What are you WRITING?

SuperflyTNT wrote:

hotseatgames wrote: I'm writing a lot of flavor text and rules for a card game I'm making. I really like writing flavor text; it's fun trying to hint at something much bigger with only a couple of lines of text.

What ever happened with your miniatures "arena" game?

I haven't personally been involved with it in a couple of months. I stopped working on it so that the publisher could catch up with sculpting, art, etc. I'm not sure where they are with it. I got focused on City of Lycans, and now another game. If they get to the point where they are going to launch the kickstarter for realz, I'll turn my attention back to it.

I actually would like to see it happen. I had an idea for an "ooze" faction, which would allow me to create a gelatinous cube unit. I don't have a bucket list in life, but if I did, that would be on it.

Jeebus. Good luck, Shellhead. Been there.

I'm still posting occasionally to the blog ( dichotomouspurity.blogspot.com/ ), although a lot of what I post in spring and summer is critiques of GoT episodes, so be careful of spoilers there if you're not caught up (I specifically avoid spoilers for non-book readers, so no worries there.) Otherwise, I tend to focus on films and social issues (I have an idea percolating about the Isla Vista shooting/#NotAllMen/#YesAllWomen phenomenon based on a some conversations with friends in a bar tonight.)

I just finished the final edits on the proof for my story in this collection: www.gwdbooks.com/cthulhu-lives.html

And I'm in the midst of three short stories which are forming the first third of a serial novel based on a setting I created for a comic studio I co-owned in the 90s. I may pitch that to the same publisher, depending on how well it's flowing.

The company I worked for just went bankrupt, so I have a lot of time to write. And lucky that I have since I have to comedy shows that needs to be finished late august.

One of them is a show about being a geek. It's the fourth show I and two other comedians make, and it's usually a lot of fun to write. The other one is based on a character inspired by Stephen Colbert and thus a lot harder to write. But I'm only doing an hour with a fellow comedian (whos persona will be an extremely left wing douchebag) and I have some great stuff already so I'm not that worried.

Cool thread idea!

I have a lot of projects on the go right now. But the one I'm most excited about is my solo album. I've been working with several different bands over the years and I've always written songs that just don't fit into any of the projects. My buddy has a great studio and liked the tunes well enough that he offered to help me record these pieces for an independent project. It's so nice to work on writing things with no one but myself in mind, to call all the shots and what not. Much, much better.

I'm also working on an autobiography (more for my son than anything else but also as a kind of experiment to see what I remember about my own life). It's weird and really hard to not censor yourself.

There there is the wildcats project which is a series of really offensive songs I've written with buddies over the years (20 years worth now) and we're trying to write short shows to highlight the tunes. Probably mostly animation with a little live action sprinkled in. I'm really excited to see how this one turns out, if it's palpably satirical or just comes across as bigoted. If it isn't working we'll shelve it and keep it hidden, if it does... well that would rock but I have no clue what will happen just yet.

I'm always on the lookout for more writing projects and there are a couple of bands that I'm buds with that have hired me to write (and in some cases re-write/edit) their lyrics for them. That's pretty fun too. I openly admit that I'm not the best musician out there, but I'm pretty good with lyrics so I've kind of earned this rep in my group of buddies as the go to guy for this kind of work.

Wow, I didn't expect this thread to get popular so fast, much less to have such a variety of stuff in it! Thanks guys!

I've been trying to update my blog more often and so far I've managed to update it six times this month despite skipping one week! I should also have another review this weekend and another by next week so I'm very happy about this, the more I wrote the easier it is to keep writing and when I stall, I risk stalling for weeks.

I feel my last article, which was a review of The Republic of Rome is pretty representative of my strenghts and flaws right now. What I try to do with my reviews is to tell the reader what a game's raison d'être, why it is interesting or why it is not. But this is hard and I often don't quite find the words to do it so I substitute personality and insight for grandiloquence because it makes it easier to write.

Basically, I feel my reviews lack humanity. You know how a good reviewer can make you go "Oooh, I understand where you are coming from!" with a good phrase or a sharp description? That's what I lack, and it's more noticiable in my most positive reviews which I think are harder to write than negative ones.

(double post)

Erik Twice wrote: Basically, I feel my reviews lack humanity. You know how a good reviewer can make you go "Oooh, I understand where you are coming from!" with a good phrase or a sharp description? That's what I lack, and it's more noticiable in my most positive reviews which I think are harder to write than negative ones.

Recognizing what you perceive as a lack is a huge, huge step. Kudos -- you have a leg up. Being your own worst critic is a sure sign that the quality of your writing will climb over time.

Reading great writing and writing more are good ways to get better, but I think the good that comes from just talking to people face to face is undervalued. I find that the more I employ spoken language, the more articulate I am in person and in print. Three kinds of talking have had a huge impact on the quality of my writing: critiquing work in art school, where I had to figure out how to talk about stuff that often defied words; lecturing and conversing with students in my day job as a teacher, where I have to figure out how to get an idea across clearly to everyone in the classroom; and running role-playing games, where I have to set scenes and assume the roles of characters in a highly improvisational context. The main thing I feel the need to focus on these days is reading great writing on a regular basis and actively paying attention to what makes it great.

I'm in the midst of inking the latest chapter of my comic book right now, so there's not a lot of writing happening on that front at the moment. But I've been revising an adventure module for Dungeon World in preparation for kickstarting it, and gradually adapting Lord Dunsany's oeuvre into a document that I hope to turn into a Dungeon World sourcebook. Have any of you guys read much Lord Dunsany? It's frickin' great.

EDIT: Oh, and after playing Eldritch Horror last week, I'm now in the process of gradually revising the rulebook for Thrilling Tales of Adventure.

A writing question for you nerds. What's the proper spelling for this phrase?

"Everything great about it; the amazing sense of humour, the witty dialogue and the fun characters is presented in an uninteractive manner"

Erik Twice wrote: A writing question for you nerds. What's the proper spelling for this phrase?

"Everything great about it; the amazing sense of humour, the witty dialogue and the fun characters is presented in an uninteractive manner"

Everything great about it- the amazing sense of humor, the witty dialog and the fun characters is presented in a non-interactive manner.

There, I Americanized it for you.

I've become a bit disenchanted with my academic writing lately, so I'm trying my hand at some more popular articles. This is the first of what I hope to be a weekly contribution:

Viking Terror & The Blood Eagle