I’ve hopped away from this blog-about-writing-with-miscellany-stuff to a set-up and name that’ll engage me (and hopefully you folks) a bit more.

http://bourchol.wordpress.com/

I love the podcast You Look Nice Today. I got hooked the moment I heard of its existence, having already been drooling and sweating over each of @hotdogsladies’ Tweets for some time. The combined comedy genius of Adam Lisagor, Scott Simpson, and Merlin Mann melts into a great podcast full of devilishly ribald comments and freeform homosocialism that’s as satisfying as the grilled cheese I alluded to earlier with that “melts” adjective.

I submitted some answers to their JOBBOTRON thingiemajiggie. And lo, I was handed my destiny. I fear for this great country.

If Script Frenzy were described as a metaphorical war, I know where I’d be. I wouldn’t be one of those brave soldiers that made it across the trenches to face glory in the homeland. I wouldn’t be one of those valiant ol’ boys who made it halfway, only to perish under a barrage of enemy fire.

No. I’d be the guy who, as the general cries “CHARGE!” is lighting a cigarette. Startled into activity, he blazes out ahead of his comrades. He gets to a point where he realizes the bulk of his unit is still behind him. So he sits his butt down in a hole, and finishes with that cigarette. Every so often he pops his head out, checks where everyone else is on the field, then returns to smoking. He writes some poetry. “Maybe this’ll be the next Flanders Field,” he tells himself. A few stray bullets almost hit his helmet, and this frightens him. He tells himself he wasn’t in his right mind when he enlisted, anyway. So he stays in the hole, until the battle is over.

What is this clumsy, two-legged mule of an analogy trying to say?

I did not pull through.

Looking at my beer and cappuccino tally, I’m of a mind to think that the lack of imbibing was directly responsible. Truthfully though, it was a bunch of distractions and an absence of will or desire strong enough to overcome them. If I were to do Script Frenzy again, and I think I will attempt it, I’d have to go in with a more solid plan for my script, and make sure to get more deeply entrenched in the community, to feed off of the frenzy, to use that mammalian hive-mind like a naked mole rat.

I’m trying to decide what to do with the >30 pages I did bung out. I fear to read them. I think I’ll let them stew, and then go back and see what it was I concocted.

Congrats to all those who won and lost, so long as you enjoyed it along the way!

Allow me to remind myself (and you, dear reader), of my own foolishness. From Day 18’s update:

Morale: It was ebbing there for a while, until I realized now I only need to write about 6ish pages per day to reach the requisite 100, which shouldn’t be TOO hard since my final university exam for the year is over with tomorrow. (She said, naively, grossly underestimating the true magnetic pull of other distractions, like video games pursuing some good literature.)

To my credit(?), my optimism was couched by cynical foreshadowing. It turns out that the cynical foreshadowing has come to pass.

I should be ashamed of myself. Catavarie made the most of his time and has won the damn thing! I think it’s the old ‘people with free time get nothing accomplished’ phenomena (is there a better, more succinct name for that?). I believe it was in episode #17 of Dr. Ginger Campbell’s Books and Ideas Podcast where interviewee Mur Lafferty made some remarks on the difficulty of being a writer at home. Self-imposed deadlines are fairly deadly, and the spirit of the fair-game competition, Script Frenzy, apparently wasn’t enough of an external deadline to really, really motivate me.

I’m sure some of my zeal right out of the gate was fueled by the desperate, wild-eyed desire to just be writing anything other than essays and exams. I still like my original concept, but since I didn’t get a skeleton outline down before I began writing, I found it drifting, sometimes in directions I wasn’t pleased with. I’m not free-form enough for stuff like Script Frenzy and Nanowrimo, I think. I’m one of those anal retentive writers who has to basically write the whole damn thing before I sit down to write the whole damn thing.

I’m going to use this public shame at failing Script Frenzy to launchpad into the research stages of the SPP™.

In lieu of a triumphant page-count update, here are some things I have “accomplished” in recent memory:

All caught up in listening to You Look Nice Today.

Discovered BLDBLOG, via a link to their great interview with Daniel Dociu, a designer for Guild Wars.

My dark elf Inquisitor on EQII is now level 21. Or 22? My newly acquired secret vice has begun to grow, like a delicious and gratifying tumor.

And, today is, of course, the day that GTAIV comes out. I’m debating going to the midnight launch at my local EB Games. This is, after all, the first 10 that IGN.com has given a game in ages.

Whether you were being a productive writer, or being a productive loafer, I hope everyone had a grand weekend.

Here are Ken Levine’s remarks on BioShock’s narrative drive.

Now, I haven’t had the pleasure of playing BioShock for myself, thanks to monetary and temporal constraints. (Ah, time. Never enough gaming hours in a day.) However, from what I have seen and heard of the game, think I can understand why it’s being received as a Big Thing, and any discussion of its “narrative drive” piques my interest as a would-be writer.

I wanted to point out that link for others interested in how the video game industry is looking at raw script and the storytelling process.

I’m going to read this as soon as I get myself awake. If I have anything intelligent to say about it, there may be an update here.

The Lorian Hemingway short story competition was just brought to my attention, and I wanted to share it. New writers are always looking for a break, I know, and this particular competition is apparently one of America’s most prestigious contests. (I plead amnesty for my ignorance owing to being from the Great White North!)

Here’s their guidelines:

Eligibility: All US and international writers “whose fiction has not appeared in a nationally distributed publication with a circulation of 5,000 or more.” Fresh meat only, please!

Entry Fee: Postmarked up to and including May 1st: $12. Postmarked May 2nd+: $17.

Date of Submission: May 15th

Word Count: >3,000 words

Theme Restrictions: none

Prize: $1000 (1st place), $500 (2nd and 3rd places), and honorable mentions.

As you can see, the due date is fast approaching.

Working Title: Living With Uriel Sam & Uriel
Genre: Comedy
My screenplay is: Juno meets Dexter
Today I learned: Giving your supporting characters (I almost just called them NPCs, ha!) funky names is a way to ensure you’ll give them a moment of sparkling goodness on the ’screen,’ rather than a drab functionality. For instance, today Sam & Uriel was infused with these winners: WHITE HAIRED GIRL, CRAB-EATER TWO, and TIGHTEST PANTS BOY. There are, admittedly, a few ‘GIRL’s and ‘GUY’s in there, and I think at least one ‘MAN’ by now (what’s the difference between a GUY and a MAN?), but I know better now.
Beers consumed in direct support of the scriptwriting process: 1
Coffees consumed in direct support of the scriptwriting process: 2
Pages: 28
Morale: It was ebbing there for a while, until I realized now I only need to write about 6ish pages per day to reach the requisite 100, which shouldn’t be TOO hard since my final university exam for the year is over with tomorrow. (She said, naively, grossly underestimating the true magnetic pull of other distractions, like video games pursuing some good literature.)

In my little Webnote box on Netvibes (my startup page, and the best thing to happen to me since Firefox), I have a memo about a possible topic for blog content. It says this:

*Writing surroundings, writing times; thought I was an evening, solitary writer. I seem to be more of a morning public writer.

Yet here I am at roughly 1:30AM, alone in my room, designing the herald of Dajobas. (As per the Sinister Adventures challenge, which I mentioned in an earlier post.) And no, that’s not a euphemism for something else.

I’ve been concentrating effort on trying to be a writer for long enough to know that just when you think you’ve established a ground rule for yourself, it will be broken - but even this surprised me. I also usually tell myself I don’t like writing with unfamiliar tools, be it a pen I’m unfamiliar with, a pencil I don’t like, or (FSM forbid), a computer I dislike. Yet here I am on my new PC, Dantalion, with unfamiliar keyboard and software galore. The pros and cons of a Mac vs a PC from a writing POV will likely be the topic of another post, but for now suffice it to say that I was considering my iBook to be my prime writer’s companion.

Being struck with totally unexpected inspiration made me pause and think. How many times have I - and perhaps other writers out there - forged concepts of ideal writing habits which really don’t exist? Have we perhaps blocked out moments of inspiration because of rigorous habit? Or, is habit all that finally gets novels written?

It’s hard to tell what set me off tonight, though I think it might have been my closer look at the NSI playWRITE competition’s guidelines (which I also linked to earlier). I was going on the assumption that you had to have a full module to pitch, but it looks more like you’re pitching yourself, and your talents. Perhaps naively, this worries me less!

Or perhaps it was the beer. A San Franciscan Anchor Steam, for the curious.

With full verve and vigor, onwards I charge!

Today’s writing accomplishment (so far): 1500-odd words on an essay. Oh boy!

Back to Dajobas’ herald.

[Music] The Strike of a Blade - Hitoshi Sakimoto - Final Fantasy XII OST

I wrote three pages yesterday, but got too busy to update. Since it looks like I have schoolwork cut out for me today, I think it’s safe to share my progress now.

Working Title: Living With Uriel Sam & Uriel
Genre: Comedy
My screenplay is: Juno meets Dexter
Today I learned: Going back to the “root” of a project (in my case, the Cragislist post which inspired me to begin with) is a good way to re-infuse yourself with enthusiasm. Also, I haven’t been taking advantage of the community support Script Frenzy offers, which is silly. The forums are an unknown ground to me. But I did check out a post on minor characters, written by Daniel Heath. He asks the important question: “Should you give every minor character a bionic leg and a crack habit?” See his article here.
Beers consumed in direct support of the scriptwriting process: 1*
Coffees consumed in direct support of the scriptwriting process: 1*
Pages: 21
Morale: Decent. I feel like I’m coasting. Waiting for this week to be over so I’m finally free from school, to write without that guilty feeling that comes from neglecting another, more important, project.

*I’m frankly surprised neither of these numbers are higher. I might have to start skewing the data if I don’t want to be seen as a prude - and everyone knows prudes don’t make for good writers.

Working Title: Living With Uriel Sam & Uriel
Genre: Comedy
My screenplay is: Juno meets Dexter
Today I learned: Scrivener has two awesome features: a word frequency charter, and a ‘project targets’ feature. I can write faster than I think I can, when I need to. I need to keep better track of plot hooks even when writing on the fly; I’m sure I’ve set myself up for some interesting conclusions, but I’m worried by the time the end draws near I won’t remember them. Scriptwriting is a good way to improve fiction - by focusing on dialogue and action, the “backbone” of a story, I know I’ll make better, neater use of the extra stuff prose allows, when I go back to that format for my next project.
Beers consumed in direct support of the scriptwriting process: 1
Coffees consumed in direct support of the scriptwriting process: 1
Pages: 18 (when I need 18 more)
Morale: Still good. A little distracted by tantalizing, other things (note: getting a new PC in the midst of a writerly competition is not a good idea), but confident I can still pull it off, by putting in immense effort at the last second, like I always do.

[Music] Grace - Apocalyptica (When Worlds Collide)