CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

A.M. Home all day, today. I have one short research essay to complete—which will take 3-4 days to research and about a day to finish the first draft on since we’ve only just started the subject. Not much room for writing, but I will make some time. Let myself sleep in, but will probably work late tonight as I have no classes tomorrow. Very much looking forward to a quiet house and a straight five-and-a-half-hour run at things. To get started on today’s challenge, I took a look at Dean’s blog . He is pretty amazing. Even when he’s had a full day and is tired, he manages to meet the challenge. Today, he wrote about how finding ideas in short stories is like finding unexpected books in bookstores and a little on the place of bookstores in a digital age. Today’s randomly rolled title is: 92-Year’s, and 02-Starfish, which morphed into “This Year’s Starfish” And that’s all I’ve got. School and study took up the day. We’ll chalk that up as another fail – although I did write ano...

Day 15: A.M. Before I was up later, 0500, this morning and did not sit down at the computer until 0515. Still only about an hour for story writing. I didn’t finish yesterday’s story challenge and today’s looks unlikely, since I will be out of the house for around 10 hours and will come home to chores and the need to sleep. This challenge is very educational for teaching me what my limits are while I’m still combining two lifestyles, but at least I’m learning what they are, while still pushing the boundary. On his blog, Dean talks about the importance of commonsense when making a living as a writer. A.M. Start Today’s short story goal is 3,200 words, which I probably won’t make, but I can make a start. For the title I rolled 75- The Magicians and 33- Plains , which became The Magician’s Plains or The Plain Magician. Challenge Results – Fail Story Match: Partial— The Plain Magician (sci-fantasy; 1100 words) Total words for the day: 1,100

I got stuck into the university prep yesterday and got no writing done—that was a mistake, and not just from the point of view of this challenge. I will have to do better. Today is my first day and my first lecture is in 4 hours. I have an hour and a half to write as I head into challenge day 14. Now, I’ll get to see what is possible during semester. Story Match day 13 was a total bomb.

Today I wanted to do something a little different—I wanted to try and write two stories. I remembered that I was a few stories behind, which is my own fault for taking five days to decide what I wanted to do in the months and years lying ahead. So, today, I thought I would try for two stories. Word targets were 3,150 and 4,000. Why’s Behind the Story Match Challenge: To recap, this challenge came out of me wanting to see what real writers did, and then trying it for myself. I was feeling very uncertain of myself, in spite of being free to finally pursue what I had wanted to do for a very long time, and I needed a little direction. I don’t know what you folks do when you feel like this, but I go looking to see if there are people out there who are where I want to be, and then I take a look at what they’re doing and see if there is anything in there that acts as a pointer. And I think the thing that stands out for me is that writers write. Pretty obvious, but how, why and did I ...