Posts in category 'writing'
Stupid Cold...
So on Wednestday evening, Lenore and I came down with cold symptoms at virtually the exact same time… personally, I blame Lenore. That, or the public transit system. Nothing like a bus packed full of people who like to cough without covering their mouths to spread the germs. Anyway, the end result is that we spent Thursday, Friday, and most of Saturday laid up. It’s been fun. Real fun.
Anyway, to alleviate some boredom, I took Wednesday evening to pick up a couple new games for my DS (I actually lost a couple games at one point… but I’d rather not get into that right now. It’s a bit of a sore spot), in order to pass the time. Sure, I could watch TV, but there’s only so much on the PVR to view. Or I could read, though reading requires concentration, and concentration requires a clear head, which is frustrated greatly by a cold. So, I figured, mindless entertainment, that’s where it’s at.
Well, what did I pick up? The following:
- Yoshi’s Island DS
- Mario Kart1
- Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time
Anyway, Yoshi’s Island is a pretty straight-forward port of Yoshi’s Island 2 for the SNES. An excellent platformer. I’ll skip Mario Kart. And then we have PiT, which is a Mario-themed RPG, and another excellent game.
But, what I haven’t done is written much in the last few days. I took Wednesday off for whatever reason. Thursday and Friday I was too sick to even consider sitting down at the computer. And today, I find myself struggling, trying to get back into the story I’m working on. Which is an interesting lesson: writing every day is important for honing one’s skills. But it’s also very important when working on a longer piece, as one can easily lose momentum and fall out of the mood of the piece, or worse, one might lift one’s head up and begin having doubts… maybe it really does suck. Maybe it’s just a stupid idea. Blah blah blah. It’s definitely a challenge.
So, hopefully today or tomorrow, I can try and remedy the situation. Step one, I think, is to read a little more Dickens. He always seems to inspire me.
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This would be one of those games I thought I lost. Until, that is, I discovered it in my DS. So if anyone’s looking for a discount copy of Mario Kart DS, gimme a call… ↩
Well That's Just Bizarre
I think I just finished a chapter in the middle of a story. I don’t know how it happened, really… I started writing a few days ago, focusing on this idea that I’ve been making reference to incessantly (or, perhaps tantilizingly? Yeah… didn’t think so), and today, after hitting the 3500 word mark and the end of what I thought was the first chapter, I decided to stop and ask myself how I wanted to progress. Suddenly, as I sat there staring at the monitor, it dawned on me that what I’d just written more correctly belongs in the middle of a larger work… what the heck??
So now I get to start all over, this time at the actual beginning… hopefully, when I reach the middle, things will fit together all nice and neat. Somehow, I doubt it.
An aside:
If one were to use Orkut or Myspace as a population sample, one might come to conclusion that the bulk of the people in this world are, in fact, functionally illiterate…
Overwhelmed
It’s too much. To vast. Can I really do this? Am I up to the task? Or am I being too ambitious, simply overestimating what I’m capable of? Honestly, I don’t know. I could abbreviated it, keep it small and contained, avoid letting it grow or get out of hand. But should I? Maybe I should just let it spread out, let it drag me along for the ride…
As an aside, anyone who actually reads this thing (yes, all three of you), may remember that I said this idea I’m currently playing with had been bouncing around in my brain for the last couple months. Well, it turns out I was wrong. I was lying in bed recently when I remembered that, way back when we were still living in our apartment downtown, I was already thinking about getting back into creating writing, and already groping around for interesting ideas. One of these ideas I wrote down in a little text file and squirreled away, after which I subsequently forgot about it. Then, a while back, as I was doing a little virtual house cleaning, I found the file, read through it, dismissed it as the wild ravings of a crazed lunatic, and promptly deleted it.
Well, oddly enough, it was this idea (or, at least the seeds of it), which sprung back into my mind. Which all goes to show that 1) this “writing thing” isn’t such a nutty flight of fancy after all, and 2) it’s better to never throw an idea away… because, even if it’s “bad”, it could become the roots of something “good”.
I Slacked Off
It’s not my fault. My brother came to town, and I found my free time over the weekend suddenly evaporate. See, Saturday was Dim Sum and Movie Day, and Sunday was Visit The Neglected Grandma Day. Neither provided much opportunity to get some writing in. So, alas, my current piece is hovering at ~7,200 words, and hasn’t moved much since Friday (and I took Thursday as a break).
On the flip side, I think I’m almost done with this one, and while I really doubt it’s anything worth reading, it will soon be my second completed piece of fiction, and hey, that ain’t bad. The biggest problem, at this stage, is the ending. The concept was actually born out of the ending itself, and now that I’m about to get there… I’m not sure I like the ending anymore. But, I’ve decided I’ll just charge ahead and see how things turn out. If I’m right and it sucks, I can always rip it out and try something different. And if I’m wrong, well… that’d be great!
Meanwhile, I’ve been fiddling around with an idea that’s been bouncing around in my brain for the last couple months. It’s more situational, so rather than worrying about building a story back from an interesting ending, I need to worry about coming up with an interesting ending to what I think is a compelling storyline. I’m not as yet sure how I’ll handle this, but maybe the answer is just to start writing and see where the concept takes me.