Geralin

Well, once again, I’ve gotten better at managing my time. Instead of using my lunch break to do pointless dailies or level yet more alts, I’m using it to write. I managed to clear 3.5 out of 5 pages for Alayne’s Story today. Hopefully I can finish up that update tomorrow during lunch and spend the rest of my time on The Unexiled.

I wouldn’t say I’m getting back on the horse just yet, though. I still have my days. I’m not raiding nearly as much as I used to. Plus, everyone at the office is getting sick so I’m just waiting for my turn to catch whatever it is that’s going around.

At any rate, hopefully I’ll be able to keep this up. Now back to work. 🙂

Edit: Finished this week’s update! That means that I can spend the rest of my time on The Unexiled!

A little bit, at least.

That’s right. I’m already 90% with the update for Alayne’s Story this week. That means that once I finish the last page (should finish sometime tomorrow), I can spend the rest of my writing time this week on The Unexiled.

That’s actually a pretty big relief for me. I always feel so guilty when I start working on The Unexiled before I’ve finished Alayne’s Story for the week. It’s stupid, I know, but I feel like I’m letting people down by not getting an update ready for them.

But, at least this week that won’t be a problem.

Sorry for the silence. I’ve been busy with writing and reading. And, last week, we had a team meeting at a location well away from the office that lasted two days. Two days where I got nothing done because by the time I got home, my bed was calling me loudly.

I guess I’m doing better lately, though. I’ve felt weird and kind of craptastic but I’ve been going to church again and getting back into my personal faith (I’m an Orthodox Christian). I’ve found that it’s helping a lot with dealing with my brother’s death and it’s also helping me with developing more discipline in my writing.

At any rate, even though I’ve gotten better about scheduling my time, I’m worried that this week’s version of The Unexiled won’t be much bigger than the first round was. I’m having some trouble with a particular series of scenes and I keep having to rework them. I had a bit of inspiration during my lunch break today, though, and managed to blast out a scene I really liked during some dead time at the end of the day.

Well, that’s really it for the update department. I’ll try to get better about posting here more often.

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.