I’ve recently made it a personal goal of mine to write one novel-length book every year for the rest of my life.

…ambitious? Eh. I’m reasonably certain of my abilities to do it. And hey, no one said I was sane about this sort of thing.

(Just between you and me, I have this fantasy of somebody discovering this huge box full of dusty old manuscripts years after I die and it somehow making this big impact on said person’s life, but then again I have weird fantasies.)

Anyways, I’ll be participating in NaNoWriMo again, because I’ve found that, for me anyways, there is nothing like a healthy combination of peer pressure and a Daily Word Count graph to get you off of your butt and writing.

Now last year I wrote my book entirely in Open Office, which is a spectacular program by the way. And you know what, Open Office is great for if you’re just making it all up as you go along, which is what I was doing last year.

This year is different. This year I already have a pretty strong outline of the entire story. On top of that, if there’s one thing I’ve learned over this last year of editing, it’s that going into the project with a strong idea of linear progression for every plotline in your book will save you a lot of headache later on down the road.

So, having heard good things about these newfangled “writing programs” that give you a place to sort said plotlines, I went off in search of one.

I downloaded and tried a few. Most were too simple, or too complicated, or didn’t have what I was looking for. A program called “Writer’s Cafe” came pretty close but the trial was pretty limited and I didn’t feel like forking out the cash, especially since I’m still unemployed at the moment. A different program, an open source project called Kabikaboo, also came close, but ultimately it’s an outlining tool more than a writing tool (although to be honest, it’s a pretty dang good outlining tool and I’ll probably be using it as a supplement while I write this year’s book.)

Still, it was looking more and more like I’d be writing in Open Office again when I got Scrivener working in Wine.

See, Scrivener is known as the writing app, and for years it’s been Mac-exclusive. Recently, they released a beta test for Windows, and of course, all us Linux dorks came crawling out of the woodwork on the forums– but I’ll get back to that in a minute.

Basically, the main idea of Scrivener is breaking your writing project down into little manageable chunks, which you can then assign custom tags and re-arrange at your leisure. This makes it easy to move scenes around and organize the aforementioned plotlines.

It’ll look something like this (sneak peek of my upcoming book! Le gasp!):

As you can see, as a way of testing the program, I’ve tossed a bunch of my book’s early scenes into the program, and I’ve been able to sort them and tag them and summarize them, and already I can see how helpful this is going to be for keeping track of all those pesky plotlines.

I’m sure it’s got all sorts of other functionality that I’ve yet to discover, as well.

My only real concern at this point is being able to export the final project out to a different format if needs be; I haven’t yet tested it and while it has an export to .rtf feature I need to see how nicely that will play with Open Office. That’s next up in the Testing Queue.

But lemme tell you what really sold me on Scrivener already.

Remember when I mentioned that all of us crazy Linux folks showed up at the Scrivener forums, helping each other get it working and providing bug reports alongside everyone else?

Well apparently the Scrivener programmers were pleasantly surprised at this and are gonna throw together an (albeit unofficial and unsupported) Linux-native version for us to play with. In their own time.

Wow. Making a version of your software for less than 1% of the desktop market share, just to be nice. I’m so impressed. I mean, you could make the argument that they’re just tossing us a bone to get us out of their hair, but even then NOBODY HAS EVER TOSSED US A BONE BEFORE.

Yeah, I’m pretty stoked.

And that’s why I’m here to tell you about this program. 99% of the time I’m all about the Free and Open Source, and Scrivener is admittedly neither, but I like to make exceptions for good software and good people and so far I’m impressed. If you’re a writer and on Windows (or Linux!), go test the Beta version. If you win NaNo you get 50% off when the final program is actually released. And that’s a pretty good deal.

The penguin gods are pleased today!

There’s one in every family. You know, like Star Trek V, or Batman & Robin. Yup, every series has got That One Thing.

Super Mario Bros. 2 is Mario’s That One Thing.

…fortunately Mr. Freeze isn’t in Super Mario Bros. 2.

And fortunately, Super Mario Bros 2 is AWESOME.

See, this wasn’t originally a Mario game. Nintendo just took the original game, named Doki Doki Panic, and conveniently gave it Mario sprites. The result is this crazy game that involves magic potions that take you to alternate phases, hurling vegetables around, bird face doors, and Warp Vases instead of Warp Pipes.

But somehow, if you mix all of this up in a blender and serve chilled, it all comes out amazingly. This game is redonkulously fun.

Also, you can be Toad. And we all know that Toad is basically the best Mario character, besides Yoshi or the talking stopwatch in Diddy Kong Racing.

There’s really not much else to say about this game; the gameplay is pretty straightforward. It’s just different. But different is good when it’s still solid, and this game is.

Also: Birdo. Enough said.

BEST THINGS

1. NO SET SCHEDULE:
“Whoops, I stayed up too late tonight watching House reruns. Oh well, good thing I don’t have to be anywhere in the morning~!”

2. NO FEELING BAD ABOUT SPENDING THE DAY ON THE INTERNET:
With a job: “Awww, I wanted to be productive today but I spent the entire day sucked into a link spiral on Wikipedia. I guess there’s always next week.”
Without a job: “I spent the entire day sucked into a link spiral on Wikipedia. AWESOME! Let’s do it again tomorrow!”

3. MORE TIME TO DO ALL THAT CRAP YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO DO BUT NEVER HAD TIME FOR, LIKE REMIX MIDIS OF LADY GAGA SONGS.
…what?

4. SAVING MONEY YOU WOULD HAVE OTHERWISE SPENT ON GAS OR LUNCH AT WORK
Seriously I probably dumped close to $100 a month on lunches/the snack machine alone. And let’s not get into gas money.

5. PLAYING WOW ALL DAY
“Holy crap suddenly I have time to do randoms. On all my characters. OMG. OMG.”

—

WORST THINGS

1. PLAYING WOW ALL DAY
“If I do the Argent Tournament dailies on one more character I’m going to punch a toy kitten.”

2. BEING BROKE
“GUYS GUYS I FOUND A $5 BILL I DIDN’T KNOW I HAD. THIS IS THE GREATEST DAY OF MY LIFE. I’M GOING TO CELEBRATE BY BUYING ONE MOUNTAIN DEW AND DRINKING IT SLOWLY THROUGHOUT THE DURATION OF THE WEEK.”

3. AWKWARD MOMENTS
Phone Rings
Bill Collector: “Hi uh, your bill for such-and-such is past due.”
Me: “Yeah, I don’t have a job.”
Bill Collector: “Oh.”
*crickets*
Bill Collector: “…well, it’s still due. Just an FYI.”
Me: “Yeah I know.”
Bill Collector: “Are you sure?”
Me: “Yeah.”
Bill Collector: “Okay because I just wanted to make sure you know that your bill is due and–”
*click*

4. CABIN FEVER
“I’m going to go drive around for a few hours.”
“Why? Where are you going?”
“Nowhere. But it’s at least slightly more interesting than walking in circles around the house.”

5. GETTING OUT OF SHAPE
“OMG MY FEET ARE SOOOO SORE”
“…um, you were only at Wal-Mart for like ten minutes.”
“SHUT UP I’MA GO LAY DOWN. AND PLAY GAME BOY.”

—

Still job-hunting. Your good vibes: send ‘em my way!

Admit it, guys. If you’re about my age, you have to admit it: As much as we love to make fun of Star Wars Episode I today, back in the day when we were kids we totally ate it up.

I did.

I think I had a Jar Jar Binks plushie.

Of course, if you’re like me, you also thought that the podracing scene was the best part of the movie by far, because crazy homebrew vehicles > wimpy lightsabers any day.

…well, now that I’ve got every nerd in the universe out to destroy me, let’s move on to the Nintendo 64 game that this spawned: Star Wars Episode I Racer.

I gotta say; this was one of the better racing games I played. The tracks were challenging (some of the later ones were very challenging) and the game really gives you a sense of speed that isn’t often matched.

Also driving through the canyon on Tatooine is fairly similar to driving down the highway in northern Idaho. True story.

One of my favorite parts of the game, though, is the sound design, because it was unintentionally hilarious. Examples include: your character saying things at the wrong time:

*podracer explodes*
Anakin: “It’s working. IT’S WORKING!”

…or characters saying the same line multiple times in a row.

Watto: “Have you seen… my chance cube? Have you seen… my chance cube? Have you seen… my chance cube?”

YES WATTO I THINK WE’VE SEEN YOUR CHANCE CUBE GOSH.

Seriously though, this game was good. Definitely one of the better racing games I’ve played, and probably the best thing that came out of Star Wars Episode I.

…well, except for those battle droids that say “Roger roger”. I liked those.

Disclaimer: You may or may not want to listen to me since I may or may not actually know what I’m talking about.

WRITE/DRAW/WHATEVER YOUR THING IS EVERY SINGLE DAY

Guys lemme tell you a story. Once upon I time I was about… 15 years old? And I decided I wanted to be an animator, for Disney. Now you have to understand something very important, and that very important thing is as follows: I COULDN’T DRAW. I wish I knew where my old stuff was so I could scan it in and show it to you to prove it. But I don’t know where it is so I can’t. Regardless, the point remains: I couldn’t draw. Once I decided I wanted to go into animation, I pulled out a sketchbook and tried to draw something. It was **awful**.

So you know what I did?

I started to draw

every

single

day

for months and months that eventually melted into years. I filled up sketchbooks every few months. I spent hours and hours a day drawing.

Slowly, I started to improve. It was a step by step process. I remember learning how to use basic shapes and things like circles to “build” characters from and I remember how much better everything got after that. Even then I still had a long way to go. But I was getting better and better and pretty soon my work was very much improved from how it had been that fateful day when I decided to “learn to draw”.

So by that time (I was about 17 or 18) I figured, what do artists do? They do art school stuff! So I took AP Art in high school. Looking back on it I was woefully unprepared, I’d only been really drawing for a couple of years after all, but I was game and took it anyway. At the end of the year I rounded up what I thought was my best stuff and sent it off to the AP scoring people.

A few months later I got my score: a 1. The lowest score possible.

I was insulted, and bitter.

I mean, really bitter.

So I quit drawing.

…

Yep, that’s right. Cause I got offended rather than choose to improve.

I didn’t start “really drawing” again for a good few years after that. In that short time since then I’ve seen how much I’ve improved and I wonder how much I would’ve improved if I hadn’t quit the first time.

DON’T FREAKING QUIT

I hate to break it to you but you aren’t going to become a crazy-awesome artist or the next bestselling author or the next chart-topping musician in two years. Probably not even five years. I know we all have fantasies of that sort of thing, heck, I have those fantasies all the time, but it’s just not feasible.

THIS DOESN’T EXCUSE YOU FROM TRYING EVERY DAY AND/OR MAKING A PLAN BECAUSE “OH IT’S JUST GOING TO TAKE TEN YEARS ANYWAY”

It’s really easy to procrastinate this stuff. Guess what: if you keep procrastinating you are never going to get to where you want to be.

If you are a creative person, I mean really truly one of those people who feels like they are going to die if they don’t do that thing they do (you will know what I’m talking about if you are)– well, chances are very good you’re prone to procrastination and/or getting discouraged early, since that seems to walk hand-in-hand with creativity, but you have to realize that this whole thing is just 95% perseverance. 95% realizing that yes, you’re going to have that crappy job for the next ten years but it only has to be ten years if you’re willing to put in the extra-curricular work on plying your craft.

Do I sound like a bad motivational poster yet?

No?

Okay, terrible jokes aside, I’ve had tons and tons of creative friends lately who are getting discouraged. I’m not going to tell you “don’t get discouraged” because everyone gets discouraged. I get discouraged. It’s a part of the process.

I am going to say: be careful. Don’t let “being discouraged” turn into “never getting anything done”.

If you believe you have something special to show the world, then you do.

A wise man once said that 80% of people in the creative world quit before “making it”.

To which I have two things to say:

One: Don’t be one of those 80%,

and

Two: Man, imagine all the cool stuff we’d have right now if they didn’t quit.

Just sayin’.

Some four or five years ago an unassuming Flash game featuring bunnies and bells and relaxing music took the internet by storm.

If you somehow missed out on this fad a few years back, and you just clicked on the link, then your day is now gone. I’m sorry. It’ll be worth it, though. Easy to learn and fiendishly addictive.

P.S. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours:

Ever been gripped with an idea or thought that you sort of halfway think is nuts but it turns into a project that you work on anyway, because it’s all you think about?

For some years I have been afflicted with the belief that flight is possible to man. My disease has increased in severity and I feel that it will soon cost me an increased amount of money if not my life. I have been trying to arrange my affairs in such a way that I can devote my entire time for a few months to experiment in this field.

- Wilbur Wright, 1900

Fortunately, you’re in pretty good company.

(Yeah, short post is short, but the above letter excerpt tickled my fancy and I wanted to share it.)

So for those who have been following the saga of the book I wrote last year, well– it’s finished. As in, it’s about as polished as I think I’m going to get it. Now I’ve reached the hard part, which is submitting queries to agents and publishers. And waiting. And waiting. And waiting. And getting rejection letters.

Adjusting to this process and train of thought has been a difficult thing to do. Welcome to a world where you, as a writer, are another brick in a wall. Where the highly personal and creative process that was writing your book has to make way for marketing and pigeonholing and making sure you meet a certain standard so the High and Mighty Publishers might possibly bother to glance in your direction.

(Who me, bitter?)

That’s how it works, though, and you have to live with it. Coming to grips with this was extremely difficult for me to do and I spent a lot of time dwelling on the whole inherent… well, “wrongness of it all” is a strong phrase, but there you go. It best describes my feelings, I suppose. I remember one day at work at the pet store, I was staring into the cricket bin and suddenly I felt a weird kinship with the insects that I was selling as lizard food. Crickets, often glorified in fable as being special by way of possessing the glorious gift of song– here they were, thousands of them in a bin, being sold for quite literally a dime a dozen, with no one giving them a second glance. Suddenly I realized that I knew what it felt like to “be a cricket”.

So one fitful night a few days later I couldn’t sleep for some reason. I would fall asleep for a few moments and then wake up tossing and turning, only to have the process repeat itself. It was a pretty terrible night all around. Something unusual was happening, though: every time I woke up I’d enter that bizarre phase between wakefulness and sleep where your thoughts and dreams all sort of tumble into one big ball of hallucinations, and every time that happened more and more of a new story would vividly appear to me. A new story that took the cricket metaphor and everything else I was feeling at the time and wrapped it up into a neat little package.

I woke up the next morning and after letting the previous night percolate in my brain a little, I went over to my computer and in twenty minutes I’d typed up a complete outline to what is going to be NaNo 2010. The entire story and its themes were, quite honestly, something I’d dreamed up, and yet the whole thing was surprisingly consistent. The things your unconscious self will come up with if you let it, huh?

Since then I’ve polished the story up and added more themes– visiting the Washington coast seemed to add a whole new layer of inspiration– and now I am really excited to write this up. This is a very personal and very quirky story– think Pixar meets Tim Burton meets Where the Wild Things Are– but every time I think about I just start counting down the days til November because gosh, I need to write this story.

Inspiration, it would seem, sometimes comes from the most difficult circumstances and the lowliest critters.

(Just look at his little face!)

You know, there’s really not a whole lot to say about Dr. Mario except for the following:

1.) Most Addictive Puzzle Game Ever (okay, okay, maaaaybe second to Tetris Attack),

and 2.) Catchiest Music Ever. Ever.

P.S.: Cannot be unheard:

I am Dr. Mario and I am saving lives
I look different in this game (I lost my hat, got a coat, doctor light, stethoscope)
I am Dr. Mario and I prescribe high fives
Laughter’s the best medicine so BWA HA HA HA! You fell down!
In the Mushroom Kingdom I’m the finest doc by far
I got my degree by watching House and Scrubs and E.R.
Brightly colored pills
They’ll cure all your ills
Just as long as you’ve got fever or the chills

(Lyrics courtesy brentalfloss on YouTube.)

So I was browsing this site of awesome fictional matchups and discovered something amazing.

Doc Brown and Sherlock Holmes vs. Carmen Sandiego.

So as I was thinking about how fantastically epic this would be, @kordwar decided to one up it:

Doc Brown and Sherlock Holmes vs. Carmen Sandiego and Professor Moriarty.

Doc Brown and Sherlock Holmes vs. Carmen Sandiego and Professor Moriarty.

…guys. I can’t hear your comments over the sound of the EPIC.