A Bunch of Stuff

Today, I am going to talk about some shit, bro. In the trenches. Damn the torpedoes. Thousand-yard stare. Blow up our underwear. Get me some new underwear.

I don’t really write about writing advice much. I am not qualified to give it; in fact, I am barely qualified to scratch myself – the Itchy Anus Incident of 1998 proved that. Yet it occurs to me that I might actually have something. Grandmaster Wangledangle, also known as the Magic Talking Beardhead, has what he calls “Advice You Should Probably Ignore”. I am going to go with “Advice You Should Run the Fuck Away From”.

Seriously, start running.

Alright, I am going to assume you ran to another computer that was recently vacated by someone else who also ran away, so this page is in the exact same position. See how it works? I’ve just restructured the world. Booyah, motherfuckers. To indeed be a God!

Anyway, I used to go hiking and cared about not being fat, and there was a little tidbit that stuck with me from my days of football practice (that’s right – a memory within a memory. Wheels within wheels, bitch). Do it hard… not like aroused hard. Walking up the side of a mountain and shoving against other men with a salami in your pants doesn’t work (alright, fine, a vienna sausage. Whatever). Push yourself; pump your legs to go further, keep your posture straight to center your gravity, play with your pack until you find the exact spot that it evenly spreads the weight. Keep going and if you need to stop for a rest, no more a couple of minutes. Any longer than that, and it is going to be exponentially harder to get started again. This is really true if you just got nailed while playing football – get back up from that painful crunch as soon as you can, because the longer you lay there, the harder it is going to be to get your ass moving again.

Skip to my Lou after the jump.

Busy Procrastinating

Writing is a bitch.

It’s an enjoyable bitch, like that hot chick with high hair and tight jeans from high school, the one that was smarter and hotter than everyone around. Writing gets good grades and hangs out with the wrestling team. Writing sits on the student council and promises longer passing periods and extra helpings of tapioca at the cafeteria. Writing is the one cool kid in the marching band, who is friend to cool and geek alike. Writing is getting pissed off at all these metaphors, ready to smack the idiot at the computer like a…

As Chuck Wendig pointed out, writers seem to avoid writing with every last ounce of strength they have. Getting a writer to actually write is a herculean feat all its own; getting them to write something worthwhile might actually be less difficult. Get us going and let us build up some steam, and then it takes something monumental to make us stop. You see, writing is addictive. If faceless conglomerates could distill writing into some word-juice and peddle it, we’d all be fucked. Having the power and authority to make your dreams reality is some heady shit, and it’s one hell of a rush.

It takes three weeks to form a habit, to give something enough repetition in order to make the action thoughtless. With writing, this is less the actual writing process, but sitting down and going through the rituals to put yourself in the writing mood. That is the big bitch; actually getting started and not finding a trillion other things to do first. When you combine habit with addiction, you get productive spurts that every writer digs… until something stops them.

Last week, I got slammed with one of those stops. I think it was valid; I needed some time to get my emotions in order, make sure my family was alright, and to get my son the focus he needed to overcome his diagnosis. That is some serious shit; sometimes serious shit means you need a serious amount of time. After a couple of days I could have come back, but in order to keep to the schedule I made, I decided to return after a week. That week ended and I posted something I’d already written before the stop. Then I… did nothing.

Getting started writing again after you’ve stopped is infinitely more difficult than starting up anything physical. It is a pain in the ass; the desire is there, the guilt over not having done is there, but the “sit your fat ass in the chair and do it” is missing. I have all my topics for this month planned out, and a good few for the next, but I’ve managed to completely screw that schedule up. The messed up thing is I will promise myself to start again on Day X, so that the schedule matches up. That, just like all the other things, is just an excuse; a reason to keep procrastinating and not taking the bite out of what I want to do with life.

It’s a fucking excuse.

So, the point of this is – getting started again once you stop is a bitch and a half, and I am going to say even harder than starting up the first time. When you first start something, you have the newness and excitement to fuel it along. When you’re returning to something you’ve already started, a lot of that initial rush is gone… I mean, you’ve already done it, why start again? It doesn’t matter though. If you want to be a writer, you need to write every day. Even if you only write three hundred words of crap, sit down, go through your ritual, and crap all over that blank page. Do it, because the guilt and regret you feel for not writing is far worse than the irritation of getting started. If you write, you end up feeling accomplished. If you don’t, you end up feeling pathetic.

It’s your choice.

Running in Shadows

The other big thing this last week has been returning to Shadowrun. I originally picked this game up way back in the early nineties, in the old softcover 1^st Edition days, when we had such powerful supplements like the Steet Samurai Catalog and Neo-Anarchists Guide to Real Life. Shadowrun was fucking awesome back then. It was Cyberpunk 2020 with Dungeons and Dragons; it was bloody, gory, sexy, and just fucking cool. I played the game through first and second editions, typically keeping with big Troll street-sams. During those editions, my primary character was named Thor, a Panther Assault Cannon wielding psychopath who worked as family practitioner during the day.

I got into Third Edition years later, around the same time DnD 3^rd came out – that year was the year of revised editions for me. I had a new Shadowrun, Dungeons and Dragons, Mage, Vampire, and… Jesus, I know there was another one. Regardless, all the editions were also third runs (the White Wolf stuff was in Revised). I was managing a gaming store then, and it was my duty to run these sweet games as they were coming out. I also got to go to three cons that year – it was fucking awesome. My main character through the Third Edition incarnation was a more low-key Troll street-sam named Boomstick, who was all about his shotgun. He was also a popular blogger under a pen name about Fine Elven Wines – it was fun.

So now, we have Fourth Edition. Holy shit the game has changed, and you can feel the influence of the Storyteller System all over it. I do not think this is a bad thing; the system is very sweet and direct now, and it has really gone to lengths to cover up some of the grey areas in the earlier versions. I do miss the Priority System, but only for new players. That system made explaining character creation to new players very simple, and very quick; I personally use the Build System, and have for since it was introduced in Second Edition, but the Priority System did have its advantages.

The world in 2070 is massive, and the continuation of the setting makes a lot of sense. I do miss the old Shadowrun terms though; drek, chummer, whiz, slams, and deckers – these were bits of the world that made it more real for me. It may have been a little comical, but that was just part of reality gone mad. Fourth Edition has also gone a long way to hammer a darker mood into the setting, much more reminiscent of Cyberpunk 2020 than the earlier editions were. I fully support this – the world can be a little less fairy tale and still have magic. They did a great job with fourth I can’t wait to get more of the supplement books. That is forever going to be the real stumbling point of Shadowrun, the core book just can’t contain it all. This is a game that lives on its supplements, and I am okay with that. I would like those books to have an introduction though, just something to give a glance at the book beyond the table of contents.

Maggie made an infiltrating face whose shadowname is currently up for debate (she started with Blueshift but is moving towards Deliliah right now), and we are having some fun. The inclusion of AR into the world has really made the setting more badass, and that everything is wireless just made it that much cooler. Great job, Shadowrun people. The game rocks.

Those Other Peeps:

So, where are we going this week? How about…

Julie Summerell – Julie is perhaps one of the nicest people I’ve had the chance to come across via Chuck’s blog. I don’t comment on her blog as much as I should, and I am going to work to change that. I hadn’t looked at it much in the last two weeks (It’s been hell here, just little time) and when I did pop it open, this gem of an article about listening is what I found. It’s really good and you should go read it now!

John Douglas Kennedy – This is a blog I am new to, and I’ve enjoyed it every time I’ve checked it out. JDK has some great reflections about video games and Caprica and the like, but this post about robots is what got me. Of course, it would be robots, right?

No website today. Just check out some cool peeps.

Tomorrow at an Idiot’s Guide: Troy Duffy wrote and directed one the most powerful and gripping movies of the 90′s. In the new millennium, he shits all over happy and flings it at a screen. The weekend review looks at Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day.