nearly 9PM as we sat down to eat.
At this point I became a little twitchy that I hadn’t written ANYTHING the entire day. Hey, life happens. Roll with it, right?
So hot dogs were had. One of the Millican’s friends showed up and we had some great conversation. He hadn’t been around in quite a while and had some stories to tell. Some good, some bad, some fascinating. He shared with us a music video he did with some footage shot while he performed on stage before Solja Boy Tell’em (or however he spells it.). He goes by the stage name of Tempmuzik and you can find him on youtube. The kids got talent. Check out his video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USKavfoLioY&feature=bf_next&list=UU0f6HUXtOnku7GAMrzwMEZA&lf=plcp
Now I’m not a big fan of hip hop, but this song is really cool. He even had a video online of how he made some of his beats and the layers he needed to do for putting it all together. It’s a lot of hard work. He said he submitted an audition video for the x-factor and got accepted. Hopefully this will do wonders for him. He’s got mad skills.
Eventually 11:30pm showed up and it was time to take the kids home. Will a full car, I had to leave the wife and my favorite daughter. The rain started and really picked up once I started dropping them off. Everyone made it home safely and I got to say ‘hi’ so a couple of the parents (still good friends) that I don’t see too often anymore. I got home around 12:30AM and finally to bed just before 1AM. A very long day, but a lot of fun.
Today I need to take my favorite daughter to a private volleyball lesson and then she’ll have two hours of practice. After that it’s recoding the Action Pack Podcast, editing, posting. Then I need to record one more little piece and finally I’ll be getting my butt in chair and doing some serious writing. I’m falling behind on my Lent goal. Ah well. These things happen.
I’ve got a busy day ahead of me. The house is clean, the projects are laid out before me. I just need to make the time to sit and type a lot today. I’ll see you on the other side.
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
Daily Update: Went to the beach
Went to the beach today. Bbq’D some hot dogs.
Very short post today. Lots more tomorrow.
Daily Update: Another long day.
Today blew by! I mean I really lost track of time today. I got a lot of work done. You know that day job stuff. I demoed my progress for the client again. I’ll do the same next week. I’m happy with the progress. Fixed a few errors, corrected a couple odd and slow queries. It was one of those good days to be a geek.
My favorite daughter decided to have a friend over. She’s going to have a beach day tomorrow. If you’re not from San Diego you think every day in San Diego is a beach day. I’m from Minnesota. I used to think that. Sure, it’s warmer here than in Minnesota this time of year, but that doesn’t mean it’s beach weather. The currents come from the north to feed us very cold water. The water temps are very cold year round and when you get that wind whipping up off that cold water. Brrrr!
Yes, I wear shorts nearly all year. I also wear flip flops as often as I can. But when you’re sitting on a beach chair with the damp, cold wind steadily blowing up off the cold water. Let’s just say it’s chilly.
The kids enjoy it though and, hey, that’s what this is all about. I’m sure they’ll have fun playing beach volleyball, rolling in the sand, things like that. Me, I’ll likely lock myself in the car at some point and record my Action Pack Segment. Our first episode dropped on March 1st, so it only makes sense to drop the 2nd episode on April 1st.
April 1st. Hmm, now I need to think of a good joke to play on that day.
I bought my lottery tickets for tonight. Heck, as I’m writing this I could be worth half a billion dollars. Who knows? Not me. I’ll find out later. I’m a realist. It’d be very cool to win, but I’m not going to be chomping at the bit to see if I won. I have a better chance of a shark riding lighting into my house and biting me on the bum.
Speaking of lightning sharks. I’ve been watching Frozen Planet. Very cool (pun intended) show. Ever since I was a kid watching Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom I’ve had a fascination with nature shows. Not just nature shows, but things that have a great narration. Marlin Perkins always did a great job with narration and Frozen Planet has Alec Baldwin. I loved him when he did Thomas the Tank Engine (my favorite daughter used to watch that) and there’s something about his voice that just draws you in.
Speaking of long days, I should get some fiction written. I’ll have a longer post for you tomorrow.
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
Unorthodox Writing Tips 22: Keeping Track.
I’m a geek. I can’t lie. I love sitting at a computer and typing away. I love creating excel spread sheets and going crazy with formatting and layouts and charts and graphs. I mean… seriously. I can sit down for hours and just toy with my spread sheet. Even though that might sound counter productive, I’m proof that it’s not. Let me explain why. (NOTE: If you’re not as geeky as I am, don’t worry, I have alternatives below)
I have a goal. I intend to write 450,000 words during the year of 2012. Now up front that sounds like a lot of words. I started with 500,000 and scared myself so I dialed it back. I didn’t want to be too ambitious with the new year starting. I had been an on again, off again writer. I’d write three or four days in a row and then BAM! Nothing for two weeks. I’d write for a couple of weeks then BAM! Nothing for a month. I’d do NaNoWriMo and I would get deep in and then just throw up my hands and stop.
Okay, that obviously doesn’t work. I needed to come up with a better way of doing things. After all I wanted to write more than I was currently writing and what I was doing just wasn’t working. In December I decided to start keeping track of what I was doing. It all started out so simple. I had Excel. I would have one column for my current word count (I called it start) and my ending word count (end) and a third column that would take the difference. So if I started on 15,250 on a story that went in the start column and after my writing session I’d put in the final word count. Let’s say it was 16,750. That’d be 1500 words and I’d feel great. Then I added a column for date so I could see how many days in a row I would keep at the writing. Needless to say there were gaps. Lots of gaps. It looked like my teeth when I was a kid. BIG OLD GAPS!
Keeping track made me see a pattern very quickly. Start, stop, start, stop. It wasn’t working for me. I also hadn’t made up my mind that writing was the right thing for me to be doing with my spare time. I had other things to do. I had TV shows recorded that I hadn’t watched. My favorite daughter had volleyball practice. There were a lot of other things to do.
No, I want to be a writer. I want to write. I want to be published. I want to see my name in print. If I was going to be a writer, I needed to keep track. I couldn’t just fly by the seat of my pants and hope for the best. Sure I’d written a large number of short stories and a few novels, but I wasn’t consistent. I needed to be consistent. Heck, I still need to be consistent.
Once I looked at my spread sheet, I said to myself I was going to hold myself accountable for writing words daily. Not just when I felt like it. I was going to write when I didn’t feel like it. I would take on deadlines. I would push myself. I didn’t want to see any more gaps in my spread sheet. I was going to leave that gap toothed kid in the past where he belonged.
That brings me to today. I’ve got a streak going of writing daily. Not always fiction (which I intend to change) but I’ve written every day. Something. Anything. I’ve tracked all the words I’ve written from blog posts, book reviews, short stories, novels, everything. I made a LOT of adjustments to my spread sheet. I figured out how many words I would need to write per day to reach my goal. It’s roughly 1230 words. Heck, I figured that’d be easy. I can knock out words like it’s nobody’s business. This was going to be a cake walk to get to 450,000 on the year.
So I started tracking. I’d see the number go up daily with each daily blog post (another goal for 2012). There were gaps in my fiction writing and there still are, but there are no gaps in my daily writing. My spread sheet expanded because I kept adding more columns. I added one for where I should be at (day of year + 1233). I added a column for where I was at (words written added across). I had a column for blog posts (these count as blog posts), one for short stories, one for novels. I added a column for what I was working on. I added a LENT section, a JuNoWriMo section, a NaNoWriMo section. I expanded and kept going by adding coloring to the spreadsheet to show when I’d hit my daily goal (green) when I got close (yellow) and when I just plain missed (red for under 500 words). I also added coloring to the Lent section. I had fun with it. But you know what, I have a string of writing each day because I know I need to update that spread sheet. Every day.
Here’s my spreadsheet:
You’ll notice a gap in there (fiction gap, not blog post gap) when I didn’t write very much. I had taken a trip to San Francisco for work training and I spent the evenings with friends so there wasn’t much to do other than eat, sleep, train, and talk.
Now I said I’d have alternate methods, right? Simple. You want visual low tech. Buy yourself a calendar. They’re cheap, right. Now buy some stickers. It doesn’t matter if they’re stars, spongebob, ponies, whatever you want for a theme. When you write a blog post, put a red sticker (red pony, smiling Buzz Lightyear). When you write fiction put a smiley face, a pirate ship, whatever. Now if you’re keeping track write in the number of words you typed that day. Don’t feel like you need to stress the word count, but stress that you wrote on that day. Start a chain and you’ll not want to see that string unbroken. Why? You’ll have to start over. But do NOT let missing a day be an excuse to not write more. It’s just that. An excuse. It’s not a reason like you broke you hand and spent the day medicated in the hospital while the put you in a cast from your wrist to your shoulder. Excuses will stop you faster than a reason, but you should be able to dispell them just as easily.
It doesn’t matter if you go low tech or high tech or if you find another great way to keep track with pictures of cows or cuts on your arm (I don’t recommend this method) or by putting hair clippings in a jar and watching the contents grow. When you see a running chain of numbers start to stack up and you realize that every day counts toward hitting your overall goal you’ll quickly realize that you can do this writing thing. You can sit at the keyboard and type and see progress. All those words each day will add up and soon you’ll have a short story, a series of blog posts, a novel, a couple of novels! I’m serious when I say that you can do this. You just need to take some time to set a clear goal and track you way to that goal. I’m not on target to his 450,000 words for the year. I’m on target to hit and possibly pass my original 500,000 word goal. No, really. You could be doing this too.
Got a different tracking method? Want to share your spreadsheet and word counts? Let me know. I’d love to hear from you. Me? I need to go make that word count grow by leaps and bounds.
Until Next Time!
WOO WOO!
Daily Update: Hitting my goal.
As the month plods on (and Lent is coming closer to a close) the ability to hit my writing goal of an average of 2000 words a day during Lent looks like it’ll be harder and harder to achieve. That being said I did hit 2000 words yesterday. I’m not going to stress out about not hitting the overall goal because I know if I start to worry about it I’ll never make the goal at all. Instead I’m content to just keep typing away and seeing where I am at the end of it all. Why stress out over what I cannot control, right?
One thing I have noticed over the past couple of months of typing each and every day; I type faster. Sure, this makes sense to you, but for me it’s bordering on amazing. I mean, I knew I typed quickly before. I’m one of those annoying people in IM that will type three or four things before a person has a chance to type up on. I usually have to wait for a person to respond.
So typing up these daily blog posts has been cathartic and useful. It’s getting my brain in sync with my fingers. I’m not sure how quickly I can type. If the backspace key counted I’m sure I’d type a lot faster. More often than not I’m sitting here waiting for my brain to think of something to say and once it’s got that figured out BAM! It’s typed up and ready to go. One of these days I’ll an online typing test and see what kind of speed I’m clocking in at. In fact, hold on one moment.
Well that was fun. I took a quick test over at http://www.typingtest.com and according to it I’m typing at 59 words per minute. It was quick, but a couple of the words in the test either threw me off or there were symbols I don’t normally type and had to pause and think about what to hit. I’m sure I can improve on that, but I just need a little more practice. I’ll check again in a couple of months and see where I’m at.
I should write up an unorthodox writing tips on the three Ts of writing, typing, tracking, spelling. Hmm, ok, I’ll work on that last one. I’m not very good at spelling to begin with. I’m so thankful for Word (and Scrivener) to correct many of my mistakes. Now if I could get word usage down better and learn some more rules of grammar I might be able to be a writer some day. Some day. J
Last night I went to The Millican’s son’s Lacrosse game. It was great to see him playing against one of his buddies from the club them they were on. I didn’t think he was going to ‘poke check’ his friend as they were on the same side of the field, but apparently there are no friends on the field. That game on the surface looks like an easy enough game, but wow is it physical. I’m going to do an Unorthodox Writing Tips on watching a high school sporting event. I have a blast.
Tonight I’ll be going to see The Millican’s other Freshman kid (the daughter) in a track meet. I used to run track (and cross country) oh so many years ago. I love track and field. She does the hurdles and they’ve said she’s done really well. I’m excited to go and watch.
We’ll see how much writing I can get done while I’m there. I think I’ll bring along my netbook because afterwards it’ll be time for my favorite daughter to go to volleyball practice. Today is going to be another long, long day. I should probably get started on it. So…
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
Side Note: Someone asked what I’m using to track my words counts on the side there. Here’s the URL. http://www.critiquecircle.com/wordmeterbuilder.asp. It allows you to customize your own tracker look and feel. Got questions on how it works, feel free to ask me.
Daily Update: Good writing day.
I had a good writing day. I clocked just under 2500 words. I may miss my Lent goal, but I’ll get darned close. I’m still hoping for a couple really good evenings of writing to try and get there. If they happen, they happen. If not, I’ll do the best I can. Life will always present obstacles. I just need to keep pressing forward and not be disappointed. After all, I’m now 14 days ahead of my annual goal. Still on target for 500,000 on the year if I keep going at the pace I’ve set. We’ll see how it goes.
One thing I’m going to do is step up the amount of fiction I’m writing. I’ve written a lot of blog posts (and some lengthy ones) but I need to really get more fiction written. Either way I’m pushing 120,000 words on the year and I’m quite happy about that.
Dan Dan the Art man has provided me with a couple new covers for short stories. Once I have edits done on Don’t Eat the Bread and Moving at the Speed of Though I will get those out there. The covers are awesome!
I’m currently working on My Teacher is a Werewolf. Again I’m having fun with this one. There are lots of little bits that make me laugh and when I tell my daughter what I’m doing she also laughs. I’m hoping that’s a plus. It’ll be a little scarier than My Teacher is a Zombie, but then it must. Werewolves are scary, right? I’m not going to make it too intense. There’ll still be a lot of funny moments. The way this one is looking it’ll end up longer than the first. I’m still trying to name this series and I’m thinking about going with Unnatural Learnings. Let me know what you think.
On a plus note: I’ve been doing a little dieting. I’m down a few pounds. Quite happy about that. The better diet is helping me keep my head clear so when I do sit down to write the words seem to be coming easier. I think that plus the combination of sitting down every day and writing is helping me get words out in a more efficient fashion.
I’m still a slave to my word count spreadsheet. I love to toy around with it. I don’t modify what I’ve done as far as numbers. Those are written in stone as far as I’m concerned. I just have fun with the formatting, graphs, percentages, adding new columns to show progress and the like. I think I spent an hour yesterday goofing around with it. Then inspiration struck and BAM! Knocked out some words. I won’t be doing that tonight. Tonight it’s all about word count and I’ll be hammering on the keyboard as quickly as I can.
Speaking of hammering on the keyboard…
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
Daily Update: Going strong
Yesterday was a good day to write with over 2500 words achieved. I’m still behind on my Lent goal, but I’m getting there. I’ve go two weeks to get caught up, I just need to stop dragging my feet. Felt good to get words down. If you couldn’t tell by yesterday’s post I’m super excited to get cracking on Of Gnomes and Dwarves.
But first must come the finishing of works in progress, right? RIGHT! I need to finish up To Fall From the Sky. I need to finish My Teacher is a Werewolf. Those are the most important writing tasks at hand. I also have a bunch of recording to do this week. I’ll be getting on that tonight and do some editing work tomorrow.
Speaking of editing I need to get back into Jack Kane and do the edits in there. This writing stuff isn’t easy and isn’t for the easily distracted. I’m usually easily distracted. Take last night as an example. My favorite daughter was working on a mask and bow and arrow for a project and she also had to write up a script. That for the most part she did on her own.
Once I stopped writing to read what she’d written (it was really good and very funny) I lost track of where my head was at. I had ended a sentence with “and Stanley went to” and I totally forgot where he was going, what he went to go do. I drew a total blank.
My favorite daughter is really coming along with her writing. Her piece was intended to be funny, and it was. It’s about Artemis and Apollo and Artemis’s affair with Orion. She made up ‘Laugh’, ‘Awww’, and ‘Applause’ cards to be held up at certain times during the skit she’ll be doing with a classmate. I so want to be there when she presents it. She read through it and I gave little advice on inflection and timing, but 99% of it was her. This is one of those parenting moments where you know your kid will turn out alright.
Today needs to see another word count boost. It won’t be easy. I’ve got the day job, then I’ll be home for a bit where there’s house stuff to do then I need to write like a madman until I need to take my favorite daughter to volleyball practice. That’ll be a two hour chunk that I won’t be getting any writing done, but it’ll be interesting to see what happens. The coach wasn’t too happy after the last tournament because a couple of girls just gave up on the court and lost a game they were easily winning. It’d be nice to see if they can change their attitude and actually show up to play instead of just showing up. That’s enough said about that.
Well, speaking of being busy, I’d better get busy. So…
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
Daily Update: Now where was I?
Between not sleeping well, sinus trouble, and a general brain cloud running between the hemispheres of my brain causing thoughts to to be muddled and difficult to handle, I’ve not been getting on well with the craft of writing. I’ve written far fewer words than I am capable of. I don’t like that and I need to change it. I need to change it right now. After this post I’m jumping in feet first and not looking back until I’ve done all I can.
That’s my plan at any rate. Next weekend is Easter and if I’m to hit my Lent goal I need a lot of words to make it. I’m way behind, but I still think I can pull this one out. Just need to put my mind to it. That’s what I plan on doing each night this week and next. Putting my mind to it and seeing where I am at the end.
The weather is looking clearer and so are my thoughts. I’m thankful for this. Ever since I posted about doing Of Gnomes and Dwarves my brain has been on fire! I don’t mean the oh I’m thinking happy thoughts and I have a general plot in mind. I mean ON FIRE! I’m remembering all those old ideas I had with some vague direction. I’m remembering everything about each character with plots, subplots, interwoven story lines. I mean everything! I had never forgotten about the story and I certainly never forgot about the characters.
Back in high school I played D&D. Now don’t roll your eyes that this is just another D&D story with random encounters and the like. I never lumped my story in with anything like that. I had a greater plan. I really did. Yes, I had dragons, yes, I had dungeons, and dwarven depths, and elves, and half-elves, and thieves, and a band of adventurers. I had all that, but I also had more than just that.
The first book is the story of how all the characters met. Chance Encounters (guess where I came up with the short story Kance Encounter). Each character also had a background story. Those are revealed in conversation but in the original writing it’s done in data dumps. I never liked them. I also didn’t like that nearly every character in my books was male. A lot of that will be changing with the re-writes and this is making the story have a totally different dimension.
The first character is Maus.
Yes, German for mouse. This is why the title of the series is Of Gnomes and Dwarves. A play on words. I used a lot of German words in the books whenever I had something Gnomish or Dwarvish to name. It helped during the writing and didn’t slow me down grasping for a name.
He’s a male dwarf that’s been horribly burned and scarred. The common folk don’t care for gnomes as it is, and this hideously ugly specimen gets a lot of unwanted attention.
He runs into Willie. Willie is an amnesiac dwarf. He loves a good fight. He loves to get the group into trouble and his memory is a constant distraction when he remembers something.
Slick is a half-elf thief. He’s never known his father and his mother abandoned him in the city when he was quite young.
This is the first key change in the original story. Slick is going to become a female helf-elf. When I first though about the party I knew I needed to change the dynamic and this was the first. When Maus and Willie run into slick, you’ll understand.
Reeg is a Paladin. Well, I don’t call him that in the story. He was annoying, pompous, and tried very hard to keep the party on the straight and narrow. Yeah, that happened a lot. Reeg will change only slightly, but he’ll still have his shiny armor and do-good attitude, but he’s going to have a very different past. This will be revealed in the short stories I’ll be putting out this year.
Dorg is Reeg’s brother and a mute healer. Having a mute healer was always funny to us, and he’ll remain that way. What’s changing about Dorg? His background. First he will become a she, and one of only a few female healers. During the finding (that’s what I’m going to call it) females have their tongues cut out so they may only heal and not perform spells that could harm a man. This will add a dimmension to Dorg that never existed before. The name will likely change as well. I haven’t put enough thought into that.
Finally there is Herminn. Ever party needs a wizard, right? The only trouble with Herminn is that in book two, when they meet him, he’s a great wizard. Okay, when you meet him you’ll know he’s more than just that. But a spell backfires and his mind is literally blown. The party, because of Reeg, can’t leave him behind so they pack up what they can and drag this wizard along.
I’ve written four books in this series and all of them are going to be 100% rewritten. I’ve got plot outlines for the books and I WILL have a great time revisiting this world and these characters.
I’ve looked over a character list for the entire series and wow have I got a lot of characters. I don’t have a cast of thousands like some stories do, but I have a lot of characters. Doing the re-write I’m sure that each book will grow and expand far beyond what they’re currently at. My writing has gotten better over the years and now I can finally tell the story I always intended to tell all along.
I hear you saying in the back of your mind “yeah yeah, it’s a D&D story. Nothing good ever comes from a gaming story.”
I give you V&A Shipping. I you haven’t yet listened, it’s there on the right or up top. This story was based on a game we played call Bulldogs and one of the inventors of the game sold the idea to a gaming company. It was a blast to play and nearly all of the characters you’ll run into were from the game we played. I only took the characters. I didn’t bring along character sheets, or inventories, or anything like that. I took the concept and ran with it.
That’s what I plan on doing with Of Gnomes and Dwarves. Have fun with it. Make it my own. Build the world to suit my needs, not borrow from D&D and use a pre-made world.
I’m getting more and more worked up just talking about it. There’ll be more to come. I can assure you of that. I’d better get started. I’ve got a lot to do!
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
Daily Update: A Great weekend.
During the week I spend a great deal of time sitting in front of the computer. I work all day on my laptop, and I’ll write during the evening on either the laptop, netbook, tablet, heck, sometimes even on my phone.
This weekend I wrote very little. Yesterday was a BEAUTIFUL day. I slept in a little bit and finally got off my behind and took a surfboard over to The Millican’s house. Let me explain what’s up with the surf board as I’m not a surfer, you might wonder what the heck I was doing with a board.
Last year My daughter, The Millican’s son and daughter, all graduated (okay, okay, progressed) from 8th to 9th grade. They completed middle-school. So there was a ceremony. The wife and I were on the committee for all the events leading up to the completion including setting up for the ceremony. As a group we had decided to do a Hawaiian theme. We had a cool backdrop for the stage, fake plants, tiki torches, a grass skirt for the the stage and finally surf boards.
The Millican and I (on his suggestion I might add) decided to look for used boards. They didn’t need to be in great shape because we were going to cut, sand, prime, and paint them. Once all that had been completed, stands were build and each of the three ‘teams’ at the school had their own board. One for UCLA, Excel, and Dream Team. The boards were painted by one of the other moms in the group and they looked awesome. I know I have a picture somewhere and I’ll point them at some point.
So all that was last year. Back in October, I think, one of the teachers at the middle school contacted the ‘other’ mom and I about doing another board. One of the teams had changed their name (Dream Team went back to the Aztecs) and they were wondering if we could make them a board.
*note: We had donated everything to the school so they could be re-used.
Of course the task was accepted. Sadly with everything in my life in flux, and the holidays, much time had passed and I’d almost forgotten about the surf board living in my garage. So with such a great day yesterday I hauled the board over to the Millican’s house and we cut off the fins and tow cord, scrapped off the old wax (Not sure if it was Mr. Zogg’s or not) and sanded it to rough it up. Them a couple coats of primer and it was over to the ‘other’ mom’s house for painting. Once she’s done I’ll pick it up, I’ll go to the middle-school to fetch the Dream Team stand, and I’ll (with the Millican’s help) mount the new board. I will post pictures. 🙂
After this one hour job was completed (in about 3-4 hours) I was pooped. I headed home, took a shower, and the wife and the Millican’s wife made some awesome fish tacos. With a full belly and the need to do something that wasn’t sitting in a movie theater, the Millican and I headed off to a local casino and played in the poker tournament. I busted out when the shoved all in from the small blind with Q 10 diamonds on a flop of J 9 7 (two diamonds). The big blind called with A 7 and the race was on. I had an open-ended straight draw and flush draw plus two over cards to his pair. I hit my 10 on the turn. It was looking good. I didn’t have to dodge much. The 7 on the river sucked big time.
There was some slot play. The wife and the Millican’s wife dropped off the girls at the movies and joined us for slots of fun. I headed back in to play some $1/$2 No Limit Hold ’em. I was up, I was down, I hit a few good hands, and after about 3 hours of play I was up around $20. Heck, I was happy I didn’t bust out. I took no bad beats, but I did make some bad chases that didn’t pan out and cost me more than they should have. I haven’t played in a long time and it was nice to see some action. I saw a few people at my table get felted and I managed to nearly felt one person (Felt: To take the last of a players chips leaving him nothing but the felt of the table under his/her hands).
Got home and to bed around midnight. Got up at 4:45am because my favorite daughter had a volleyball tournament. The girls didn’t wake up for the first games and lost the match by making a few too many mistakes. They redeemed themselves by showing up for the second match and winning 2 of three. The final match they played well. They lost the first game, won the second game, and had an 8 point lead on the final game at 12 – 13. They managed to lose 15-13. It was quite depressing, but they did play well for the most part.
My favorite daughter is sitting next to me working on a couple of assignments for school. I typed up a great essay for her (she wrote it, I just typed it) and now she’s working on props for a report on Artemis. The wife is helping a little with the artwork (painting what my favorite daughter drew) and my favorite daughter is working on the bow.
Me? I’m writing up about this great weekend and the moment I’m doing I’m going to jump back into My Teacher is a Werewolf. Yes, I’m way behind on my Lent goal, but hey, I really enjoyed my weekend. I’ve still got the poker bug, but I have a lot of writing I want to get done this year. So if I’m going to get it done, I’d better say…
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
J.R. Murdock 