The lights were out. Outside of the ultra thick headphones there was only silence in the house. Curtains were drawn, the chores were finished, and to anyone outside of the little domicile the place was dead asleep. Inside those headphones, behind the LCD reflection on the glasses, and with the tapping of each key stroke the creative engine was churning along. Music slammed ear drums as that moment of writer zen ignited. A story was coming along, kicking, clawing, and screaming to be told.
I’ve got that bug again.
It has been a rough few months since I completed writing the first draft of Rebin’s Story. I still haven’t finished the editing of it and I’ve come to realization of why. I suck at editing. Not because I’m necessary inept at the skill set, only that I haven’t developed it. The last few decades were built on writing, creating, and brain storming. Few of these ever saw the light of day or another’s eye so editing was not a skill I practiced. I’ve wallowed through trying to edit, correct, rewrite, and adjust the novel and I’ve come to realization that no; I just shouldn’t have bothered yet. I haven’t learned how yet.
That’s where this week’s adventure comes in. This week I started work on a short story project for Andrew Eckhart, a splinter story in his The Last Mage universe. It’s part of an initiative I have to create a number of short fiction pieces and practice editing on them. I’ve already developed a list of story concepts to work on and I hope to have a number of these completed by the time Dragon*Con rolls around. I’m debating how I want to share these. Their purpose is training lessons but if they are good enough I’d like to distribute them as free audio fiction and maybe in print through an anthology in Kindle. All of this is speculation based on my success on completing the project.
It feels great creating fiction again. I’ve been busy this past month with audio projects, but the flavor of creativity that comes from raw written fiction is such a huge boost. Between coming off being sick, refocusing on my weight loss, and starting writing again, I feel like the second half of 2012 is going to be a strong year.
A few quick notes before heading out:
5 Things We Like has officially launched! We’re at ten episodes and we have more already recorded. This is a twice weekly podcast (On the T’s as Dakota puts it) were we talk about nerdy pop culture things like movies, games, books, surviving the oncoming zombie apocalypse, telling each other to shut up, and replacing hosts with time travelling shenanigans. It’s fifteen to twenty-five minutes an episode and it’s a lot of fun to create.
Sixth World Chronicles should premier next week. This is the special podcast series of The Hidden Grid focused on an actual play campaign of Shadowrun. My normal podcasting troupe makes up the bulk of the players and we’re expecting to put this show out twice a week on Monday and Fridays.
We’re back in action over at Burning Theorsa. This is the (normally) weekly game I play on a live stream through Google Hangouts of Burning Wheel. Andrew is joining us on this episode and should be becoming a regular player, replacing the awesome and missed Noam. Recorded episodes can be found on Shaun’s youtube page.
Okay, that’s it. I’ll talk to you soon with a review of Nathan Lowell’s Double Share coming up within the week.
