Bicentennial, minus 198.

Productivity seems to come in waves. One week I'll write fifteen pages for my story. The next I'll spend my free time on nostalgia avenue playing SimCity 3000. For as popular a game as SimCity was, I feel like it was never truly appreciated enough by the gaming community. Maybe that's because by the time SimCity 3000 came out, the first person shooter had become all the rage and taken over the entire video game world forcing any sort of game that had any semblance of originality or actual fun to it out of the limelight so games based on Tom Clancy novels with little to no replay value could become the norm.

Not that I'm bitter or anything.

Hey, last week was Ang's and my 2-year anniversary. We made it two whole years without killing each other, so we must be doing something right. Heh.

And actually, since last year I decided to declare to the world how to have a happy marriage after only one actual year of it, I think perhaps I'll take this opportunity to clarify something about that:

I really can be an outlandish sensationalist sometimes, can't I?

Don't get me wrong. I stand by most of what I said last year. But... truly, there really is no definitive set list of guidelines by which one can govern his or herself through their respective marriages. A marriage is a living, organic thing, not a textbook with bullet points outlining the proper ins and outs thereof. You have to work with it, not for it. People change. Ideas and beliefs change. Sometimes those things were things that you thought were hallmarks of your relationship. They can be difficult changes to accept once you've tied the knot.

But that's where the things like communication come in. You talk about it. You work with it. You accept that change has occurred and figure out how to change with it. That's what makes marriages work, the ability to adapt to one another because you've made a commitment to stick with this person no matter what.

So here we are, Ang and I, sticking it to each other 2 years strong and ready for many more to come. :-)

Song stuck in my head: Blackbird - The Beatles

Darn you, XKCD.

Gosh darn you to heck, XKCD.

*****************

Anyway, I think I know why I haven't been blogging, actually.

I've been actually writing.

Like... my story. For those of you who might be unaware, I've been attempting to write a science-fiction-y type of novel thing since, like, 8th grade or so. I actually had completed about three and a quarter little novella-length stories in the series, until I realized that I wasn't in 8th grade anymore (by now I was in 12th and getting ready for college) and my younger self kind of sucked as a writer.

Well, maybe that's a bit harsh. Let's say I hadn't yet learned the joys of proofreading back then. Still working on it, really.

Whatever the case, it became apparent at some point that my original stories were mostly junk riddled with a few good paragraphs here and there and that I was going to need a serious retooling of the series if I ever really wanted to turn it into something publishable. I think I determined this about the time that my parents' computer decided to melt its hard drive on itself and I lost nearly everything I had ever written on that thing (years and years of work, gone... I still get a little depressed when I think about it). At that point, all I had left was a printed copy of the first book, which was about 60 pages long on unspaced, 10-pt Times New Roman, so whatever that would equal in book form. I still have that, which I affectionately refer to as "The Hard Copy," the original tome from which my work is based. However, at the time, I was just so bummed about losing all that work (most of the best stuff I'd written was in books 2 and 3), I kind of gave up on the idea entirely, and I just about stopped writing entirely other than occasional poetry.

A few years back, however, I took a look back at the Hard Copy and got an itch to enter these characters' world again. I made a decision to commit to actually writing something worth reading, not just writing something for fun in my spare time.

So, over the course of the past three or four some odd or even years (that's probably terrible grammar in that sentence, but nuts to it), I've been working on retelling my tale of space-age comedy and intrigue. It wasn't originally intended to be a comedy, but that ended up happening to one extent or another. I was originally inspired to write the story in the first place because, at the time, I had just discovered Star Wars and thought it was the awesomest thing since slicing bread with a lightsaber. Several chapters into it, however, I discovered my favorite book of all time, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and was inspired to switch the feel of the book towards humor. This is actually probably why it didn't work as well as it might've, because I have a very... um... singular sense of humor. As in, things I might find hilarious probably wouldn't be so to 95% of humanity.

Consequently, the story is now about 90% altered from its original state. It's much more drama oriented, with hints of comedy thrown in for good measure (because unless you're Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke or something, you have no right to be writing humorless science-fiction). Nearly every character has received a dramatic overhaul in personality, or they've been eliminated altogether. The plot itself doesn't even begin to resemble the Hard Copy, save for the fact that the main character is still a man named Richard Crane and his parents are dead. (I'm trying my hardest not to make him either Batman or Iron Man, truly I am. The Iron Man connection is particularly difficult to get around. I think I've succeeded in making him his own character, though. I hope.)

But what matters most is that I'm actually writing again. I'm actually making headway. When last I checked, I believe I had made it to 48 pages, single spaced still, 11-pt Times New Roman, and only five chapters so far. Five! I had like 25 or something in the entire Hard Copy. I'm actually enjoying where my story is going. I feel like I could actuallys it down and enjoy reading it. That, to me, is a win, at least so far.

Anyway, I've been dedicating a great deal of time to that over the past two weeks, particularly last week (a chapter and a half!), and I pretty much only take free time after work before I pick Angela up from Denny's. We try to spend as much time that we actually have together together, rather than retreating to respective corners of the apartment to do solitary activities. We got married for a reason, after all. We kinda like spending time with each other. :-)

So, I write when I'm alone. I also blog, for the most part, when I'm alone, because blogs can take a good half an hour to an hour to churn out sometimes, and that's time I could be spending with Ang if she's here. So yeah. If I've been quiet lately, 7 times out of 10 it's been because I've been writing. Productively.

For the moment, I'm going to go review a movie or two on my other blog, which is also in dire need of updating. Honest, I really do intend to make this a more regular blogging experience. Maybe if I sprinkle some prune juice on the computer...



(cuz... then... it'd be more regular...)




(I'll shut up now...)

Song stuck in my head: That's How You Know - Amy Adams