Day: December 1, 2020

I’m done trying to predict NFL football games this season. Covid-19 is making everything way too unpredictable. The Broncos game was the latest example of that. How can I possibly call a game when one team loses all their QBs after I call it? Trash. Takes the fun out of the thing. So, I’m done with all of that noise.

I’m done with football in some ways. I’m just a fan right now. I am not coaching. I’m not even training for some time. All I am doing is playing Madden and watching the Giants creep back into the playoff picture. I’m good with that. I’m good with the unpredictability so long as I don’t have to call winners. It is fun.

Fantasy football has been fun as well. Unfortunately I am out of playoff contention in one of my three leagues. Playoffs start next week and while I have the same record as the 5th place team, I am in fact in 10th despite knocking off the top 3 in the last three weeks. I did all I could in the late stages. I figured out the point system (which is different from any I have ever encountered and entirely different from this specific league last year) late and figured out how to play the system late and now it is too late.

In the beachborn league I am sliding back into the last playoff seed. Now I am going to face last year’s champ in the first round. In the newest of my three leagues I am entirely relying on Eric Ebron to score 8 points to put me into the playoffs. This man needs 8. If he gets .0000000001 less, I’m out. I could fall from 5th to 10th just like that. Sound familiar? Just like in that other league I’m playing the #2 guy. Unfortunately I am left to rely on Ebron thanks to a number of bad choices this week. Such is the way of fantasy.

Writing is very hard work. It is very lonely work. I don’t know a single writer alive who, in the midsts of a tough section of a story, thinks that the work is fun. I am not having fun with this present story. I’m writing what in essence is a cozy mystery. I’ve never written one, and I’ve always wanted to do it. Here I am in the midsts of that opportunity and I am struggling.

The problem is always the same. It is not the form or function or purpose or any of that. It is the character. If I have not fully descended into the skin of a character then the story is going to be poop. Instead of trying to really get into this character I find myself blaming the victim (of the crime) and the suspects. It really is not their fault. I do need to know more about them and their motives in order to make them feel real, but I need to be one with the protagonist for this thing to work at all. I’m not there yet.

This is a shorter piece, and one that is already dreadfully behind, so I need to get cracking on it. I expect a chapter tomorrow and one each day after until I am finally done.

That all begins with writing about this protagonist and getting into that character’s skin.