Day: January 11, 2023

Seems like I am slipping again. I’m not hitting that publish button a second time, which means I am not really focused on what I am putting down on the screen (page?!). This peculiar habit rises every so often, so I wanted to dive back to a time when it arose prior and think about what was going on then. That led me to a post from 4.85. Only, here is the thing: I never published it. It remains one of 24 unpublished draft posts from various spots in the past. The most difficult aspect of this is that these posts reflect a sum of 240 minutes of my life that I meant to have external value that never actually did. I wasted those words in a sense.

All that being said, I’m still in that place to a certain extent. I am steel dealing with hypertension–thought I am at stage two (at least) all the time, vs. being at stage one in that post. All of the issues and situations in my life way back then still resonate. It is in this fashion that I have learned that I am not moving forward, though I am really trying to do so.

I am giving myself this week to get my shit together. It’s been 17,155 days of me being aware that I drew breath. Time to use that awareness to do something.

Alexander C. Kane has fun with his characters. I miss the days of doing that. I miss putting my people in wild situations and then just seeing what happens. I think the crux of having fun with the writing is to challenge your characters in unique ways and to develop characters who have the personalities to do truly unusual stuff. For example: I write a lot of Shadowrun, which is typically described as stories about shadow runners. Okay. So, how about you take that convention and blow it up. No, not in the traditional–write a counter story about someone trying to catch a runner, but in a more interesting way. What does that mean? Off the top of my head I’m thinking about the idea of a runner who overhears someone hiring for a big job and decides to take that information and sell it to the highest bidder, which winds up getting them in a bit of danger… somehow? To make matters worse, the runner whose payday job he is selling out is his sister.

That’s what I mean. have fun. Create dynamic characters and thrust them into situations. To make it even more fun, it could be a basic situation that is only odd or untenable because of who they are or what they can do. A man who speaks with ghosts ends up in a poker game and the ghosts decide to help him until he becomes so emboldened by their aid that they don’t, simply to teach him a lesson… one that he fails to properly learn.

I just want to get back to telling good stories. I feel like I have to remind myself how to do that.