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A Busy Weekend (where have we hard that before?)Posted by dhoffman on May 17th, 2009

Kind of an interesting, social weekend.  We drove around a fair bit, took turns running errands, saw friends and family from both sides and finished things off by realizing our refrigerator (which some may recall once tried to kill us) is finally giving up the ghost.

A busy weekend like this is, typically, crap for getting much writing done.

So it goes.

We also snuck off to see Star Trek a second time.  No Imax this time and while, yes, improved visuals would have been nice, I really think this movie works great even in normal-o-vision.  We both agreed we liked it even more the second time — in spite of the lack of Imax, not because of it.

Star Trek is something special.  It’s one of those movies where you see it and, I believe, it becomes a part of you.  You see something happening on the screen and it’s a moment you mark.  Not the moment in the movie, but the moment of the movie.

Neither of us are Trek fans in particular.  I don’t know if this helped our appreciation of this movie, but it certainly didn’t hurt it.  More, we’re eagerly looking forward to the next one.  I’d say such a thing counts positively towards the revitalization of a franchise, wouldn’t you?

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Also, I got Jessy to sit down and play a game of Stone Age on Saturday night.  That’s a Euro-style (or, “designer”) board-game.  This particular game is all about worker placement and picking the right roles at the right time, developing your culture and its economy and generally managing a lot of different things all at once.

It’s a hell of a fun game.

We started playing about 10:30 on Saturday night and, what with learning the rules and flow and checking things as we did them wrong, and all, it was nearly 2:00am by the time we were finished.  The mark of a good game is that, at 2:00am, neither of us was “going through the motions” to get to the end.  We were glad to hit the hay, of course, but if we had a knock out another half-hour to see who won, we would have pushed through.

Stone Age is a good next step for us, in terms of gaming.  We’ve been playing things like Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride.  Stone Age is our first “worker placement” and/or “economic” game (granted, it’s quite light on the economic front) and I’d say, objectively, it was a smash-hit.

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Oh, I didn’t get much, if any, actual writing done this weekend.  Chapter Six is still about 100-200 words from being completed.  I started Chapter Seven (great, quick, tone-setting scene) and I’m hoping to knock out the finish to Six tomorrow night and get rolling on Chapter Seven.

Animals has between four and five chapters, and maybe an Epilogue, left to go.  We’re a pinch under 60,000 words and going strong.  As much as I’m dying to get cracking on Painted Ocean, I’m really looking forward to pushing through that second draft of Animals, making the changes I’ve been working over in my head, bringing things to the level, on the page, on which they exist within my head and heart and, I suppose to a lesser extent, my notebook.

Onward, then, to sleep!

Another Weekend Comes to a ClosePosted by dhoffman on April 20th, 2009

Not my most productive weekend, writing-wise, but Jessy and I did get a LOT done this weekend.

To be fair, Friday was something of a wash.  We had one of those crisis-that-aren’t-really-crisis taking place on the work-front, and that pretty much killed the entire evening.  Jessy got home to find me sprawled on the couch.  She made me hit the hay and that was Friday night.

Saturday and Sunday were mostly spent running around on various errands.  We had a handful of nice meals and we got a ton of stuff taken care of that we’ve been putting off (Jessy’s new iMac is set up now and working great, and I think I found a good case for the custom Settlers of Catan tiles we bought through someone on boardgamegeek.com.

I did stay up late last night, after she called it a night, and made a good dent in Chapter Six.  And just now, I was able to finally steal some time to get a few words in.  Not much, but there was some editing and revision and then a page or so of new stuff.

One day I’ll figure it out, how to have a life and still spend 5 hours writing on the weekend.  Every now and then I pull it off, sure, but mostly I spend this big chunk of free time doing anything but writing.

While I lament the loss of writing time, I can’t say I particularly lament a productive, enjoyable weekend with my wife.

A Quick Friday Night ThoughtPosted by dhoffman on April 10th, 2009

Thought for the night (as I finish tidying up the Settlers of Catan and Munchkin games from playing both this afternoon, pausing briefly while bagging up Catan game pieces to type up what might be a pretty cool couple of paragraphs for Chapter Five):

Doing something non-writing-related is a great way to get your head to slip into writing mode and pop out a good idea.  Ironically, it’s also a great way to procrastinate and while away the time while kidding yourself that you’re “prepping” to write.

Which is a fancy way, I guess, of making myself put away the games and get to work.

Settlers of CatanPosted by dhoffman on April 5th, 2009

Yesterday was rough.  I was in the office all day, then out in New Jersey to get a job started, then baaaack to the city to catch a train to walk/feed the pets and then drive up to lovely, scenic Peekskill, New York to meet Jessy and see Lewis Black performing live.

We got home at 11:00 and essentially lay down and went to sleep.

Peekskill is not-so-much a mecca of hoity-toity restaurants.  Which is a nice way to say most of the eateries there were goddamned terrifying.  We found a coffee house where we were able to find snacks, but when you get right down to it, neither of us had dinner last night.

So, one of the first things we did, upon rising, today, was set out in search of food.  We were successful in our quest, and then returned home to watch the classic bit of schlock, Eight Legged Freaks (which Jessy had, somehow, never seen).

Tonight, we had dinner with friends and then returned home to play a round of Settlers of Catan.  Settlers is one of those things which I was familiar with in a peripheral sort of fashion.  Which is, I knew the name, and when someone would mention it, I’d not in a knowing way and change the subject fast.

I think I’ve linked this before, but just in case, here’s the Wired article which piqued my interest enough to go out and pick up a copy of the game.  Jessy and I downloaded the Xbox Live Arcade demo of the game, and played a couple rounds, but it’s MUST more fun to play at a table of four people.

So, that’s what we did after dinner tonight, eathing dessert and learning-by-doing how to play Settlers in the flesh.

The people we were playing with are not gamers by any definition.  One, for instance, won’t play video games b/c he’s too embarrassed by his utter inability to play (though, we did get him drunk once up on a time and playing Wario Ware on the Wii).

They jumped right in.  Oh, I got some funny looks as I set up the board, and the first couple times around the table were filled with a lot of explanations.  We probably did some stuff wrong, too, but by the third time around, two things became abundantly clear: first, that there’s no such thing as a “friendly game” when Jessy is at the table, and, second, that Settlers of Catan is fun as hell and incredibly easy to get into.

Our friends finally left because Jessy was stomping us and it was getting late.  But we’re already talking about getting together to play again and, “next time, we’ll do something simpler with food so we can play that game more.”

“That game” — that’s what non-gamers call a game when they discover games can be fun.  “That game”.  It’s like when a non-movie fan sees something they like.  “We should watch that movie again”.

There’s already talk of getting a third couple to come along, so now I’ve got to pick up the 5-6 player expansion set.

Fun times.

Creativity or Discovery?Posted by dhoffman on March 29th, 2009

I read recently in a Wired.com interview with the German creator of the boardgame, Settlers of Catan, the following quote:

I felt like I was discovering something rather than inventing it.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard a more succinct description of the creative process — when it’s firing on all cylinders — than that right there.

Discovery, yes.  That’s what it feels like.  Not like you’re creating something, not like you’re making connections, thinking, “okay, if this character here does this, then that character over there can do that”.  That IS what you’re doing, of course, but the sensation can be so revelatory as to feel not like creation but like discovery.

I’ve been pounding my head, I think since Thursday, on a single, somewhat extended section to close out Chapter Four.  I went through a bunch of neat ideas, tried umpteen-number of different ways to express what should have been some very simple (but important) stuff, typed, deleted, typed, deleted, a hundred times over.

Today, with little fanfare, I sat down, went to the top of the section, tidied up what I already had (about 800 words, give or take) and knocked the rest of it right out of the park.

The only problem, in point of fact, is that this section was supposed to lead to the close of the chapter, but now it’s longer and more emotionally powerful than I’d originally intended.  Bringing it to where I need to go next (a couple characters talking in a bar) is not going to feel satisfying in the least.

So, I’m tossing around a couple options.  Either (1) go to the bar, or (2) skip the bar and go right to Chapter Five, or, (3) push Five back to Six and have a medium-sized, new Chapter Five, which incorporates the bar and some other stuff I should probably be getting to.

The problem with (3) up there, which is the likeliest candidate, I’d say, is it has the potential to break something *else* I’ve been doing.  Namely, each chapter, in and of itself, represents either a day or part of a day.  Which is to say, when you go from One to Two, it’s not the same day (hmm, perhaps that was obvious).  Going to the bar in “New Five” would break that — unless the “bar” conversation moved to a brunch the next day, or something (which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but I could manage it, etc., etc.)

For clarity: this is a GRAND problem to have.  something which started out as a bit of a throwaway section has grown to affect the structure of the story around it.  And while I was there, writing it, I was also there, marveling at what I was writing, as it unfolded.  It accomplishes EXACTLY what I had planned for it, only in an almost-completely different way than I’d intended.

Discovery, then.  Truly grand.