Sundries

I forgot to post this when it came in a few days ago but it’s now official, I’m a AugNoWriMo winner:

As you can see from my word count I just made it over the 50K.  I had time to do more but I was a little burnt out the last few days so I just wanted to get past the finish line.  I’ve been taking some time off writing but I’m ready to get back and start doing some more now.

Yea!  I’ve managed to get my 50,000 words in on my Novel before the end of August:

I feel good that I’ve made the limit but since I have another 15-20K words left till the end of my story it’s not the big deal I had expected it to be.  I’m hoping to be able to finish off the first draft over the next few weeks and then I should get the celebratory feeling from having really accomplished something.

After I finish my first draft on this story I’m going to spend time coming up with the details for my November story for the NaNaWriMo.  I have the basic idea of what my story will be, unless I change to something completely different.  My first idea was a more serious modern day fantasy story dealing with eastern mythology, religion, and of course – warriors.  I’m also feeling tempted to try writing a novel that’s more lighthearted but I don’t this this story I had is the one to do it with.  I’d enjoy being able to write something in the vein of Douglas Adams but I have so much respect for the man I don’t know if I could manage to do something I’d be happy with.

In WOW news I’ve finally reached exalted with both Kirin Tor and The Kalu’ak.  This took some time as I’m playing solo and not doing any instances.  I’ve done a ton of fishing and cooking quests as well as the dailies for The Kalu’ak as well.  I now have a nice purple robe from my Kirin Tor rep and The Kalu’ak gave me a nice little +30 fishing rod that lets me breath under water as well as a new little friend in game – Pengu:

I’m most likely a few days away from reaching exalted with the Sha’tari Skyguard and then I’ll be able to get a number of new flying mounts as well.  I’m planning on starting my rep grind with the Wyrmrest Accord now for mount, gear, and glory.     They have a few nice cloth pieces of gear but most importantly the Red Drake mount.

They also have a tailoring recipe for a 32 slot enchanting bag as well.  I’m not a tailor now but more and more I’m getting tempted to take it up for some of the sweet bind on pickup gear you can make yourself and since I can DE most everything I make while leveling.  I’d have to give up mining which would hurt to do since that’s a good money maker but I guess I could just focus on grinding out humanoids for cloth, make gear, DE it, sell the mats on the AH.  OK, I’ll admit it.  What I really want is the flying carpet mount that tailors can make themselves:

**James.

I’m getting very close to getting my 50,000 words needed on my novel to complete the AugNoWriMo.  I’m now over 46,500 words so far but I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it to the end of my novel by the end of the contest.  I’m guessing it’s going to be about 70,000 words but it’s hard to tell.  I’m feeling very good about my progress so far and I’m really learning a lot about my writing, as well as learning what areas I need more practice in.  That’s really one of the benefits of doing this contest, it get you writing.  I’ve heard it time and time again – the way to improve your writing is to read a lot and write a lot.

Even with all my writing I’m still not avoiding WOW, in fact I’m playing it too much still.   At the moment I’m working on a number of reputation grinds, mostly to get some more mounts as well as some new gear.  I’m going to Outland every day to work on my Sha’tari Skyguard rep:

I’ve also been playing around more with getting some of the achievements.  I just got the “Chef” title the other day for completing a huge amount of cooking achievements and I noticed how close I was to getting my weapons skills up so I put a few hours into it and got them all maxed out to 400:

It wasn’t much fun raising “unarmed” to 400 as a mage.  I ended up going to the wetlands and smacking around murlocs for about an hour.  I’d get them down about to about 20% health and then polymorph them so they’d heal back up and then start smacking them again.  It starts out going fast and you feel really good about it but trust me, those last 3 points take a long time to tick.  I’d guess at least 10 minutes to go from 399 to 400.  Ugh.

I also managed to get another Mr. Pinchy when I did a little fishing in Outlands a few days ago:

I’ve caught him before and was lucky enough to get the non-combat pet (you can see him in the lower left of the image above).  So far I’ve received a stamina buff and then a package with some L70′ish potions.  I have one more ‘charge’ left on him to see if I get the full sized Benevolent Mr. Pinchy as seen below:

He can be summoned and can help you in a battle.  Not much use as a L80 I guess.  Anything I need help when I’m a L80 mage isn’t going to come from a L70 pet, but he’s huge ugly lobster monster so I’d love to have him.

I’ve also decided to load up my old Lord of the Rings Online account and give that another shot.  I played it a little over a year and a half ago and it was fun but it wasn’t as smooth a game as WOW.  They’ve cleaned up a lot of the rough edges on the game but it’s been so long since I’ve played I’m really just getting a grip on how to play again.  I’ve downloaded the ‘hi-rez’ version of the game and noticed that it supports DirectX 10, as does my system, so it’s looking damn nice.  The one thing they really do better than WOW is with the environment.  Below is a screenshot I did today, try to ignore the interface of the game and look at the water – it’s just amazing:

(CLICK TO MAKE IT FULL SIZE -  1920 X 1200)

This is a direct screenshot from the game, I haven’t dont’ anything in Photoshop to it at all.  It’s also a full resolution I play the game at – it’s a large image so make sure to click on it to see it in full glory….  so purdy.

**James.

I’m still going strong with AugNoWriMo and I’m now well past the half-way point to get my 50,000 words in for the month.  I’m still a little worried about being able to get my entire novel done in the one month time frame but I’ll have no trouble finishing the contest by then.  In fact, I should have the 50K done in about a week I think.  I took a vacation day Friday and I’m hoping to get close to 15,000 words done on my extended weekend.  I’m getting a better feeling for how long the book may be and I think I should have about 80,000 words at the end of my first draft.

Not sure if it will go up or down in word count with my rewrites.  I’m feeling that I’ve been really slack in my description text and need to add a good bit more of that to help give life to the world the story is in.  At the same time though, my story is loaded with dialogue and may really need to be trimmed down to keep it from being too talk-heavy at times.  I know that in Stephen King’s book, On Writing, he said you should see your story decrease in size when doing a rewrite.  “Cut out the fat and get to the meat of the story“.  He gives a little formula for this as well:

Second Draft = First Draft – 10%

As I said, I still have a good deal left of my story.  I’m just at the point of getting ready to start my second of three acts.  At the end of my first act I was in a place where the characters had a slightly relaxing moment from the turmoil of the inial act to deal with some “issues” and that gave me another chance to hopefully make them seem more human.  (wow, how’s that for vague?)  I’ve heard many writers say to keep your work private while writing it, not really just for the issue of someone taking your story but if you tell the story to people as you are writing it, it tends to deflait your enthusiasm to continue writing.  I don’t know if I’d have a problem with that but why bother taking a chance.

After I finish the story I’m going to put it away for a month or two while I use September to get ready some ideas I have for my next book which I think I’ll write during the November in the BIG NaNoWriMo.  I’m hoping the one month of September is enough time for me to get my story prepared.  I’m finding it so easy to put my current book, Experiment of Humanity, together because I’ve had so much time to create scenes, ideas, and technology.  (I need the tech since my current book is in the Science Fiction genre’)  I know many people just have a basic concept and a good character idea and then just go with it and see what happens.  I can now see how that can work as it’s been happening in my current story but sailing into those uncharted waters just seems to scare the crap out of me.   Maybe that alone is a good reason to do it?

**James.

Even thought I’m concentrating on writing the novel this month, I’m just at about 20,000 words now, I haven’t given up playing WOW completely.  I’m not spending hours in the game like I used to but I did manage to put in the time I needed to finish off getting my new ride:

It’s the Alliance only reputation grind mount called, as you can see, the Winterspring Frostsaber.  I remember when I first heard of this mount years ago it sounded cool but hearing it could easily take over 200+ hours of play time sank that idea real quick.  Especially since the level cap was 60 back then and you were going the reputation grind in L58 – L60 area.  There are 3 repeatable quests to grind on, the 3rd one becoming available after you get Honored rep though that one has you taking on L58-L60 elite giants.   UGH!!!

Thankfully, like many things recently, Blizzard has made it much easier and after a short grind I now have my mount.  I didn’t count how long it took but I’m guessing about 15 – 20 hours maybe?

One thing I can say to those about to undertake this rep grind is do yourself a favor and take up skinning.  You are going to kill so many things you can skin on your grind to the top that the extra cash will help make up for the time it takes.  I did most of the grind with Herbalism and Mining and was able to get a good amount of Icecaps which was OK money and some Thorium mines but I hated seeing all those fully skinned animals just laying there.  It’s also worth mentioning that the bear meat you get sells rather well, at least on Earthen Ring it does.  I would do 2 or 3 quest turn ins and come out with 15 – 20 gold in items.

Even though the rep grind wasn’t that bad I’m glad to be done with it.  I loved seeing this show up at my last turn in:

I also picked up the new Alliance tiger mount they added with Patch 3.2 this week.  It looks nice but it’s only a 60% speed increase so there is nothing to get too excited about:

That’s about all that’s new in WOW for me.  I should mention that over the last two weeks I’ve tried the trial for Star Wars Galaxies as well as the 10 day trial for Warhammer and wasn’t overly impressed with them.  SWG was how I remember it.  The IPO grabs you and you get psyched for a great Star Wars game but once you get down on the planet and have to suffer with the clunky interface and game play and the very aged graphics you realize that at it’s core the MMO isn’t very fun.

Warhammer may be the best competition I’ve seen for WOW but one of it’s biggest troubled that I had with it is that it’s very similar to WOW in many ways.  So similar I kept thinking, “Why don’t I just go play WOW then?”.  I did like the character designs, I made a Dark Elf Sorceress female and got a good shot of her in a sexy-evil looking outfit:

Click to make the image bigger

I wasn’t happy to find that my “must have” character name of Trillion was already taken on the test server so I had to settle for Trilliyana, I actually kinda like that name as well.  At this time my test account has ended already, I got to L8 or L9 I think and I saw just about all I wanted to see.  The other issue the game had was a strong focus on PVP, something I don’t have much interest in.  I did partake in some of the RVR (Realm Vs. Realm) battles but I wasn’t interested.

I think I’m destined to stay with WOW till Star Trek Online and Star Wars – The Old Republic come out.  I’m very anxious for a really good MMO to come out, one that I know I’ll be spending a few years in.  I’m very much a world explorer and having a new world to learn and poke around in is just what I’m in the mood for.  WOW expansions are good but it’s still more of the same.  I think Blizzards new “secret” MMO they are working on may just be one of those worlds but it could be more than 3 years before we’ll be logging into it I think.

Time for me to be getting back to writing – I’d like to get to 30,000 words by Monday which would be a tough push but I think I can do it.  I’m not having a problem getting the words down but it’s looking like my novel may be about 75,000 worlds when done.  Maybe more!!!  I’ve already got an idea for the November NaNoWriMo and I plan on spending September fleshing out that world and characters.

**James.