However, over the months of working on my blog on Wednesday mornings, I've discovered that I really do write best first thing in the morning, and I can only do so now on my days off. So.... double-edged sword I guess.
Because I've been working during my optimal writing time, I have still been completely halted. I attempted to move forward with at least the set-up of the next X-Future: The Second Generation Begins chapter. In other words, I tried to go through the now two-year-old posts to try to organize what happened next in our over-all story line. It didn't go well. Internet bandwidth in the area is horrible over the summer when all the students are home and chewing it up. So my internet crashed on me multiple times. Frustrated, I gave up and haven't attempted again since. Maybe I should just wait until school starts up again.
I thought that I had to do one of my pathetic "I haven't done anything, guys" slacker posts. Which would be doubly embarrassing considering I'd FINALLY be posting on time since who remembers when.
Then magic happened yesterday.
I completely zoned off at work. Not the most ideal situation, but making subs has become so monotonous a task that I really don't need to focus on it any more. After four years I think I might be able to literally make them in my sleep - if I were one to sleep walk, that is.
See, Hubby had to institute another time jump on X-Future. It's his way of catching everyone back up to the same time period and having a nice starting point for new characters. He did it when the forum started to fade originally, and we had three new recruits for playing. Sadly, only one out of those three still plays, and that's rarely.
Well, our numbers are pathetically small yet again. Ronoxym hasn't been on - let alone done anything - on the forums pretty much all summer, Phfylburt - as I mentioned last week - is finally focusing more on his own original stories than the forum, and so who knows how frequently he'll be on to play. This only really leaves MadDog24, who was only really ever on sporatically before anyway. I mean, the man does have two daughters under 26months old.
This means Hubby and I are probably going to be the only routine players. Kind of pathetic. I mean, I know we each run two or three main characters, but still.
Well, the time skip was a way to usher in a new player: Spink. She is a bit of an online text-based RPG veteran, and so we're hoping that she'll bring some life back to the boards. Problem would be trying to figure out how to remain entertaining with just the three of us though. The time skip will also open the door for MadDog's newest character(s) to come in, so maybe that will be incentive for him to be on more frequently too.
How does all of this relate to my zoning out yesterday, though?
Well, with the time skip Hubby weeded out a lot of characters to whittle down our "cast" to those with active players. A lot of characters just left the school for whatever reason. Others became background NPCs that Hubby will take over if/when our characters need to interact with them. Two got killed off.
So this is where the inspiration came from. Lia's been in a bit of a depressive funk since.... well.... she's been in a bit of a downward spiral since our last time skip. She's close to rock bottom and I needed the poor girl to have some closure. I couldn't get players to jump online in order to role play them out, and so that's what my mind did yesterday. I had Lia have conversations with certain characters before the characters left the board. I'll have to double check on a crucial tidbit with one of the characters' players to make sure I role played the character properly, but otherwise I think I made great progress. Once I know yay or nay on if that character truly felt how I THINK she felt, then I'm going to write out the conversation. It may not be entertaining enough to join with the X-Future: Snippets, but at least I'll have a reference point in order to role play Lia better once we start the game back up again.
Hubby also has me in charge of writing out what happened to a bunch of the characters over the time skips; in the meantime he has short briefings so people know roughly what happened. One couple journeyed to Japan. Another spent the summer in New York City. The final couple turned out to be among "the lost". There was a run-in with Trish and the duo has yet to return to the Institute.
Sooooooo I wrote a little bit of that too. Well, "write" is an overstatement. Nothing is down on paper yet. But I had shots of the scene and some of the closing dialogue more-or-less figured out in my head.
This gives me at least four things I need to write - on top of the stack I already had going - and three of them should make the cut to become Snippets. However, the Japan trip had a lot going based on Hubby's itinerary - it WAS a full summer out of country - and so that may become a companion story instead of a snippet.
Nothing to show for my efforts, but at least something with writing happened this week. That's a big step considering my dry-spell over the past month.
Ali Luke's final mini-challenge for the Writers’ Huddle summer challenge is to spend just five minutes to work on something we've been putting off. Even if it's not writing related. Especially if it's not writing related, but it's distracting us from our writing.
I think I need to take this challenge to heart. I need to stop putting things off. Once I have my life a bit more organized and a lot less procrastination-filled, perhaps I can finally get in to the right mindset to do this whole writing thing correctly.
I'm almost a month in to my third decade. Time to try YET AGAIN to start anew. Didn't work with New Years resolutions. Failed again with the Lunar/Chinese New Year. Third time was not the charm when my birthday rolled around. Yet it's the start of a new year for me. A new decade for me. There's still some time left in the year, perhaps I can make 2014 work for me after all.
Because, honestly, I've been noticing a pattern since 2011 that I get in to an awesome writing groove during odd-numbered years and dry spells during even-numbered years. I'd hate to think that would mean 2014 is pretty much a "shot" year simply because it's divisible by two. Also, what kind of career could I possibly have if I can only produce every other year!?
I need to break this pattern, and I think the first step is to really push with my writing community: Struggling Writers' Society.
I may have something for everyone to read next week, but right now I'm focusing on getting the community's website up and running.
*Scampers off to work on the forum*
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