So you’re sitting there worrying about NaNoWriMo; worried that your plot is all wrong, your characters too thin. Then there’s the task of actually writing 50,000 words. And behind it all is maybe a secret wish that one day, many drafts later, this story will turn into a ‘proper’ book. So much pressure, it’s enough to put you off from even starting.
Stop.
Breathe.
I have just a couple of days rest between finishing one major project and pushing forward with the next. In an ideal world maybe I’d want a couple of weeks to switch gears but there are many reasons why the short break is an advantage.
I’m proud that I’ve always been someone who wants to build on their strengths and continue to learn and evolve as a writer. So it’s no surprise that with this next project I have ideas of things I want to achieve.
It’s done! After a number of hours great enough to make your eyes water, Project Octopus is complete and almost ready to announce. Not sure when that will be (could be today could be a couple of weeks), but rest assured, it’s a truly HUGE announcement and one I’ve been sitting on for a couple of months now. I’m so excited for you to all to find out about the project and I look forward to being in a position where I can tell you more about it.
For now though, I’m content that the actual project part is done and I can turn my full attention to my next project, which won’t be a codename for much longer either.
So my latest article for GPStracklog has now gone live.
This month I take a look at the iPhone app, Geocaching Buddy, which is likely to be of interest to Geocachers who like their puzzle and multi-caches due to the range of features the app offers.
Check out the article over at GPSTracklog
It’s Saturday night. For most people that means an evening in front of the TV or a night in town drinking or clubbing , but for me it’s work. I have a mountain of stuff that needs to be done, and amongst it is getting what I refer to as Project Octopus ready to be announced. Over on the other side of the Atlantic, people are busy putting the final touches to things to do with the project. Amongst the updates I’ve been sent is this picture.
What? You thought with a name like Project Octopus, there wouldn’t be tentacles?
In 2013 there are going to be a LOT of tentacles!
I’m trying to work out how I’ve suddenly got so behind. Either a combination of a busy return to work and Warcraft dailies ate my time or I somehow subconsciously stacked a load of writing jobs to all be done the week after my holiday. It’s not as if I felt like I slacked off last week.
Whichever it is (I suspect a combination of the two), I am running behind on so many things that this morning I got up at 5am, just to try and clear a few before the day job.
Ordinarily, I’d be saying I was going to ‘lower my periscope’ to knuckle down, but I’m at a time when I’m professionally thinking I need to ramp up my social media presence, not take a break. There’s the possibility of ‘something exciting’ next week concerning Project Octopus but I’ve learned that these things never happen when you think they will. Still, I need to be ready; just in case.
So for now I’ll just worry about getting these jobs done and try to write the odd blog post in breaks.
Busy, busy, busy!
Back in the days when I ran Action-Figure, media plans were the bane of my life. This is where a publicity department or an external media agency will work out the press for any given product along a timeline so to manage their resource and supposedly “maximise consumer impact”.
Back in the day, the major event in the toy & collectible industry calendar was the US ToyFair. This trade event, held every February, was when all the major products for the year ahead got announced in order that retailers could place their orders. The fact that many major summer blockbusters get their trailers to début at this time is no coincidence.
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I have recently returned from two weeks holiday from the day job. When asked whether I went anywhere, I replied that “No, I had just stayed home and played games.”
“Oh, so you didn’t do anything then?” they say.
This annoys me slightly. Just because I was playing videogames, doesn’t mean I wasn’t doing anything. In fact, I’d specifically taken the holiday then so I could play videogames, or rather one in particular- World of Warcraft.
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I’m a huge fan of a lot of Geek and Sundry’s shows and have been eagerly awaiting the new season of The Guild. However, one of their lesser known shows but a must for any aspiring writer is Pat Rothfuss’s Storyboard series. Without any flashy production this series features Pat and a bunch of other authors talking about an aspect of the craft in a Google Hangout. Always entertaining, always informative, this series often gets drowned out by Geek and Sundry’s bigger shows and could use a little signal boost.
Episode 3 just came out talking about “form and function” featuring Terry Brooks, Cherie Priest, Brandon Sanderson and, of course, Pat Rothfuss. I know what I’ll be doing this morning.
There’s this theory that as a creative person you need to cut down on your time consuming content and put it into actually creating content. It’s not a bad idea but my creative process is a little different. See, to recharge my creative batteries, I need to consume. I need to consume on a large scale, devour, bury myself in consuming content so much that the real and the fictional almost seem to change places.
And with the latest World of Warcraft expansion released at the beginning of last week, I’ve been doing that. I took 2 weeks holiday from work, played for 26 hours straight, and still took another 10 hours the next day to hit level 90. Between then and Fantasycon, I have been playing pretty solidly. Fantasycon acted as a good buffer to allow me to go crazy but still force me to take a break after a few days.
It seemed like the perfect plan.