Chapter the Eighth: Creative Interlude

I need to get pretty serious about whether or not I am still a Writer (capital letter). Clearly, I am no longer an Author (unpublished, and unfinished manuscripts are just that), but putting words to “paper” requires effort, not good intentions.

It certainly does not happen when one is playing video games, working jigsaw puzzles, watching television/movies, or gallivanting around.

Or does it?

I’ve now been with my current employer for three years. I have now worked in Seattle (specifically the publishing industry) for 10. Other than a huge mass of rules and instruction documents, I haven’t been an active Writer for almost 4 years, and even then, I was more of an Editor than a Creator.

2002 was a solid year of creativity, in which I worked on/produced over 70 roleplaying adventures, (half of which were entirely new content), created two game worlds, an interactive software package still in use by certain game companies, and my magnum opus, a 150 page complete apocalyptic campaign adventure, in which I was the creative director of the entire storyline, edited all encounters, wrote all major characters, all stat/game rules information, and half the adventure itself.

Then, in 2003, I went to go be a grownup, and more or less stopped writing altogether. There was a girl, you see…

Then, there wasn’t. 2004 was a year of non-fiction for me, in which I mainly wrote satire and journals, while shopping myself around as an editor and/or columnist through the fourth great period of unemployment. I started another novel that summer, one that I think has a fair chance of being published someday.

If I actually finish writing it, that is. When I started working for a living again later that year, I stopped active work, and although I’ve done some songwriting and occasional poetry, I’ve been a technical writer/system programmer ever since.

I kind of miss Fiction. But I work for an IP creating company, and things that I write technically belong to “the Man.” So rather than give up my creative rights altogether, I’ve been neglecting them.

This year, I have retooled the new novel’s outline a couple times, and added more of a plot and character treatments. I’ve given a lot of though to how I would re-write the first book (a slapstick mystery novel I was shopping around during and after college). Since it was originally set as a play, it requires more work than I can devote to it right now, and I was never really happy with the ending. It was far too trite, and the antagonist never made much sense in the greater picture.

Of course, the Hero is a dog, so it’s a bit hard to play against on the big stage.

I digress. 2007 is nearly over. I need to write. In fact, I made more or less this exact statement at the beginning of this year, and towards the end of last year.

Maybe I mean it this time.

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