Yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve updated the ol’ blog. Truth be told, I haven’t been very good about writing in general for the past month and a half or so. I don’t have a good reason for you other than life has been freakin’ busy and the games have been a major distraction. But, saying this and then signing off seems like pretty bad form, so I’ll tell you a bit about what’s hanging me up.
Some of it has definitely been gaming. I’ve donated an inordinate amount of time to Dungeon Defenders over the past couple weeks. The game is crack. I’m bad enough with RPG’s anyway, but this one is a combination of Tower Defense and RPG that has really gotten to me and my friends. I think the clincher is the loot and the desire to always be looking for, getting, and upgrading the stuff that you have. They’ve also been running a kind of treasure hunt in the game for the last week or so that I’ve gleefully participated in as opposed to writing. Is this an excuse? Yes. A good one? Probably not.
Another contributing factor is that my fiance and I just got done with … or rather close to done with a move. Our new apartment is now pretty much set up and looking good, but there’s still some work left to do. One of the changes that affects my writing is that I’m not entirely sure where my writing area is anymore. Oh, I’ll get my writing spot figured out, but I had really good spots back at the old place that really let me get into a rhythm.
One of the bigger things though, is that I was trying to write. Trying really hard but it just wasn’t working. I’m sure none of the authors who I follow know anything about this blog but if they did I’d ask them to comment on this. Ok, quickly, Glenn and I are working on the next book (OK, Glenn is working on it mostly since he does all the artsy stuff) and I was supposed to be writing a short story from Baron’s point of view for it. Its on the time he spent in the Ukraine that had only been briefly alluded to in the comic. I had good ideas for the plot, villains, some characters and more than a few false starts but none of it was gelling in my head. It all felt forced and wrong. I spent just about as much time writing as I did trying to figure out what was going wrong and I think I discovered what was going on.
I realized that in my mind, Edge is just about completely visual and intimately hinged to Glenn’s art. There just isn’t a Baron in my mind if he isn’t attached to one of Glenn’s drawings. I was writing, and I just couldn’t make it match the style and evoke the feelings of Edge. We’re talking about a world where we leave Baron being chased by tanks and its a funny thing, not a dangerous thing. Where Kieron and Trife are jumping from rooftop to rooftop evading helicopters wearing fake mustaches and eye-patches like nothing was amiss. Thinking back, I was making the story I was writing too serious, which isn’t something that I have to worry about when writing chapters, because usually the images in my mind aren’t that different from what Glenn produces… but I’ve got a block when I’m writing the text in that story. I’m considering some options to get it to flow better…but given how serious that part of the story is… I’m uncertain how I’d go about it. I haven’t written anything like that before and I’ve got to do some exploratory work to even get the voice down. Is all that bullshit? Maybe. I’m not sure.
And above everything else, I’m GETTING MARRIED IN A MONTH AND A HALF AND OH MY GOODNESS I’M GETTING EXCITED! So, maybe the excitement isn’t keeping me from writing, but there’s enough to do that writing days don’t happen quite as often as they used to. I’ve kind of got this feeling like I can sit back and relax on my writing until after the wedding and then pick it up again. Well, that just isn’t going to fly at all. So, even though I don’t think that I’ll be doing the 25,000 word month in April (or June for that matter) I will be going back to my 500 words a day minimum routine. If I can stick to that until after the wedding it will be much easier to jump back into the routine I’m trying to set up. So, even though the Edge project might be on hold, barring creative problems, I’m going to get Impervious up and running again. The last 25k month saw most of the first third finished, and that’s just waiting for me to write out the end of the first arc. So, if you read this, stay tuned. Things will be happening again. Assuming that Diablo 3 doesn’t eat me whole.