Category: The Digital Feed

No, I’m not dead, no I haven’t given up on the site, but I just haven’t had a whole lot to say as of late. Recently my insomnia struck pretty hard core. For those of you that are familiar with it, I can sympathize. It comes and goes in bouts, but it’s somewhere between Acute and Chronic. Comes around for a while, shanks me in the sleep department, and leaves me sort of wired for a while.

The saying has always been “No good can come of this” but I’ve found that I tend to be at my most creative during these points. Unfortunately the majority of that creativity tends to be on small, throwaway projects, nothing lasting. Well, we’ll see if I can turn that around, neh?

— Vid

Two years. It has been two years since I’ve had a computer of my own connected to stable and constant Internet access. It started when my last computer literally caught fire, and I didn’t have a viable way to replace it. After about a year and a half of dealing with a shoddy put together Frankenputer, I finally had the funds to build the Library. The Library was wonderful; nVidia SLi ready motherboard, 2.4GHz Quad Core processor, 4GB of RAM, 512MB of vRAM, and a 10krpm hard drive.

But then I realized that my home office didn’t have wiring for an Internet connection. It kept getting put off. Every so often I’d lug the thing into the bedroom to hook up there, which is where we had the cable run. One by one I’ve bought the tools, and the other day I finally said “[expletive] it. This is getting done.”

I went up into the crawlspace, clipped the connection, spliced it, and now I have access with the Library! Games abound! I’m so fired up I don’t know what to do first! All in all, not a bad way to start off the year.

— Vid

Character concepts have always been my strong suit, but I’m beginning to wonder if that’s more detrimental to my writing than anything else. Lately I’ve had a lot of ideas for different characters, but less ideas for places to put them. That really sucks, and here’s why.

Lately I’ve been very anxious to do some sort of ensemble project. Something larger than a story progression from a single character’s point of view. Well I can put the ensemble together without too much trouble, but try as I might I seem to be having a hard time keeping the personalities different enough to keep it interesting. I tend to lean on one or two archetypes a bit too heavily, and unfortunately I’m not realizing it early enough in the process to avoid continuity errors.

This, combined with my constant problem of screwing up tense, the past, present, future, and et cetera [yes, et cetera, paradoxes are common] tends to lead to a lot of retconning. I’ve done my fair share of that, and I’m not a huge fan. I understand it’s a necessary tool in more epic stories, but I prefer to try to get it right the first time.

Impulse Company now has a primary antagonist, and I think at least one protagonist. Some ideas have even been put together for additional ensemble, but really this is something I want to share with others. I’m also beginning to think that it’s going to have to be shared in order to thrive properly. If I’m the only one doing the personalities on something like this, it’s going to get stale very fast.

I just need a good way to set up sharing it. Forums seem to work well in concept. I’ve always liked the interactive novel idea with forums. Working a chunk of the overlying story while focusing on a single character per writer provides a level of dynamic story telling that other forms of collaboration just don’t provide. It also offers a lot more input than a simple two person group. Unfortunately setting up a forum with the current site design is a pain in the ass.

Obnoxiously so.

— Vid