Home sick today. Woke up early with some kind of insidious stomach plague…the kind of thing that makes every muscle in your body feel like you’ve just run a marathon. Laura tells me that the whites of my eyes are grey. Not a good sign. Bleah.
So, of course, I’m writing instead of resting.
A couple of links for yez:
Congress is voting on a bill to let religious leaders endorse candidates from the pulpit. God I despise this nation sometimes. We’re still paying the price for being founded by religious nutjobs, hundreds of years later.
On the other hand, this is cooler than hell. Gotta love when relgious nutjobs mix with steampunk.
Started work yesterday on something which could be the novel that I’ve been dying to write since…well, forever. This is good, because I was beginning to get very concerned that gaming writing had pretty much wrecked me.
Let me explain: I decided a bit ago that I’m pulling out of the games industry. I’ve had a good run–I’ve been writing professionally in the industry for 9 years. In that time, I’ve had some success…nothing huge, but I did well enough to do it full time for a couple of years. I’ve had enough though–I’m ready to move on (lots of reasons, including the realization that the effective cap on salaries in this industry, barring Magic-the-Gathering level breakout success, is about a third of the starting salary for tech writers in the “real world”.) A big part of it, though, was the nagging feeling that I’ve had since starting the gaming thing that I was somehow not a “real” writer.
Stupid, I know. I get paid to write. By anyone’s definition, I’m a writer. However, part of me has always felt, deep down, that I haven’t made it as a writer unless I am published as a novelist, or optioned as a screenwriter, or something.
The problem is: since I stoppped working in the game industry full-time, I haven’t had a lot of time to write, outside of the tech writing I do for the day job. When I have had time, I ran into a bizarre form of blockage: I was able to create settings and premises, but I couldn’t for the life of me come up with plots. It was almost as if the 9 years that I spent writing games material had atrophied my ability to craft stories– I could create “campaigns”, but not “adventures”, so to speak.
Yesterday evening was the first indication I’ve had in a while that I’m still capable, which I’m relieved as hell about. Even if this particular project doesn’t go anywhere (and I’m certainly hoping it does), I’m at least getting back into practice.
Now, I’m off to go medicate myself. Take care.
GMS
