8.18.2011

Guilt and Mug Shots

All right, to be frank, I forgot I had a blog. But currently, I am at a "comfortable" 35k, which is several days ahead of schedule, and I am actively engaged in procrastinating on writing! 

I spent the time trying to draw my characters, and failing miserably. They were crap.

But I did do a few sketches of Professor Snitpot, the headmaster of the Gentlemen's Academy, where all the Heroes learn to fight dragons and save damsels in distress without setting them on fire. Here are a few of them that weren't execrable. Unfortunately these are crappy quality, because I sketched them by hand all over a giant sheet of paper, and I was too lazy to cut them out and scan them. I just took abysmal photos of them with my iPad in bad lighting.

Professor Snitpot

Yes, did I mention that Professor Snitpot is a very aggressive two-foot tall penguin who can do some mean damage with a sword? I didn't color this, having come to grief on several previous attempts when I tried to do Snitpot in Sharpie...but he has yellow glasses, blue eyes, a golden yellow throat, and a dark brown combover.

Baby Snitpot!
 This has absolutely nothing to do with the story, but I had to try drawing a baby penguin. I know this isn't actually what baby penguins look like. I sacrificed accuracy in the name of humor a long time ago.

Pig-guin
It was very late at night, and pig-guin sounded too much like penguin for me not to try to draw one. This is not one of my characters, which is presumably why he looks so miserable, and not because he is a pig grafted with a penguin.

Professor Snitpot riding a plot bunny to battle against the Ineffable Wizard.
He is carrying a sword and a torch, in case you can't tell. I can't draw bunnies and I can't draw castles and I can't draw mountains and I can't draw cliffs.

Drawings of my other characters are forthcoming...once I figure out how to draw people that aren't lumpy.  =/


8.06.2011

Why Am I Still Awake?

I tell you what, the last thing I wanted to do was to go see a movie. It completely threw me off my groove, just when I was getting into it. Ah, well, there is tomorrow.

(....shopping......)

Ah, right. I forgot about that.

(.....but there's a huge sale on.........)

/headdesk/

This whole blog is seriously turning into A List of Excuses As To Why Agent Double Oh Zero/bobo_the_bard can't write.

Better than "The Nocharen Sideas ate my homework," I suppose.

8.04.2011

I Am Getting Sleepy...

So today was the "big presentation" which was supposed to be the last of its kind. I was supposed to be done with this project forever with a big fat period after it.

Then the thing crashed a couple of times while presenting, and we discovered a number of small issues that would need to be fixed. So guess who gets to spend more time working on this damn thing while time leeches away the last few precious golden days of summer?

That's right! Me! Hip-hip-hu-bloody-rray!

Now is the time to insert a mournful soliloquy on how this is just my luck, and how something always comes up just when I think I am in the clear, and about how life in general sucks.

I can't muster the doleful pessimism.

Seriously, folks, I have been looking forward to August 4th for too long. Too long has my WriMo been taken from me by the machinations of Responsibility. Well, I stayed up late yet again today, when I had the opportunity to simply crash in my bed early, and finished up everything that was in my power to do. This will be the third or fourth day in a row that I will have been up until about 4 in the morning. I was so cracked out on lack of sleep yesterday that for a second I seriously thought that "cheese Ray" was a real word.

And by Ray, I mean...proper noun NAME Ray.  cheese Ray. Hmm.

So basically, everything else...is on the other guys. I have my coffee ready, I have a daily word war partner lined up (and we have already begun the traditional international pre-war ritual of yelling various forms of "my plot bunny is faster than yours!" at each other). Bottom line: I am damn well going to start writing tomorrow.

8.03.2011

Anticipation And Various And Sundry Matters of Conscience

On the writing front...I realize it's August 3rd already, and I have written nothing, but it just won't work. Today is my final day of summer classes, and the big presentation is this evening. I will not be able to relax until this is over because of last-minute guilt.

August 4th, it begins. I mean business.

Other than that, I am rather cheesed (more on this delicious delicacy later). I had three completely epic, vivid dreams this past week. They were wonderful story material.

They were also the kind where you wake up having absolutely no clue what they were.

/facepalm/

I am usually pretty diligent about writing things down just before, in the middle of, or just after sleeping, having had long experience of having an awesome dream and waiting too long and losing the first few moments of growing awareness between the road of sleep and dawn, where it was all just there in my mind, and I still felt the emotional impact but was coherent enough to write it down. Those dreams played fair. These guys, however, walked out before I had a chance to vacuum them up into my collection! They are such sillies!

On the other writing front (yes, I have more than one), I really should get back to finishing up yet another draft of my 100 word story. That one's gotten rather neglected. I'd tell you what it's about, except it would probably take up more words than the story itself.

All right. I gotta hang in there. Ugh.

8.01.2011

An Old Madness Hath Taken Hold Of Me, Part II

I had to split this entry up, or risk a non sequitur so heinous that the harsh discontinuity between the adjacent units of prose would have been severe enough to throw a boot in the proverbial gears of the universe. The resulting thunderclap (smelling of pink) would subsequently have completely erased the existence of the letter 'e' from every alphabet, everywhere.

Ever.

Until I realized my mistake and corrected it, of course, but who knows how long that would have takn? Luckily it wasn't so! That would have bin horribl in-dead.

A Siris of Mini-Updaits:

1. I just got a huge box full of books! I rearranged my bookshelf to fit them and it is now epic! I have a lot of reading to do! Heaven!
2. The renovations are done, and my workspace is beautiful! And I am no longer living out of the living room!
2. I am thankful for there being two sessions of Camp NaNoWriMo. Hopefully August will be nicer to me than July. That whole experience (see Part 1), coupled with my luck for any wrimo/month challenge I attempted after NaNo10, has left me paranoid, and I dread something else happening to prevent me from winning this time.

Oh, please let this work!

An Old Madness Hath Taken Hold Of Me, Part I

Oh, goodness. It's been a while. Homework ate my life. It's still got two more days to devour until summer class ends, but whatever. I am updating my blog right now.

The whole Camp Nano/JulNo thing was a bust. I did a 5k marathon of words on the first day, and then after that...nothing. I had homework out the stinky, dripping wazoo* and this had to take precedence over all else. It can be argued that where there's a way there's a will, and that the persistent mind can always find time to write.

But Guilt is a harsh mistress.

Not even the harshest self-critical rantings and self-esteem-leeching nitpickings and brain-whippings of the most tyrannical Inner Editor can reduce you to a pile of soggy, cringing, whining emotional pulp as quickly or as effectively as a single glance of Guilt can, and not even the wildest wiles, or the most exhilarating inspiration of the Muse can build you up again. That is not to say that the justice of Guilt is not tempered with mercy, for she acknowledges the need to wind down and take breaks once in a while. She fosters productivity, not panic attacks, and she certainly withdrew herself to allow me leisure to read books, and to watch TV, and to eat unhealthily sugary things. But the sheer amount of work I had left to do, and the importance of it, precluded the option of me putting it off to write. As Guilt so aptly pointed out, if I had the energy to write, then I had the energy to code.

Then she merely flicked her little finger, and slashed me with her whip (it's made of deadlines) until I bled in binary.***

I can't blame Guilt. She was just doing her job, as was I.

I blame this on July. I thought I knew you. I thought you were my friend, July. You have ever been true and faithful to me, and I knew not the betrayal lurking on the horizon. I was looking forward to our time alone together, in the heat and lazy haze of summer. It seems this was not to be, for you turned out to be a backstabbing blackhearted anthropomorphosized chronological entity, sapping the joy of the season with your fluorescent sponge of academia and mental anguish.

July, my cursed love, I lay thee to rest, and hope that the future may one day bring summer again for us.

*Shurmann's Dictionary of Infinite Verse defines this as a small fruit of uncertain origin, after it's been rotting in the fridge for a while**

**Shurmann's Dictionary exists in the nonexistential plane. It's just like Earth, except that written words smell strangely purple, and they tend to read you back.

***Not literally, but that would be pretty cool.