Bowling for Chocobos
Dug out the sketchpad Wednesday night, and worked on that character some more.
There’s an Eddie Izzard joke where he drops into the role of the young Hitler in painting class, muttering to himself, “I can’t get this tree to look right… wait… dammit… fine! I’ll just have to kill everybody!”
That gives you an idea of how well the drawing was going.
Saturday night was a birthday party at the bowling alley for one of Rain’s work friends. I knew a bunch of people there from her work, including the one guy who begged off and just played Final Fantasy Tactics all evening. I bowled well… which is not to say I got a high score, but that I actually hit pins most of the time and got the rare spare and strike. Next time we go for ourselves, I think we’re putting the bumpers up. We had them for one game because of a youngster’s presence, and the score sheet’s a lot less embarrassing when there’s no gutter balls.
Back to the gym today, finally. (The holidays played hell with our gym schedule.) I was hoping the new mini iPod would be a lot cheaper, because it’d make an excellent gym companion, but no joy.
In the last week, I’ve read Diane Duane, Frank Herbert, Tom Clancy, Robert Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke, among others. That, and madwriter‘s posts have reawakened my writing urge. We’ll see if it goes anywhere… the nice thing about 15 years of abandoned projects is that I have a lot of source material to mine 🙂
I read an Alternity novel by Diane Duane once. I liked the characters, just not much of their choices.
What I’m reading now is her “So You Want To Be A Wizard” series… aimed at the Harry Potter crowd, but (like Harry Potter) pretty enjoyable even if you’re older than that.
She also writes practically the only Star Trek novels worth buying anymore.
Good to see that even though I’ve opted against teaching in the public schools, I can still influence and corrupt young minds. >:)
Any abandoned projects you’ve dusted off since writing this?
I’ve been insipred to take the elements I liked from several old pieces (some complete, some not) and start outlining a novel. It’s a space opera setting, and a plot dealing with a spec ops mission that’s a peace initiative at the same time.
I don’t yet have an ending yet, and the drama for my current plotline is all external, which I’m not satisfied with. But my characters interest me, and I’m having making sure there’s no glaring illogic in what I’ve got so far.
I’ll be happy to discuss it more if you’re interested. My next step is to write some actual prose, which often helps me start nailing down characters, which can help me figure out the ending 🙂