Sunday, July 22, 2012

End of an Era

For the first time in over seven years, I'm not playing World of Warcraft.

As I've discussed, I'm busy lately. It's better now than it was a month ago at this time - the wedding is over, the computer is fixed, we're no longer expecting to buy a money pit soon, we're being more relaxed about house-hunting, I'm no longer discovering new stuff in Diablo III - but I still have a fair amount going on, still want to write, and still want to completely vegetate when I do find free time. And Warcraft has got boring lately. Partly my own overexposure, partly because it's been a long time since there was new content or anything. There's just less to do there.

So with all that in mind, two weeks ago my biannual subscription renewal came up, and I didn't extend it. I'll probably be back someday, probably when the next expansion is released, but who knows. Oh well. There are other ways to kill time. Taking a break from the hobby I have put the most time and thought into since my senior year of college seems like it should be a bigger deal.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

What I did at Comic-Con
  • Watched the panel discussions of  a number of things I'm interested in: Doctor Who, Dexter, True Blood, The Guild (or Geek & Sundry), the TV Guide panel featuring at least two actors I wanted to see as well as half a dozen more I don't care about, the Blizzard panel hyping the game company's upcoming ancillary products, a panel discussion of problems faced by female creators in comics, and at least one panel discussion by fantasy novelists, and maybe more I can't remember at the moment.
  • Watched some panel discussions I don't really care about - Supernatural, some Tron cartoon, several others - because they were before ones that I did. Call it like the opening act of a band or call it bad organization policy, but organizers didn't clear rooms when one panel ended and the next began, so we eventually learned that if we wanted to see something at 12:30 and it was likely to be at all popular, we should get there at 11:30. Or 10:30. Or 4:15.
  • Bought five back issues of comics from the 1990s, one graphic novel signed by the artist, one webcomic collection signed by the artist, one spinoff toy from a webcomic, some Magic cards, a t-shirt, and probably more that doesn't come to mind right now. T. bought quite a bit too, both for herself and me.
  • Picked up freebies including t-shirts, two different funny hats, comics, posters, and more Magic cards. Again, T. probably got even more than me, mostly novels.
  • Took lots of pictures of cosplayers. There were quite a few clever and fun and creative and, sure, racy costumes there.
  • Had dinner with two different friends of T. who live in the area and their families. They were nice.

What I didn't do at Comic-Con
  • Didn't succeed at getting into the Firefly events. And we tried. We were in line for it four hours early, that just wasn't early enough. I gather it's always popular at Comic-Con and this was the 10-year anniversary. So that sucked. T. was literally crying about it.
  • Didn't even try to go to the panels about Iron Man 3, other upcoming Marvel movies, The Hobbit, Magic: the Gathering, or several other relatively big-ticket events. I might have liked to, but either they conflicted with someone I was even more interested in, or I just needed to rest after everything else we did. In hindsight there's some stuff I wish I'd seen, but there was just a ton to see and do. Oh well.
  • Didn't cosplay. Sorry, maybe next year.
  • Didn't do anything else in San Diego. I gather the zoo is nice, and the beach, and more, but all we did outside SDCC was one evening in the pool hot tub and the aforementioned dinners with friends.
Other notes
  • It was fun, but tiring. I want to go next year if we can, but that's a longshot.

Thursday, July 05, 2012

I'm slightly optimistic about writing... even though I'm nowhere near the benchmarks mentioned in my previous post.

That Monday I had off, I managed to write probably less than a page. I was busier than I expected (one errand turned into three or so), but even so, it was depressing how little I accomplished. In the meantime, though, I've added six more pages and have a pretty good idea of what will happen next. Two characters so far, both of whom are at least a bit developed. That's nowhere near one page for every hour I've tried to work on this, but it's a good beginning.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I realize the goal was flawed from the start. A page an hour would be a ton. It would be five novels in a year (assuming no time needed for editing), and no one does that. It would have to be pure stream of consciousness. That might be useful in certain limited contexts, and I should try it some time as an experiment just for fun, but won't do for a narrative.