Ohbalto Online Welcome to the new blog. Same as the old blog.

I Will Never, Ever Get Daylight Savings Time RightPosted by dhoffman on March 9th, 2009

Thanks to Daylight Savings Time, which I can never fully comprehend, it’s either a quarter after two or a quarter after midnight.  It’s certainly not a quarter after one, as my clock says it is.

Ah, what can you do?

We were busy most of the day today, first seeing Watchmen (my short review: I loved it until I hated it.  I’m convinced the last twenty minutes were shot and edited by a completely different crew.  I don’t care about “the ending”, if you know what I mean, inasmuch as I care that the ending segment felt jarringly different from the entire rest of the movie), then running some errands.

In the wake of that was working out, food, some quality time by the fireplace and then, finally, writing.  Chapter Three exceeded all expectations tonight by doing almost exactly what I wanted it to do, almost exactly how I wanted it to do it.

I’m not sure if I can ably communicate how rare a thing that is.

Now, regardless of whether it’s an hour later than I think or an hour earlier, I think I should get to bed.  I’m either getting an extra hour of sleep tomorrow morning or an hour less.  Either way, I suspect I’ll be tired (it’s sort of my thing).

Free Association TheaterPosted by dhoffman on March 7th, 2009

The last couple days were crap for writing; I was too tired to do much more than crawl into bed on Thursday (this happens, usually, once a week, as I tend to stay up too late most nights burning that old midnight oil) and Friday was just a wash.

I made up for lost time by spending almost the entire day today plugging away.

I’m never sure if the stuff I’m typing up is the sort of thing anyone else would find interesting, in the context of “how did he write that?”  I try to write stuff I might find interesting so, if you think posts like these are dull, just skip ahead and wait for the next funny video I link.

Essentially, Chapter Three is one of three chapters that have a specific goal to achieve, but no actual plan to achieve that goal.  So, what I did today was something I like to think of as Free Association Theater.  Basically, I opened up a new Word file and started typing.  It’s similar in function to pacing the room, talking to myself except (a) I have a written record of what I say, and (b) I tend to type faster than I can talk.

Several thousand words later, I found I’d worked out what I wanted to work out, had a plan for the stuff I needed to plan, and I got cracking.  I was rather productive, and had to force myself to stop a little while ago (this blog post is being typed in the lull between dinner and watching, perhaps, City of Ember courtesy of Netflix) lest I got carried away.

“Carried away”  Yeah.  I was rolling pretty well and wanted to take a step back to make sure I wasn’t overdoing it.  So I did.  I’ll get back to the chapter either tonight or tomorrow, after Jessy and I get back from seeing Watchmen on the big, fat Imax screen.

The chapter is working well, for all of it.  It took me near to forever to find the proper tone.  Once I found that, I realized I had no idea what I wanted to say.  If you need a real world equivalent, imagine you made the decision to drive to Milwaukee from Chicago.  Great.  Now you need to sort out exactly which routes you’ll take to get there.  Local roads?  Highway?  Sure, you could just plug it into Google Maps or turn on the GPS, but where’s the fun in that.  Anyone can do that.  Finding your own path, coming up with a new and interesting route, that’s what makes it fun.

So, there you go.

Also, just to foil the folks who skipped this post in search of the next silly video, I’d like to present this:

Who Watches the Watchmen . . . Saturday Morning Cartoon?Posted by dhoffman on March 6th, 2009

Some of you kids out there will check this video out, shake your head, and not get it.  But if you were around in the late 70′s and early 80′s, you will get the joke.  Oh, will you ever get the joke . . .

Filler Text in Sheep’s ClothingPosted by dhoffman on March 4th, 2009

Yesterday was one of those idiot-crazy-productive days  where you start off with almost nothing on your plate and then, fifteen hours later, turn around and say, “crap, I got all that done in one day?”

Somehow, someway, between the work and emails and phone calls and cooking (!), I also managed to get nearly 2,000 GOOD words written.  I’ve sort of taken everything I had for Chapter Three, put it in the blender, hit puree, and now I’m spreading it gently on some sort of . . . I don’t know, toast.

Okay, that metaphor fell apart towards the end.  Point is, some choice editing and a few adjustments and things are moving along nicely.  I even managed to crawl into bed at a somewhat human hour.

One thing I’ve picked up about how I craft a world in the past month or so is this: sitting down and just pounding out a few thousand words with a vague notion of where I want to go and what I want to accomplish is mostly just a jumping-off point.  There’s nothing wrong with that, intrinsically.  It’s quite good and satisfying, actually.

Going back and fixing something and seeing how it works better, how it’s 900% more solid and in line with where the story needs to be, and not just filler text in sheep’s clothing is a VERY good feeling.

This weekend has Watchmen and the possibility of my wife’s sister giving birth to her first child.  Saturday should be a good day for writing and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be blogging about Chapter Four this time next week.

Lil’ WatchmenPosted by dhoffman on February 26th, 2009

I’ve had this window open, literally, since 10:00 this morning.

Been too busy to write anything.

But, I’ve got a spare moment and I hate to let a free window go to waste, so here’s something fun to look at:

Of course, Watchmen fans know they’re not actually called, “The Watchmen” but why split hairs.

The movie comes out in a hair over a week.  Yes, twenty years later, we have a week before we get to see if Watchmen truly is, “unfilmable”.

Quite excited, come to that.