Winter's Block

I fascinate me. Should you know me well, this should come as no great surprise.

What I mean by that is for as well as I know myself, I still surprise myself, in ways both good and bad. Take my reaction to the winter season, for example. I know that I've struggled through every winter, specifically, in the ways that relate to 'not being a fragile emotional deadweight.' I go into every winter saying, 'eh, fuck it, I'm fine,' and then, by about January, I'm staring out the window, wanting to break out into a very sad Wilson-Phillips-esque song that is heavily imbued with longing. Well, except, that would require motivation.

And, see, this is the point at which I should be saying, 'AHA! I'll go write a book about it! YES!' Instead ... eh. I don't feel like it.

What sucks is that I'm deep into some good pages on the Endless Wars sequel, and I've been getting some good feedback from my editor on them, and now he's quietly knocking on my phone door saying, 'Uh, dude? About that book? I want to see what happens next.' THAT is exactly what every good novelist wants to hear, and yet ... eh, I don't feel like it.

I've also been trying different things in terms of my process, too, to try to jump-start the thing. Everything from changing up the time of day to refining my environment, and none of it is sticking.

Of course, I always like a jackass at these moments. I'm an adult. I should be able to just make myself sit for an hour and bang out a page or two. That's what should happen, and yet ... eh, I don't feel like it.

And, it's temporary, of course. I'm not really sweating it, but I kind of wish I was.

In the meantime, I'm reading like a madman. I've been devouring the Wheel of Time series, something I'd long avoided. I was finally convinced by a friend in the meatspace to just try it, and I'm loving it. It's like the anti-A Song of Ice & Fire series. Don't get me wrong, I love ASoI&F, but WoT is a refreshing low fantasy opposite. They have similar settings, but where everyone in ASoI&F is fucking and dying right and left, the WoT characters are ... well ... not. Additionally, where there's little else out there akin to ASoI&F, WoT iterates on every great sci-fi/fantasy trope, but does so rather skillfully.

I'm also hyped for the release of Dead Space 3 next week. The fiction of that universe is fantastic, and a great commentary on the ways that science, religion, corporate interests, and government all interact. If you've not played the Dead Space games, grab the first one and let me know what you think. There's also animated films, comics, novels, spin-off games, and all kinds of stuff that feeds into the fiction. It's a great universe that offers some pretty sharp critiques of how we, as a people, have evolved, and might continue to evolve.

For now, though, I'm hoping to narrow my focus a bit, reign my passions in, and make myself more productive in the writing space. I love doing it, but hate doing it part-time.

I also want to record another album ... and make my own text adventure ... and get back to more model building ... and spend more time sharpening my C# skills ... and sharpen my Windows Server skills ... and finally finish Buffy ... and have more time for playing sports with my son ... and back into watching basketball more ... and baseball, too, for that matter ... oh, and I need to play through all the Neverwinter Nights games and mods ... I also never finished Final Fantasy XIII-2 ... and I don't spend enough time with Guild Wars 2 ... I wouldn't mind revisiting Star Trek Online ... and I would really like to play through more of the stories in Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Like I said ... narrowing my focus.

Love,

Yo I Be Where I Be At

Yes, I'm a neglectful bloggist, I know, but I'm good at what I do, and I'm rather charming, which means I can get away with whatever I want.

Lemme lay it out for ya like this:

- I take classes, and I'm one of those students who works incredibly hard at determining what I can do to get away with having to do the same amount of work as the generic, average students, but get at least a B. This takes a lot of dedication and devotion to fucking around. I take my slacker-ness seriously.

- I work, and I rather enjoy what I do. Working in IT on a college campus seems like a tough, bitchy job if you haven't actually had a tough, bitchy job. I have had some fairly bad jobs (ripping the guts out of chickens), and I've had some very, very hard jobs (being a restaurant GM), so going to work in an IT department on a college campus is something that I actually enjoy, and in order to keep enjoying it, I actually, ya know, work. And read sports news on the internet.

- Uncharted fucking 2: Among Thieves. Thank the Maker, this is the best game I've played in a long, long time. I know that Cody's mental vagina has developed a severe allergy to cut-scenes, but this game epitomizes my belief that, in certain games, the cut scenes provide a wonderful breather, and act as a 'take a sip of your beer, grab a smoke, and relax for a minute' kinda moment. Cody, my dearest friend and fellow bloggist, I urge you to inject your brain with some Vagisil, and happily slurp down a PS3, loaded with wonderful cutscenes. Anyway, this game is the best of the adventure/platforming genre, and has a beautiful blend of puzzles, storytelling, rich characters, platforming, combat, gorgeous art, and my wife was even wanting to give kudos to whoever 'dresses the sets,' so to speak, because the environments are so detailed (and I don't mean polygons and textures, though those look nice, too.)

- I also journeyed out to Kingston, IL and Chicago over the weekend for a wedding and to visit the in-laws, so there.

- I spent quite a bit of time fighting with Windows 7, since I got my retail keys for several copies a couple weeks ago, through work/school. I've been trying to upgrade my gaming Deathbook from Vista Home Premium x64 to Windows 7 Pro x64, and it is not, officially, possible. I don't accept that, and I'm halfway through the process now. Of course, if I have to do a full reinstall, so be it, but I have that machine, and each game install, super-customized, and don't even get me started about my fucking iTunes library. If I have to reinstall, I'm looking at a month or two of tweaking to get everything back to where I want it. No thanks.

- Lastly, I've been working on getting more gaming going w/ Linux. One of the things I'd really like to do in life is bring a greater gaming presence to Linux. It would make gaming platforms FREE, which is a huge win, but would also open game development up to a greater number of people. Gaming + open source could be a great thing. I've now got Guild Wars & the Neverwinter Nights (plus all the expansions) running on my Ubuntu netbook, and they both run PERFECTLY. NWN actually runs without any emulation. It is actually running ON Linux, which is awesome. Now, if we can just get Steam to act as a means to run anything and everything on Linux...

Oh, and I guess I need to publish that third chapter of my book on here, as I had promised. I'll get it up here tomorrow.

What have you been up to?

-Blaine