1000 words & books!

Ok, I am registered for NYC Midnight/1K word challenge, which starts on May 31.  So good heavens, I better start writing again.

Fortunately, I am heading up to our cabin (see picture upper right on blog) this weekend and should have some quiet time and, hopefully, inspiration. I have started two different stories this past week, but I am still stuck in the gate with both of them. Neil Gaiman says you have to finish things.  Fingers crossed.

I am also committing to reading more. I am currently half-way through Huck Finn, which is obviously amazing. I just picked up four books printed on actual paper, which I hope to tackle this summer:  Siddhartha, Roadside Picnic, Children of Time, and A Fire Upon the Deep. I also ordered Consider Phlebas, which should arrive tomorrow. Based on my reading speed, this will be very ambitious, and maybe a more realistic EOY goal.

If anyone wants to do a read along on any of these, let me know!

On the game dev front I have been experimenting in Unity (as opposed to following a course), and trying out a number of packages from the asset store.  I am gaining confidence and despair at the same time. Everything is easy and hard at the same time.  And I am not artistic!  (though I do have a very skilled daughter I will deploy once her school year wraps up :-))

peace, greg

Back to coding

Today I finished getting the new MBP set up, including re-installing Unity, Visual Studio Code, and Sourcetree.  I also figured out how to remap some of my keys on the Ducky keyboard thanks to this video from KeebNews. 

With that done, I then spent a few hours working through the first half of the Simple Driving game course, which is part two of the Unity Mobile C# Developer course I had started a while ago.   

Not done yet, but progress!

It feels good to be making stuff again.

Ebbing

As timestamps clearly show I have not blogged in a few weeks, and this accurately represents my activity on the creative front. I have been away from the keyboard.  I have not even added anything new to #vss365.

It's hard to explain why, actually?  Yes, I did spend time popping down to Washington, DC, to help my son wrap up his first year of college and move back to NJ for the summer.  And allergies have been a bugger.  And I have dealt with several car issues, and it's hockey playoffs, and my wife's birthday... but really I think it's just been a dip in my energy and confidence.  I started building a plot timeline for my larger story idea and then narrowed in on a scene in the story and tried to write it.  And that produced all sorts of issues. My descriptions were stilted, and I was unsure it's all that interesting. So I paused and then the pause gained momentum. Grrr!

But I also think this is normal.  I need to push through and just keep writing.  I already have new ideas because of the struggles. And I will only learn to write good descriptions through practice -- and reading more Mark Twain and Michael Chabon.

So ebbs and flows. 

My daughter says, "just get back to it."

indeed.