Between scheduled slacking and genuine distractions over the beginning of “the holiday season” in addition to the actual Thanksgiving weekend being totally freaking awesome, I haven’t gotten much writing done. However, I’m ready to once again force life to talk to the hand while I get busy and make some progress. After a chat with my wife last night, I realized I need to completely BS my way through the part of the story I’m on and fix it later — the important thing is to get the skeleton in place so I know what to flesh out later.

Edit: I realized I talked about a job I was going to pursue and never gave an update on that. I spent a couple of hours brainstorming and playing with the software, and basically concluded that I don’t currently have the skills required for the job. I’d rather take my sweet time to get a feel for it, focusing most of my efforts on my fiction, and be capable of delivering something awesome next time a job opens up, than to bust my hump to crank out something mediocre and forgettable, while neglecting the stories that sometimes keep me awake at night. That might make me sound like a quitter, but I really don’t care. If I’m going to apply for a job where I get to be creative, I’m going to make sure they get the best I have to offer.

Also, 338 words at lunch today.

Well, I’m taking something of a hiatus from my WIP to put together a resume. This isn’t a normal resume, oh no — a video game company is hiring writers, and they want applicants to create modules for a game that showcase dialogue writing abilities. I’d like to get this thing sent off by the end of the week, at which point I’ll be completely focused on my story again. I’m posting this so no one thinks I’m slacking off.

No words today, but my wife helped me hammer out what’s going to happen next, so I won’t be flailing around aimlessly tomorrow. I’m pretty pumped about that.

This was originally going to be a comment in Lynn’s blog, but it got way out of hand so it’s going here (context: she asked about writing process).

My first thought is to type, “I haven’t quite nailed a process yet,” but I have a feeling that as I type about what I do, a fairly standard process may emerge.

Keep reading ‘A long, rambling entry about my writing process’

Words
Lunch: 212
Home: 729
Total: 941

My wife is making me write when I get home tonight, so I’ll get more done. Most importantly, I managed to wrap up a scene that was driving me nuts and sorely tempting me to quit. I’m really excited about where the story is going, but this was one of those necessary downtimes that wasn’t terribly interesting to write. Hopefully it is more interesting to the reader than it is to me. I always have trouble with the parts that explain the mechanics of the world, because I already know how stuff works and it seems redundant as I’m writing it, but I know the reader will probably appreciate a little more technical information so it doesn’t seem like I’m just inventing magic and backstory as I go. I don’t mean to imply that there is no improvisation involved, but I spent a lot of time developing the world and I think the reader should be confident that they’ll be safe if they step into it.