Thursday, February 9, 2012

Derailed and rebuilding the tracks.



At the start of January, I spent a week creating the most detailed notes I have ever written for a project titled "The War of Antiquities".  It made it so easy to write that in the first eleven days I had written around 43,822 words.  I think by anyone's standards, that is a pretty break neck speed, easily double what you need to finish NaNo.  "The War of Antiquities" takes place just after the war is declared over and will end at the prologue of Requiem.  It develops all of the back story and characters like Duke Falconcrest, Therion, Vincent, Rhonin and Rayne Masterson, as well as several other characters.  I project the series to finish somewhere around the 200,000 word mark, spread out over 22 short stories approximately 8,000-10,000 words each.  Currently the project sits with story 5 about half finished at 5,800 words.

So how did everything get derailed?  It's been about 3 almost 4 weeks and I haven't written anything of substance.  There were plenty of times I sat down, looked at my notes, fired up MSWord and just turned off the monitors and walked away.  It's not burn out, that I can assure you.  On Jan 11, my grandmother died.  She was the last of my grandparents to die and had been living near my parents at their place on the river where all of the photos I like to post come from.  She was in her 80's, but in fine health, so her death was pretty unexpected.  There are certain things in life that we tend to ignore or take advantage of and when something happens to them, everything else becomes a lesser priority.

Aside from spending time with the family, I had a lot of time to catch up on things I had neglected these last few weeks.  I read a couple of books.  I have read several times that authors say you should keep reading while you write.  I'll be honest and say that I hadn't read a book since I sat down and started writing Requiem back in March of 2010.  I also sat down and played some video games.  Another past time that I had ignored.  I picked up a copy of "The Old Republic" and chopped my way to level 50 as a Sith Juggernaut.  Reading, and playing a game with a very good story line feels like my creative writing gas tank just got refiled.  I look at my stack of notes that you can see in the photo and it's time to start writing again.  There is an excellent story that needs to be told.