Quicky

Not a lengthy one today. Started re-reading Bluff last night with a view to start editing it. My word I'm a terrible writer in places! :-D  I think (hope) I can turn it into something readable by average humans but it's very early days yet.

And by "average humans" I don't mean that it's in any way too intelligent for normal folks, just that it's bloody painful. Maybe I should have said "discerning"humans.

I plan to start another creative project ASAP but the main issue I have is, as always, focus. Just as I get myself geared up to run a load of creative projects Netflix goes and launches in the UK! So instead of writing I find myself watching The IT Crowd, (entertaining) films and Mythbusters! I really need to get a grip and move away from the entertainment. I tell myself that I'm being productive, doing background work of some kind. To a degree I guess that's right as all the information and dialogue's going in somewhere but unless I actually sit down and get it back out onto paper I'll be going nowhere.

I keep reading tips and tricks on how to get going but the main challenge is sitting down to write in the first place. I can spare an hour a day. I need to spare an hour a day. Every day that I get home and spend 3 hours doing nothing before i go to bed is a waste of time. It's said that "time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time" but there's only so far you can take that premise. I need to set myself a firm calendar to give myself writing days, study time, drawing time.

Skills I have on the cards for this year:

Writing - I need to finish Bluff and, if I do, to get something else written. I want Bluff out by June at the latest. Let's say I finish and publish Bluff by June 1st

Coding - I need to develop (geddit?) theskills I started last year. The couple of months I spent trying it last year were by far the furthest I'd ever got into it, I shouldn't throw that away. Having an app out on the store might be a bit bold but someone else from EG has done it so there's no reason I shouldn't be able to.

French. - Parlez vous? I need to rebuild what I learn in school. I then need to practise that skill. I got to A-level levels FFS! I should be able to understand more than I do

Drawing - Not a necessary skill by any stretch but something I've had a reasonable talent for before, I want to develop this one through sketching and building up muscle memory

Things I may need to give up on:

Guitar - I think we all know it's probably not going to happen.

Bah

So my telly got replaced - a friend gave us their old one. But it's shit. I've gone from a 100hz nice Bravia to a 30hz Digimate that has dreadful picture quality and can't be used to plug a PC into. The wife's said "it's good enough" which translates to "any emergency budget we could have drummed up is now off the table, let's go to Ikea and spend it on storage and curtains"

Bah

Whilst whinging about tellies though, what a fucking minefield! You can get no-brand, no frills LED TVs (32") for a shade over £200. Great, but then if you want a reasonable manufacturer, plus mod-cons like FreeviewHD and iPlayer/Lovefilm built in the price goes up to £400. Still not too bad on the face of it but that's then the same price that decent 40-42" screens start at!

So I'm left with the choice of a Freeview HD internet-enabled 32" screen or a 42" screen with the same (and sometimes better) specs for EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING PRICE! All which leaves me with a distinstly sour taste in my mouth as I'd feel like I as throwing cash into the gutter by not choosing the bigger screen, even though I fucking hate big TV screens

Fuck it, maybe this shitty TV has helped me dodge a bullet

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LIVING ROOM

The east wall of the room is decorated in floral wallpaper, the other three walls are plain. A large bay window adorns the South wall, allowing copious sunlight to flood across the thick wool carpet. A two piece leather suite provides comfortable seating options. There are exits to the West and North.
There is a GIFTHORSE here.

> Look at gifthorse

The gifthorse is black and silver, a little shabby and dusty. He is piebald, and the markings on his side seem to almost appear to mark out the letters "DGM". His mouth is open.

> Examine gifthorse mouth

Habits and How to Form Them

Apologies, it's been over a week since my last post and even then those were only fillers.

Writing is something I enjoy and something I feel I'm reasonable at (although I know full well that I need to develop my skills a lot further) but getting into the habit of doing it every single day is something I find really difficult. I could blame the backlog of 70+ games or 200+ books but when it comes down to it I just can't trust myself to do what I should be doing at any given time. It wouldn't even be so bad if I were making a dent in my game and book collections but I'm not. Too often I'm sat pondering what I should really be doing next.

To try and stem this I've started trying to write something every day, no matter how minor. Whether it's a blog post like this, an account of somewhere myself and the family have been or an entry into my creative writing, I'm determined to get something down every single day. OnePagePerDay has a guideline of trying to fill an a4 side every 24 hours (about 750 words). That's probably not a bad target but I know I've struggled in the past to hit marks like that. I'm not going to beat myself up if I fail, but the more the better. I want to partake in NaNoWriMo again this year and as I'm away with the in-laws again I need to be able to write around 2k words every day. That's a shock to the system at the best of times but unless I'm used to having some kind of output each day I'll never make it.

Not Games. Honestly, No Games Here.

When my wife found out I'd started blogging again, she offhandedly commented that "it's probably just about boring games*". I said "Of course it's not" but then realised that so far my success rate in trying to keep this blog well-rounded hasn't been particularly great, even across the very few posts I've made so far.
So, a not-games post then:
...
....

... I'll work on it and get back to you

*(dramatisation. Comments may or may not have actually been made in this manner)

Case in point

That last post was meant to be a draft and was meant to be a *lot* longer. I was also intending to write over 1000 words but at this current time I've written... 37, 38, 39, you get the jist.

This weekend I've not finished the garden, a game, a book, the cleaning or my planned writing. The only things I've sorted out are choosing a game to play for the next few days/weeks (GT5) and watching a film (actually managed 2, The Money Pit and Limitless).

The Importance of Finishing pt 1

The number of things I've ever actually finished in my lifetime is appallingly low. I guess some might say that "you can never truly finish anything" but I never even come close most of the time.

Indispensable

I'm a tech-loving sort of fella but really only from an appreciation point of view. I love seeing how people solve problems using technology more than I enjoy using devices themselves. Sadly as I'm getting older I'm becoming ever more cynical about why a product even exists in the first place.

Example: Kindle. A truly revolutionary device, but not for the reason you might think. I don't care about the fact that I have 1,000 books available at any time, especially given that the search engine on the thing is utter guff. I care that for the first time in recent history the publisher model is being disrupted. No longer does an aspiring author have to approach a publisher and beg to be considered. No longer does a writer have to tweak his story to fit a certain "target demographic". A writer can finally just write what he likes and charge what he wants to charge.

The same thing is happening in other entertainment industries: music, videogames, film-making. There's people out there that would suggest there's always been room for people to break through but the point of the stores that allow individuals to publish their own work is that the wall is now that much thinner. It's not breezeblock anymore, it's plasterboard.