Day 10

Very behind today. Spent the week writing Stall and now I've gone and got some 7,000 words behind. I'll make it up, I'm certain, especially with my attention less divided, but it's not the most auspicious of beginning.

Least I did finish Stall. Or, at least, the most current iteration. Draft 4, by my reckoning. I'm honestly not too wild about the version, as this was the version that had more creative input from outside sources. Still, it's good to explore new options (and humor producers) and a handful of solid ideas were born of the discussion. Regardless, I'll be eager to return to a draft more closely resembling the original.

Off to work on Mooncrash. Running a big super session, the party's first real dungeon crawl, this Monday/Tuesday night. Wish my PCs luck – they may need it.

Resurrection

It's me!

November is NaNoWriMo, an activity I've always looked upon with a certain degree of ingrained skepticism. Initially, I was excited – it seemed like a fantastic tool to kick oneself in the pants and, from my research into it, that's more or less what I've sussed.

At the same time, the guiding philosophy of NaNo runs so contrary to my own personal writing style that I was hesitant to jump on board, for fear that doing so would, by 30 days time, render me a gibbering hunk of typos and subject-verb disagreement. I completely understand I'm the exception when it comes to writers, but I have an incredibly difficult time pouring myself out and editing later. Good or ill, I deliberate over a sentence before committing it to page – just my style.

So, thusly, NaNo seemed like a poor choice. Plus, this month, I'm doing weekly rewrites on Stall, my zombie/bathroom/one-room horror script (money for drafts! commerce!), I'm running a full-time D&D campaign (link to follow soon) and I've also started doing this weird thing, where I close my eyes for six or seven hours a day and fall into a state of prolonged somnolence. (Weird, I know. My Thri-Kreen buddies have no fucking idea what that is.)

Point being, who's got the time for NaNo?

But fuck it.

Timothy J. Televisionguy

STALL: 40 of 75 (53%)

FACT: The most surefire way to activate a craving for Italian food is to watch any episode of The Sopranos. Fact.

I know what you're thinking, I know what you're thinking – how many fucking shows is this douchebag watching? Answer: a lot. Game of Thrones, The Legend of Korra, Breaking Bad, Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Batman Beyond, The Walking Dead and now The Sopranos. Fuck, I've even seen Sopranos before – I'm just watching it with the missus.

I seem to have an unlimited capacity for input. I will consume and devour all television shows of quality, all to fuel the ever-spinning wheels of my hungry imagination.

Bring me your televisions, world. Bring them to my face.

HULK RECOMMEND

Stall: 31 of 75 (41%)

So, The Avengers: Earth's Greatest Heroes? Kinda a badass show. For a kid's show. Seriously.

It's nowhere near the intellectual level of say, The Last Airbender or even Batman Beyond. Oh, no. But for pure smash-and-bash good times, it's surprisingly epic.

Plus, at one point Hulk falls form space and defeats an Orwellian-omniscient robot by ripping it in twain.

It was pretty crazy.

It's on Netflix. Go watch it but, I should warn you, the theme is balls. Total balls. It's so balls, at this point, it's almost become good.

Somewhere

Stall: 20 of 75 (26%)

Netflixed Coppola's Golden Lion winner. I've been a big fan of her previous work (specifically Lost In Translation) and I should really see the other two, but I was very impressed with Somewhere.

It's an exceptionally risky script. She's attempting to talk about boredom and the malaise that can occasionally accompany success and, rather than simply depict a character complaining about how bored he is, she takes a gamble and appears to literally attempt to bore the audience with his actions. Whole sequences just depict Dorff not doing anything. Another writer, including me, would have shown a character yearning to do something, or watching people enjoy themselves but, as everyone around him idolizes him, the protagonist can't necessarily complain about his station. It's an amazing risk and overall a great film.

I'm beginning to respect films with less and less dialogue. Drive, as I mentioned previously, does this and Somewhere does it to the extreme. I don't believe, save one scene, the characters of Somewhere discuss the movie's actual theme.

Its ending is perhaps a little dramatic, but even in that, serves as a strong and bold choice made by the director. The more I see of Coppola, the more I like her.

Research, I Swear

Stall: Page 10 or 75 (13%)

As if you didn't already know this, Mark Hamill is quite literally the man.

Check out the Denver, Colorado chapter of the World War Z audiobook for further confirmation of this fact.

That is all.

RLW

What I'm Reading: Ganymede by Cherie Priest. Why? 'cause I'm probably an idiot. I wasn't really a huge fan of Boneshaker – unremarkable characters, a largely unremarkable plot and enough bad writing conventions to go sour in my mouth. Then, for some reason, I picked up one of its several sequels. It's apparently about the only minorly interesting character in Boneshaker, but thus far, it's been mostly wasting time with exactly those few characters in Boneshaker I didn't much care for. So, yeah. Unless somebody air-pirates a motherfucking dirigible in the next two chapters, Priest is on thin fucking ice with yours truly.

What I'm Listening To: Young Man In America by Anais Mitchell. It took some getting used to, but I really like this album. It's certainly different and it's certainly pretty similar to itself, but it's insidiously infectious. I find myself humming it at odd moments, with little or no inspiration.

What I'm Watching: The Walking Dead. Why? 'cause I'm probably an idiot. A commissioned script job ($500 for a first draft! I'm a screenwriter at last!) has put me on the zombie trail again and it looks like, as soon as HULL DAMAGE is actually finished and ready for print, I'll be finally trying my hand at STALL. So, much as I might loathe it, zombie research. Or, that is, as much zombie research as I can conceivably stomach. I'm told that, since I don't enjoy horror movies, I'll probably write a good one. I can only hope that, when it's made, people enjoy watching it. I certainly won't enjoy writing it.