Alternate Futures

I've talked a little about this before, but part of the reason I enjoy the Madden games is the franchise mode that allows you to take a GM-type role with a team, making personnel decisions as you take them through the season. Not only can you come up with your own narratives based around the decisions you make, but the choices made by the 31 teams being simulated by the game lead to some entertaining stories as well. Here are some of the scenarios that have played out in future seasons, according to Madden:

1. The 2018 (I believe) Packers hit 11-4 before Aaron Rodgers is out with an injury that will extend into the playoffs. Desperate, they sign Michael Vick, who had been a free agent all season after several years of bouncing between teams (rated a 68 at this point). But Vick comes through--he gets the Packers through the playoffs before letting Aaron Rodgers take back over for the Super Bowl, which they win. Vick retires afterwards with the only Super Bowl ring of his career.

2. After spending his entire career with the Colts, Peyton Manning is released as a free agent and picked up by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who have a solid receiving core and a strong O-line, but lack a reliable quarterback. Manning goes on to have his strongest season in several years, and faces his brother Eli in the NFC Championship. The Bucs win and go on to take the Super Bowl, allowing him to retire with one last ring.

3. Serious salary cap issues (before I learned how to manage it better) force the Packers to release two of their veterans, QB Aaron Rodgers and CB Tramon Williams. Rodgers goes to the Dolphins, where he stays for the duration of his career but unfortunately never makes it back to the playoffs. Williams goes to the Bears, who release him a season later. The Packers pick him back up and he proceeds to save the NFC championship game with a clutch interception late in the fourth quarter.

It's kind of silly and it's (if anything) a secondary concern for the developers, but the opportunity to come up with little stories is probably the reason I keep playing the game. People say that sport games lack depth, but the fact is, sports lack depth when you look at them as simple physical competitions. Passion in sports comes from the little stories--the loyal veterans, the player stories, the dedicated fans. You may have to work a little harder to find it in a video game, but I like to think it's still there.

Ways Not to Write a Novel

It's a tricky thing, not writing a novel, and you may need some helpful advice to get you through the process. Fortunately for you, dear reader, I have a great deal of experience in not writing a novel, and I'm going to share with you some of the top techniques. Be warned; some of these are not for beginners.

1. Netflix. If you're not subscribed, you should definitely sign up--at least for the online streaming. Sure, you can probably find everything on Netflix elsewhere and save $8 a month, but Netflix has a magical invention that is almost essential to not writing a novel: the instant queue. In less than twenty minutes, you can have the next 250 hours of viewing planned and lined up, ensuring that you'll even have to think about what to watch next, lest you be tempted to give up and get back to work. Need a place to start? I recommend diving into something with more than 200 episodes, like Law and Order: SVU.

2. Discuss your story. This one's a classic--writers have been using it to not write for centuries. At every opportunity, tell your other writer friends about your novel; talk about your characters and the brilliant narrative that will bring them all together. If, somehow, you manage to exhaust those topics, move on to talking about your eventual search for an agent and things you'll talk about on your book tour.

3. Video Games. You're bound to be getting burnt out, and video games are vital for restoring the creative process. Just shut off your brain for a while. It's for the best.

4. Research. It sounds boring, but don't be fooled. You have no idea of knowing what you might need to have experience in when you first start your novel. Dedicate yourself to at least 2 hours every day hitting random Wikipedia articles and reading Cracked.com.

5. YouTube. Just start with one two-minute clip of something you enjoy. A song, or perhaps a kitten slideshow. Then, follow the related video links until you have been completely enveloped by the YouTube vortex. Once you're in the vortex, don't worry about putting off your novel--there's no way you'll escape.

You may have noticed that many of these techniques require access to technology, but don't think they're your only options. If you're trying not to write a novel, it may be the perfect time to pick up a new hobby like origami, or lawn darts. Is your kitchen stocked? Closets clean and organized? Bills paid? When in doubt, just take a look around and you're sure to find something. Perhaps a blog post.

Now, if you're actually looking for ways to write a novel, I'm not sure I can help with that. I mean you could, in theory, just not do all those things...but I fail to see how that could be at all possible. You're probably doomed.

50,228 Words

That, I am proud to say, was my word count for November, though the word verification on the site only gave me 50,051. After years of feeble efforts and failure, I finally beat NaNoWriMo. I had a strong start (4500 words on day one) and then started to fall behind at the halfway point, but I managed to hit 50,000 a day early after a staggering (for me) 12,000 words in 3 days.

NaNoWriMo proved something to me that I thought was impossible. Not that I could write 50,000 words in a month--I knew that was something I could do, it was just incredibly unlikely. Rather, it proved that I could find the time to write 50,000 words in a month without sacrificing everything else. I certainly made more time for writing than ever before, but it's not like I had to become a shut-in to do so. Having completed NaNoWriMo makes the idea of finishing the novel seem like a much less daunting process.

But that's where the self-congratulations end, because since December started, I haven't upped that word count at all. I'm not sure if it's because there's no longer a community for encouragement or competition, or if it's simply that I'm not sure what to do next, but despite defeating NaNoWriMo, this draft is only about 60% completed. And after that comes the editing process.

One of the dangers of NaNoWriMo is that it allows you to get a little too caught up in your achievement, and you forget how much more work is left to be done. I'm getting back to work on the novel, albeit at a much slower pace--if I can have the first draft done by the end of February, I think I'll be doing okay. But who knows? Those 4000 word days were kind of fun, in a psychotic sort of way.

Please Don't Quit While You're Ahead

I'd like to share with you, if I may, a brief history of my dealings with NaNoWriMo.

I don't know for sure what year I began, but I know it was when NaNoWriMo was still relatively unknown--I think 2003, which would make me a junior in high school. The concept was new and exciting, and I found myself really looking forward to November, when I would tackle my first ever novel-length writing project. I'd write the novel I started developing in junior high and had written an opening chapter to once before. Most of the book (I thought) was already planned out, so it was just a matter of writing it down. How hard could it be?

My first NaNoWriMo, I wrote roughly 200 words.

I tried again (with the same story) the next year. And the year after that. I managed to crack into 4 digits, writing probably 1000 words each year. 2% of the 50,000 required for NaNoWriMo. It was around that time I decided that NaNoWriMo was not for me--though oddly, I still believed I was capable of completing a novel. Just not in one month.

I stayed away for a few years until, late in the summer of 2009, I mentioned NaNoWriMo to my writer-type friends, forgetting that not everyone spends as much time online as I do and assuming they already knew about it. After I hesitantly explained to them the wonder and madness that is NaNoWriMo, they decided this was something we would do.

At first, I was adamant that I would not be participating. I knew better. I'd been where they were--the excitement that comes from a ridiculous, but plausible goal--and I knew the disappointment that lay ahead. But they were persistent. It would be different--I was older now, and my writing had matured. We'd be doing it as a group, so I'd be pushed to carry on. So against my better judgment, I went for it. But this time, I did things differently. I went in completely blind, making up my plot on the spot November 1, 2009. That year, I made it to 10,000 words. A vast improvement, to be sure, but another failure.

By fall of 2010, I knew what to expect. Again, they talked me into it (my wife, in her rookie NaNoWriMo year, was the only one of us to reach 50K). So I tried again. My 2010 count? 20,000. Still better, and still failing.

So this year, I convinced myself that I was going to give up the dream that NaNoWriMo was something I could accomplish. I told my writing friends that they'd be doing this one without me, and I stuck with it. Until a week before November.

I decided that I wanted to--needed to, even--try again this year. (Why I decided that is another post in itself). So at midnight on November 1, I again dove in.

And I don't know what it is--maybe I found the perfect combination of an idea that I had invested in but hadn't planned much, or maybe now that I'm out of school I can finally feel like writing is not something to be feared and avoided--but this year, for the first time, I feel like I have a chance at winning. At just over a week in, I'm already caught up with last year's all-time high word count.

It's today that worries me. Today I wrote only 100 words.

The key, I know from experience, is to get back to it tomorrow. And maybe I have nothing to worry about. Let's face it, I'm not exactly a prolific writer, and for the last week I've been putting in an average of 2300 words a day. To borrow an analogy often made by Mur Lafferty, it's like deciding to run 2 miles a day after years of sitting on a couch. You will burn out if you push too hard.

So I'm hoping that today was just the break I needed from the fatigue that comes from writing more in a week than you have in the past year. I'm not in any danger, since according to NaNoWriMo's handy graph I can actually go another two days without writing and be on schedule, but I can't let myself fall into that trap as I have in years passed. Tomorrow, it's back to work.

And somehow, that idea no longer fills me with dread.

Nearly November

I stayed up tonight with the intention of revising/rewriting a short story I intend to submit, but about 1300 words in I've pretty effectively lost focus.

I really enjoy the first of editing--finding the problems. I like to find some of the ridiculous inconsistencies I can manage even in only a few thousand words (typically, characters introduce themselves twice with different names, or start the story at 19 and end it as 29). I like finding the rough patches that I know have promise and cutting out the lines I was clearly insane to think had any potential.

But then comes the second part, where I have to figure out -how- to expand on the areas that I know need to be fixed. The part where I have to decide on a name or age that will be the same through the entire story. That part is entirely more difficult, which is why I enjoy editing other people's stories quite a bit more than editing my own. I don't have to do step two for other people.

And speaking of writing, it's something I'm becoming increasingly bipolar about. In the same day, I'll go from thinking that writing is simply too much work and a waste of my time to really believing that I should be spending every free minute working on a project and that if I do I'll actually find some success. And maybe that's pretty typical for writer-types, but it's also incredibly frustrating.

But I haven't stopped, so that's something. I'm debating if I want to give NaNoWriMo one more shot this year--every year, I insist that I'm tired of losing (which is true) and that I'm going to call it quits, but somehow I always end up trying again. I first gave it a shot only a couple of years after it started, and after several pathetically weak attempts, decided to give up. This was right about the time my writer friends discovered NaNo, and I found myself roped in again. I made 20,000 words last year, which is less than halfway to the month's goal. It is also the closest to it I have ever come and the most I have ever written in a single month.

So I'm sure I'll be trying again this year. Because if I can't hate myself for what I've gotten myself in to, what's the point of even being a writer?

The Triumphant Return

This post started as a script for a vlog--oh, by the way, I've been doing a vlog called English Majors Talking (or English Major Stalking) and you can find it here.   After a disastrous two-hour attempt at editing, iMovie crashed and I lost everything.  I still have the footage, but I don't really feel like reliving that experience, so it's not getting edited.  But rather than have it be a complete waste, I thought it might be worth putting up here.

I noticed that as our videos get later and later it becomes harder to actually post the video, and I have a theory to why that is (at least for me).  And to talk about this, I want to use Randy Moss.  (Yes, that Randy Moss).  

I think we’ve been sort of conditioned to believe in the triumphant return--you’re away for a while, but then you come back better than ever.  So take Randy Moss.  I always thought he was overrated, but he’s still a solid receiver and officially, he’s in retirement.  But he’s said that he’d consider coming back to the NFL for a team with a playoff bid.  (Disclaimer: Since writing the script, I saw an article in which he announced that he had no intention to return, but I'm sticking with the example to make my point.  Besides, you know how often retirements stick in the NFL.)  He’s not looking just to play--he wants to put up great stats late in the season and send a good team all the way through.  He wants to have a triumphant return to the NFL, and you see it all the time in football--Brett Farve tried and it didn’t go so well, but Michael Vick returned and dominated. When you pull it off, you're practically a hero--you get a clean slate.  If Randy Moss comes back and does well, we forget that his last season was mostly a game of "No, you take him" in which he accomplished very little.  Instead, he becomes the underdog who came back and proved himself. 

And we see that everywhere, not just in football.  The first time doing something outside in the summer needs to be epic after a long winter.  You need to go do something crazy if you haven’t seen a friend in months to make up for lost time.  I think we’re conditioned to believe that the longer the lead-up, the better things need to be, so as we fall more behind there's much more pressure to do well.

But like Hank Green said in the Wednesday's vlogbrothers, sometimes a bad decision is better than no decision.   Sometimes you just have to put it out there and move on.  We might not have anything spectacular to make up for lost time, but we can at least stop more time from being lost and there’s a lot more value in that than people (like me) realize.  It just doesn’t make a great narrative--which makes me wonder if people like writers aren’t especially prone to making bad decisions because subconsciously they realize that the story will be that much better.  Not only do we over-value the triumphant return, I think sometimes we intentionally do poorly because we believe we can set one up.  It's a stupid risk at best, and it's without a doubt a waste of time.

Triumphant-Return-Syndrome has definitely had a strong impact on my written blog as well.  I tend to have pretty large gaps between posts; if after two months, nothing has been interesting enough to post enough, how is today any different?  And that’s a hard habit to break, but I know that I need to.  I'm beginning to believe that the best kept secret to success is that it's often disguised as mundane work.

About That Time

I seem to be on something of a monthly posting schedule, which isn't all that horrible considering some of the other gaps between posts. 

I'm now all settled in to my new apartment in Madison and found a new desktop support job, although it's only a three month contract with no plan to hire at the end of the contract, although they aren't ruling it out either.  Still, even if it only lasts three months, it keeps the paychecks coming and gives me some more experience to add to the resume, so no complaints here.

I'm done with college, probably forever, which is a surreal thing for someone who spent as much time as I did putting off graduation.  (It might become more believable once I actually receive my diploma).  So now it's time for that part in my life where I decide what it is exactly that I do.  For now, it's IT.  But I don't want to work on computers forever.

Don't get me wrong.  I really do like the job, and from what I've seen so far of the company I just started at, I think I'll like it there.  I like solving random technical issues and I like helping people.  I've known several people who wanted nothing to do with IT after actually working in it, and I'm not one of those people. 

But I went to school to study English.  Well, that's not entirely true--I went to school to study music, then I transferred to another school, then I started studying computer science, and then I decided to study English.  I want to get a career in writing or editing, not to justify my degree, but because it's something I feel genuinely connected with.  So I've been thinking of looking into a couple of (what seem like legitimate) online editing openings.  The challenging part is that assuming I was to get accepted, those positions are looking for 20-30 hours a week, which would put me up to a 60-70 hour work week between editing and my full-time job.  For someone as in love with free time as I am, this is a daunting thing to consider.

And I'd like to build some freelance experience to branch into a full-time editing job.  Sounds great, until you consider that moving from a desktop support IT job to an entry-level editing position will almost definitely be a pay cut.  And I like money.  I use it for things like not being homeless or not being yelled at by the bank. 

In short, I was a liberal arts student.  I want to read or write or make music as a career, but it's a pretty tricky branch to go out on and I'm getting increasingly afraid of heights.  (In this metaphor, heights represent poverty).  If I try to go this route, it will be a lot of work with questionable payoffs. 

And yet, it's still so appealing to me.

One last note.  Speaking of things that I'm hesitant to do, here's a video of me covering a song from the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  I recently started this vlogging project with a friend and we've been doing it long enough that I feel like I should probably start telling other people about it, even if I am making a fool of myself occasionally.

Typing Without Fear

In the latest Vlogbrothers video, John Green said this fantastic line about writing:

"Writing does, at least for me, require quite a lot of concentration.  And to concentrate you must be prepared to face the terrifying spectre of boredom without fear."

Hearing this made my night.  Most writers love talking about writing more than anything else, and to hear them talk about it, writing should be some kind of transcendental experience.  So when I sit down to write and have a hard time getting out even a few words before hitting Facebook or taking a sudden interest in cleaning out my closet, I can't help feeling like maybe I'm doing it wrong.

So hearing a successful published author so succinctly describe the lonely drudgery that is the actual action of writing was a great comfort to me.  In theory, writing should be exciting.  As writers, we can create worlds and people and plots.  But the creativity part can only get you so far before you have to actually sit down and start the work part.

But if you're lucky, sometimes the work part pays off and you get to make videos and write in Amsterdam.  So maybe it's not so bad. 

Here We Go Again

Here's a familiar scenario.  It's after midnight, I have class in the morning, and I find that the thing I want to do least of all is go to sleep.  I'm finding that as my penultimate semester comes to an end, it's becoming more and more common of an occurrence.

My final semester.  There's something I was afraid I'd never be able to say.  After six years in college, the thought of actually graduating falls somewhere between ludicrous and, well, whatever the adjective for "about damn time" is.  And with my senior semester comes senioritis.  As a long time procrastinator, I expected this--I pretty much went into college with senioritis--but I had no idea just how bad it could get.  Simply going to class has begun to feel like an overwhelming chore, let alone doing homework (and getting ahead is right out).  With only--fuck, less than!?--a month left, I keep expecting some switch to go off that kicks me into high gear and pushes me to finish things, but it keeps not happening. 

I think part of the problem is that I'm taking it for granted that I'm graduating, and somehow believe that it will happen on its own without any input from me.  So I'm becoming much more concerned with the near future rather than the present, being faced with the knowledge that we'll be moving to Madison by June and I'll have to enter the so-called real world. 

At the moment, I'm waiting to hear back from a job interview I had last week in Madison.  If things go well, it'll make things much simpler for me.  I'll have the job aspect lined up, we'll know what area to look for apartments in, and I can try to focus on what's happening now.  If it's a no-go, I'll need to keep looking for jobs while we try to guess where to live.  You can guess why I'm hoping for an optimistic result, here.

As anxious as I am about the whole thing (though I've been told that anxiety for me is roughly the same as a normal person who has become slightly concerned about a trivial matter), I don't want to sound like it's just a hassle.  I really am excited to graduate.  There's just a lot of work involved in getting that far.

I'm thrilled to be moving to Madison.  It's been ages since I went to a concert, and Madison is the perfect place for someone looking to rediscover the music scene.  And I'm looking forward to moving to a new place.  I actually really enjoy moving, except the heavy lifting part--it's a nice chance to look through everything and toss out the things I don't need, and it's a change of environment.  I get tired of the same setup after a while, and our current apartment of 3 years doesn't really give us many options to rearrange. All in all, I'm looking forward to it.

I just need to get that far.

I Played D&D For The First Time...

...And I'm not as embarrassed to admit it as I thought I'd be.

Backstory. My friend Martin (whose blog I would link to here were it not completely devoid of posts) has been trying for the better part of eight years to get me to give it a shot and I've resisted—partially because it just seemed too nerdy, partially because it seemed overly complicated, and largely out of spite. Recently, he asked me about playing again and I decided to stop judging it without trying it. Making no promises, I told him I'd give it a try over winter break.

So it finally happened. I rolled up a character and we played with a group of four, and it was pretty much what I was expecting. D&D is essentially playing pretend for grown-ups with some rules to keep things from getting too ridiculous. And by some rules, I mean books and books of rules that you will need to constantly reference to get anywhere. Also, there's math. More than you'd think for something people consider to be a game.

But then, as a gamer, I can't really criticize it for all those things. Any video game is a fantasy, although they're able to hide the rules and math behind physics engines and GUIs. And if we're going to compare, D&D has one thing video games can't hope to accomplish—legitimate choice.

In any story-based game, you'll hit a wall at some point. Typically, you'll hit a point at which you either complete the mission as written, or you fail, die, or stop moving forward in the game. Take a game like the Grand Theft Auto series. You're on a mission to kill someone. If you fail, and he gets away, you just fail the mission. That's it. Try again. Regardless of how involved you were with the game, the immersion just stopped.

So what if it didn't? What if instead, you reported back to the person who gave you the mission. Maybe you get a second chance, and maybe you fail again. Now, they're after you too because you can't be counted on. An agent for the other side offers you protection if you'll help them instead. Blow it for them, and maybe you've managed to piss off the two strongest crime bosses in town and all you can do is run.

Games are working on this, but the fact is the only thing that can make a continual experience is a real intelligence responding to the player. A video game can only account for so many choices, and players are always going to be able to punch holes in the linear narrative. The kind of AI needed for that sort of interaction is a long, long way off.

Because D&D (or any pen-and-paper RPG) has someone running the game, the game world genuinely responds to your choices. There's a direction the plot is being moved in, but the players often have the ability to hijack it as they see fit. The trade-off for the added freedom is the added work—you need to track your own inventory, statistics, maps. But with friends, the work part goes by pretty easily, and I think I'm going to keep playing.

I'm just not going to tell people. I mean, it's still pretty nerdy.