Spring Break Accomplishments

Another Spring Break has come and gone, each year this break from work seems to get shorter and shorter, this year being no exception. I had a relaxing break though, my family and I stayed local since Carrie still had to work and we are pretty close to baby girl's due date. Henry and I had some nice days together. I love spending the day with him, he's been such a riot lately. Everything is just a blast for him. I couldn't be happier watching his face light up with excitement, his little dance moves, and his signature "WHAS ZAAAT?!" (What's that?) when we do something new and fun.

Plus, I got to hit up Adepticon with my friend Craig. Which was awesome. Adepticon is a convention for miniature wargames that has been growing in size for the last decade give or take a couple years. Thousands of gamers from all over the world, descend upon the innocent and unknowing patrons of fancy hotels in the Chicagoland region. This year's was held in Schaumburg, not far from O'hare. You can find just about any game under the sun there, and for those of you who know me well you understand how I would feel about a place like this. To put it mildly, it makes me very happy. I was not participating in any competitive events, but Craig and I still had a good time. We checked out the vendor hall, played a few demos, had beer and wings, saw some old and new friends, and sat down for a lengthy game of Cthulu Wars (Risk with the elder gods from the H.P. Lovecraft stories). I actually won...well sort of...I brought about the end of the world by driving everyone mad, but hey, I think Lovecraft would have seen that as the true victory. Here's a pic.



Super nerdy I know. Like really super nerdy.

But break is over. Sad face. So, for those who are keeping tabs on my writing process, here's what I accomplished.

I managed to write a completely new Robbie chapter matching the narration of the chapters for the other characters. As I stated in my last entry, I am much happier with the way it turned out. It still needs to be looked over a few times before it is final, but I am pleased with how it is shaping up. That chapter turned out to be about 4,000 words which is around 13-15 pages depending on font size and spacing. I try to wrap up chapters around the 4k mark, I don't think teens like reading 20-30 page chapters. I could be wrong though.

I began writing a new chapter focusing on one of the coven members; this chapter will follow the girl known as The Voice (still debating on the name though...The Voice...Blake Shelton comes to mind...). So far, I have completed one other chapter for the coven focusing on The Reaver. Every coven chapter will give us a glimpse into what has happened to drive each member to become the way they are as well as move the plot line forward. I hope to create three unique characters with these chapters. One that you utterly despise, one that you find yourself feeling bad for, and the other whom you're just not sure about. I was only able to write about 1,000 words or so for The Voice, I would have written more but I was distracted and driven to address the Robbie problem.

After discussing a few details of the story with my friend Chris, we agreed that Robbie has become a little flat and boring. So, Chris let me bounce some ideas off him and I came to a better plan for the poor boy. I am going to attempt to discuss a relevant topic through Robbie, one that has affected me personally (So it should be easier to write about, at least that is what I am telling myself). Sadly I think this is something many kids today will be able to identify with, anxiety and depression. I think that is a relevant flaw for a protagonist without going to the extreme. I am a little nervous though, because I don't want it to become a total downer.

So, I began re-writing the first chapter of the book. It is not complete yet, but it is turning out to be much better. As I was looking back at my original I kept finding myself thinking I thought that was good? Ugh, it was kind of depressing, I mean, what if all my other chapters are like that? Well, I did a quick skim and  for the most part they are not, it is primarily the Robbie chapters that I have a problem with. I'm sure this is a problem for many writers though, so I'm just going to power through.

All in all I wrote about 10,000 words over break (I'm fairly proud of that), but unfortunately. only half of that was "new" material. The second version of my Robbie chapters set things up for new events in the story, but I don't necessarily count that as new material since I am using about 75% of the material I had previously written.

That's about it, I'm sure I could say more, but I will wrap it up here. I hope to do a post today or tomorrow about what I've been reading, so keep your eyes out for that.

Thanks for stopping by,

Brian