Story Updates

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.

God help me; I never want to go through another week like that again. Ever.

I got absolutely no writing done. I barely had my computer turned on. I spent most of my time with my parents. My brother’s visitation and funeral were beautiful and very well attended. I think there were over 400 people at both. AMR and all of the local volunteer fire houses had their trucks out there to escort him from the funeral home to the cemetery. It was really nice to see just how many friends he had and how well-liked he was.

On top of that, we found out he had a daughter. So, I’m an aunt.

I’m back home myself now. Jet-lagged and tired but home. I’ll go back to work some time this week. I’ll get started on my writing again and will, hopefully, post an update this Friday. However, for now, I’m just really tired and really glad that last week is over. Part of me is still hoping I’ll wake up to find it was just a really vivid (and really bad) dream.