I am a good blogger – Warden's Keep

Actually, I’m not. But, I’m going to try to be better.

So, I’ve been doing some thinking and, after spending two months being completely dissatisfied with where I wound up in The Unexiled I’ve scrapped it and started over.

From the beginning.

For the fourth time.

I’ve reworked my outline a bit, reconsidered the culture I had developed for some of the major groupings, tweaked the world history, and sat down a lot, staring at the ground, talking to myself, and I think I’ve worked out the problems I kept encountering. I know the large framework I want to write but it was the details that kept trapping me. However, I am cautiously confident that draft four will be the final draft.

Of course, draft four is currently all of six pages long.

Sometimes I wonder about my own sanity.

At any rate, I’ve also decided to hold myself to a schedule on it like I do for Alayne’s Story. So, starting this Friday, I will email out whatever I have to anyone interested in reading it. I’ll have to find a .doc to .pdf converter but I will start emailing it out every two weeks. This means that I will no longer be doing more than five pages on Alayne’s Story each week, though. Please don’t get upset about that. I’ll explain:

It comes down to an issue of time. There are 24 hours in a day. On average, I’m at work for twelve of those (but I have a two hour lunch break because my boss is awesome). I sleep about six to eight of those. I play WoW for about two of those. My commute to and from work is about one hour each way. So…

10 hours working
7 hours sleeping
2 hours commuting
+ 2 hours for WoW
——————–
21 hours I can’t write

Now, admittedly math is not my strong point but 24 – 21 = 3 hours of free time per day. I could cut out WoW entirely (and piss of my guild and a lot of my friends) for a total of five hours but then how do I keep on top of the material I need for Alayne’s Story? I mean, I could skimp like I did for a lot of the Burning Crusade raids but I’ve found that I can give a better description of the encounters and the motivations for participating in them if I have, you know, actually run the encounters a few times.

Now, in the three hours I have per day to write, I can generally get about five pages of material written. That means about two pages per story. On weekends, I can do more but on weekends, I like to do things like play WoW more, read, relax, go to this place called “Outside” where there are crazy things like a big burning ball in the sky and white puffy things. Oh, there are trees and plants (but you’re not allowed to gather them for Alchemy) and animals (but you don’t get experience for killing them and the loot sucks. Plus people get mad at you if you attack them. Not sure why…). I know, it’s a mad-house.

So, since I have to work for a living because my bills won’t pay themselves and far too many people don’t believe in doing something and getting nothing but my eternal gratitude in return, I have to prioritize things. I do actually want to finish The Unexiled before hell freezes over. That means I’ll have to slow down on Alayne’s Story a bit. I will also be cutting back how much I play WoW some but I’m not going to stop entirely.

I know some writers can sit down and crank out ten pages in an hour. I applaud them. I envy them. I ain’t one of them. So, I just need everyone to be patient, to understand that I’ve got to schedule my time better, and that, while you won’t be getting everything you want, you’ll be getting an update every week (every two weeks for The Unexiled). That’s the best I can do.

And now, back to work. My boss has this crazy idea that I’m actually supposed to work instead of goofing off. Silly man.

Related posts:

1 thought on “I am a good blogger”