CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

Last week’s progress report. Late again, as usually happens when I try to increase one or another part of my routine. I focussed on completing the NaNoWriMo quota this week, after a fairly rough and inconsistent start. Finally, seemed to put it together this week, so it was done. Anyway, that happened, and I got some gardening done. Overview New words produced: 24,863 Old words revised: 0 Outlines and Notes: 912 Works completed: 0 Works revised: 1 Covers created: 1 Works published: 0 Works submitted: 0 Competitions Entered: 0 Bloggery: 1,164 University Prep and Assignments: 0 Stepping Up Challenge Update Languages: Nil progress Non-Fiction Reading: Nil Ingress Updates No new challenges for me. PokemonGo Updates Nothing new to report Publishing Tasks Created 4 blog posts for this blog; Updated royalty records; Created the cover for The Sevarine Sidestep New Arrivals The following pieces arrived last week and are ...

I started playing just over 12 months ago, three days before Niantic’s birthday celebrations for the third year of the game ended. I reached level 4 by the end of November, 2015, and level 13 by the same time this year. I enjoy the game, and I’m fitter for it, but there are a few things I wish I’d known when I started: The Sojourner’s Medal The sojourner’s badge is awarded for hacking portals during consecutive 24-hour periods. Like all the other badges, it has five levels, the highest being black, or onyx. If I’d known about the sojourner’s badge when I started, I would have made it onyx by today. As it is, I didn’t cotton on to this fact, until I’d spent my first 15 days hacking and the badge lit up on the Agent’s screen… that took me almost two months, and I still have 49 days to go. The Importance of Medals in General In Ingris, you can level up by earning points known as AP, right up until Level 8. After Level 8, you need a certain number of badges as well as ...

In the last couple of weeks I’ve been asked about publishing options by a few different writers, and the first thing I’ve said to both is “don’t pay for publication”, followed quickly by “don’t give away your rights”, and “be careful of agents”. And it strikes me that writers are vulnerable to predation, and there are a lot of predators out there. The problem is that the predators are often legitimate goals of the writers, or mimic them: agents, publishers, and competitions for example. These people prey on an author’s desire to be published and make a living from their work—and an author’s own insecurities, especially the one that haunts us all: am I good enough?, or the fear that saying our work is good enough will have us accused of being arrogant. Now, while I will always recommend going independent and publishing your own work – and I’ll talk about why, next week – this isn’t the path some writers want, and I can’t offer a lot of help, there. I’ve been published by four...