Inspiration is a Cruel Mistress.

I know I'm going to regret this later on. I should have been in bed hours ago, but I suddenly got the urge to sit down and do some writing. At this point, I might as well just stay up till after work. Why does she crack the whip on me at the worst possible times?

Anyone see that ball I dropped?

Get your minds out of the gutter.

I have a good reason though. Work finally leveled out and ramped up and brought a whole new level of topics to cover, which, ironically enough, I just had to sign a paper saying that I couldn't. I'll have to find a way to twist it around, although no one really knows which restaurant concept I do work at unless they, ya know, actually know me. And I hope they're smart enough not to say anything about it in the comments. I actually like my job.

I also moved. Got a pretty nice new apartment with a pretty awesome roommate. One of my neighbors sucks, and that's definitely going to be a topic that gets touched upon soonish (though hopefully not as heavily handed as the 'topic in question' gets 'touched' several nights a week). And now I feel dirty for even trying to make a domestic violence metaphor.

I've also been doing less geeking and more drinking lately too, during the transition period. It doesn't help that there's a decent hangout bar between where I work and where I have to park for work. But now that things have settled down some, that particular habit will correct itself.

Onto the writing front. I've gotten all my scattered notes together and half transcribed, and misplaced several of my written backups. I do have a few of them saved to backup discs. The catch there, though, is they're on 3.5s... And I haven't actually owned a computer with a 3.5 drive since... 2003? It's pretty moot anyways, since I've been gutting 90% of everything I had previously written and been redoing it almost from scratch. So that's coming along as well as can be expected. I did, however, decide to not post a few sample chapters, and just start the story from the beginning. I think it'll help me have it all flow better, and less chance I'll screw up the continuity of things. More on that later.

Lastly, I do wanna touch on a bit of actual geekery. E3 just came and went, and the one thing I was pretty hyped about was announced a few weeks prior. MAHVEL, BABY! Everything I've seen about MvC3 over the last few weeks has me so hype for this. I really can't express it enough. The new trailer looks fantastic, the match vids from E3, the released third of the lineup, and the speculation of who will realistically make the cut in the final build... I really haven't been this excited about a new game release in a very long time. Ten years to be exact. And it was for MvC2. I don't even get this hype for MMO expansions (though I am totally ready for Cataclysm).

So it looks like I've got a handful of topics to hammer out over the next few days. Hopefully I won't drop the ball again. I actually want to talk about this stuff. If it happens, I won't be apologetic for not keeping up with what at the end of the day is a hobby, but I'll make an effort.

Employment and Writing...

So I've started a new job, opening up a restaurant. So far, it's been pretty good. Once the labor pars get established and our target clientele figures out who they are and that we're actually open, then things will get a little more smoothed out and we'll actually start making money. Nature of the beasts, I suppose. It does, however, cut back on a lot of my free time that I've been lately working on my writing.

Speaking of writing, a few weeks ago one morning, I was sitting in on a speech trying not to fall asleep when I started jotting things down on the back of the program. I ended up with 3 pages worth of connectivity notes for a story I started writing almost 12 years and 300 pages ago, linking it to a few other false start projects I've got laying around. This got me actually pretty excited about what I think will eventually end up being a 4 part story. What at first only was to be a nod and a wink (a bartender with a couple of scars on her hand, who showed up in two separate stories, in a very eerie bit of clairvoyance. I initially wrote her about 3 years before I started bartending, and certainly before I got a few scars of my own in the exact same place on my hand), ended up making me relook at a lot of the similarities and start to draw a few natural connections in other places.

So I think what I'm going to do is post up the first chapter, of two or three of the four different book ideas here and see which ones get the most love. I think they're all stories worth telling, and I kinda love each of them and the ideas they bring to the table, I just can't decide which one to take and really run with first, not that I want to get serious about it. So come Monday, I'll let y'all help me. =P

Writing!

So I've been writing up a storm at the strangest times. This isn't a bad thing by any means. It's usually when I'm in a situation where I don't have access to my lappy or my desktop and have to try to jot down broad stroke notes on whatevers available. Work, social gatherings that I'd much rather not spend my time on, places where it'd be a bad thing if I whipped out Obsidian and started hammering away on the keys. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have atrocious handwriting and could decipher half of what I've written. =P

On the upside, though, there's been some forward movement on several of my long abandoned and thoroughly planned and fleshed out stories I've been working on for the last... 12 years? Jesus, I feel really old now.

Turns out, they're all connected. Even the throwaway ones that I was just jotting around on as a writing exercise. Not all of them, mind, but 4 of the 5 big ideas I've had all seem to fit together thematically and in a way that makes sense. Now lets see if I can take these pieces and run with them.