Tools
The things I'm using to make myself believe I'm making progress
Surprising myself, if not everyone reading this, I continue to make progress. While my map-making has so far failed to produce anything useful, I did manage to have a bit of fun with the Neverwinter Nights 2 toolset. While that might sound a bit (or a lot) like an excuse to play games, I do find that it helps me to ensure spaces make sense. While a simpler solution would be to map it all out on paper, I’ve always loved building things using video game toolsets. Ever since Starcraft, when I would build ridiculous levels which largely ensured the defeat of anyone who set a foot wrong. They were almost never seen by anyone other than me.
A conversation with a brilliant friend has resulted in the impending delivery of Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction, which I am very interested in reading. I own Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, which is a rather wonderful resource, and Beyond the Hero’s Journey by Anthony Mullins, which I really must finish. Both focus on screenwriting (which is another project I have on the boil) but I think the principles are applicable to other writing when one has a story to tell. I’ve also made a very rough start at a short story, featuring the protagonist from my novel, in an attempt to fill him out a little in my own head and to force myself to work on something brief. I figure that will allow me to reduce some waffle which, as these posts show, I tend to do.
I’m back at work now, which obviously takes up a lot of time. Most of my work involves dealing with spreadsheets, graphs, and data analysis while figuring out ways to convince people they should do things my way. That takes up a surprising amount of brain power so getting anything done at all has been a bit of an effort over the last couple of days. The current strategy is to sit on the couch and bash something out (not like that!) in the evening. This does result in some distractions and the occasional loss of flow, but if I waited until there was no chance of interruption, I’d wind up writing for approximately 17 seconds around 3:00am.
The latest chapter goes somewhere later in the book and seems to refer to things for which I am yet to find a place. While this might mean I wind up throwing the whole thing out, I’m quite pleased with how it’s progressing. This strikes me a slightly dangerous because I think being ruthless with edits will be important and falling in love with a chapter will make that difficult. Still, it’s all writing and that’s the point.
It strikes me that these posts, as well as being a bit stream-of-consciousness, could really do with a bit more pizzaz. Pictures, more dynamic layout, that sort of thing. Of course, I’m currently writing this shirtless, on the couch while half watching a rerun of Eight out of Ten Cats Does Countdown. What I’m saying is, the chances of this becoming anything particularly slick are, at least for the moment, rather slim. This is really just another tool to help get the main job done. I may not be using it in the best way possible, I recognise that, but this really is a case of figuring it out as I go.
Right, that’s your lot for today. I’m off to read some better Substacks and think about my life choices.