For Whoever Is Interested

[TMS]

Well, on Friday I turned in my final papers, so now only exam week stands between me and graduation. Unfortunately, I have exams in all four of my classes, so there will be a lot of studying to be done. When I do have free time, a good deal of it will go into The Call, which I am once again behind on updating. Once I finally get it finished I can start writing things I can get make money off of. By the way, I would like to assure everyone who has given me support regarding it that I have not forgotten about my fan-made card game, Digimon Tactics, which I will also have time to work on this summer. I hope to get at least the first set released by the time autumn rolls around.

As always, there are plenty of distractions. My brother is back from college, so he and I are hanging out a lot. I'm also still playing through the Kingdom Hearts series. I've also started thinking about using RPG Maker VX Ace to create some video games. I have an idea for a Digimon game and another, original idea. I'm kind of torn on which to start on first, but both are in the very early stages of planning, and I may never get around to one or the other. I'm thinking that maybe I'll put off starting real work on an RPG until some of my current projects are done (finishing The Call and getting at least the first set of Tactics released).

 

[TMS]

I figure this topic is due for another oddly timed update. It is summer, though I feel like if I blink it will be gone. I've graduated from college, ending my formal education for some time if not forever. I know that on an intellectual level, but it hasn't really sunken in emotionally. I still feel as though I'm on a summer break. It probably won't hit me until the autumn rolls around. Unsurprisingly, I've been rather lazy since graduating, with little done in the way of finding a better job than the one I already have. Starting this week I've been trying to get myself in gear. In particular, I'm looking into getting published. This was my first day of that, so I don't have much to report. I figure tomorrow I can take a first step in contacting those published authors that I know for their advice on how to get some of my short stories out there (though the stories could probably use a little revision before being sent in).

Other than career-related activity, though, things are much as they were last time I posted here (minus the studying, of course). I did some reading of fiction over the summer - it just feels so good to read for pleasure again. I've gotten through an S. J. Rozan mystery novel and two Stephen King novels, The Shining and Insomnia, both of which were excellent, though Shining in particular.

On the writing front I'm still trying to finish The Call, and I've been doing a better job of getting chapters done on a regular basis. My plan to get it out of the way so that I can focus on my salable fiction is still in effect, though I think I like filling in gaps in the Digimon canon and working with its beloved characters and monsters too much to give up fanfiction completely. Maybe once The Call, which is looking to be my first novel-length work, is finished, I can focus on serious stuff and put fanfiction on the backburner, but not leave off of it entirely. Still, it may be a long time before I post any fic other than The Call. Or maybe I'll finally get too old for this stuff... but I doubt it.

I'm still looking forward to doing something we RPG Maker in future, though if I keep doing Digimon fanfiction I may just skip the Digimon game and put all of my game-making effort into Tactics (it is coming, I promise) and the original RPG idea I mentioned earlier (a game with a focus on dreaming).

Okay, that's it. I hope someone on here has enjoyed my ramblings.

 

[TMS]

Well, "best laid plans" and all that.

Although I did not return to school when Autumn started, I still found serious work to keep me occupied when I was hired by a company to answer people's questions about the company's software over the phone. I was hoping for full time, but could only get part time, so I had to keep my job at McDonald's. My hope was to move into full time on the new job when the opportunity arose, so that I could quit the old one. One of the big selling points about the new job was that I would have a lot of downtime between calls to do whatever, and I intended to get some reading done this way. I was there for a few weeks before coming in last Friday, working for an hour, and then being told that they were "going to have to let me go." Talking to someone I personally know in the company, I learned that apparently they thought I spent too much time reading instead of browsing the news and Facebook like my senior coworkers, and decided to fire me instead of, say, telling me that I needed to get my act together.

So now I'm stuck in fast food hell again, looking for a new job that will actually look good on a resume. But it isn't all bad. I feel like this is a wake-up call that I've needed for some time now. I promised myself and my family that when October rolled around I would get serious about professional writing, and tomorrow I start a new 7+ hours a day writing regimen. I still intend to work on The Call, but salable fiction will now take precedence. Still, I hope to keep the fanfic updated at the same rate, since I'll be spending so much more time writing. As for my serious stuff, I'm thinking about publishing works online with Amazon, Kindle, Nook, etc. until (hopefully) I get noticed by a more conventional publisher.

With my new schedule, the evenings should be free for non-writing-related activities, foremost among them being work on Digimon Tactics. Right now I'm looking to rearrange the Digimon types and rethink how to organize the card sets. I haven't gotten a response to my last post in the Tactics thread, but I'm thinking about getting rid of the Flame and possible the Warrior type, and design the sets with a view to having a balance among the types of Digimon available. Planning the whole thing out as I did before is going to take way too long, so instead I'm looking for a general plan or pattern to follow. If anyone has comments, questions, or suggestions regarding the game, please post in the Digimon Tactics thread (the link is in my signature).

 

[DigiTamer Rikun]

That sucks about your job. One of the biggest things I hate about companies and hiring in general these days is when they have a shitty-ass reason for making these decisions, or when they don't tell you something because it would be 'too difficult' either for you to handle or for them to deliver. As if being back-attacked out of the blue when you think you're doing all right is any less fucking insulting.

I also didn't realize you were a serious writer, maybe I'll actually invest some time reading The Call.... =w=

I also actually intended to reply in the Tactics thread but I forgot. Dx I'll go post my thoughts in there momentarily but for now, I was gonna say that I think getting rid of the Flame type isn't a bad idea (many of them can be sorted into other types; Candlemon and Meramon, for instance, can be in the demon group or something), though I think Warrior should be kept, as there are enough of them who don't readily fit in other categories to justify keeping.

 

[TMS]

Thanks for your sympathy, Rikun, and for your input on Tactics. I probably will keep Warrior, and shove Candmon and the Meramons into the Dark type, like in Jintrix.

 

[viperzerof-2]

hey trust me work over the phone is never fun, just look you will find something else even if it takes a little while. your a strong writer and I like to read your work so you professional work should be very good.

 

[TMS]

Thanks. I'm staying hopeful.

 

[Faust]

Online publishing is kind of like an agent's slush pile. There's a heap of it, and most of it is crap. If you want to publish works there, that's fine. But publishers don't exactly search through the mush to find the next great novel. That's what agents are for.

Instead of self-publishing and crossing your fingers that you're going to be noticed, query agents the traditional way. If your writing is good enough, it'll only end up in 49 slush piles, and the 50th agent will offer to represent your novel.

 

[TMS]

Well, it's a temporary solution. Mostly I'm just looking for some passive income. Short stories will be what goes out there right now. Once I actually get a novel done I can take on the hassle of finding an agent.

 

[Faust]

In that case, I wish you luck, although I find that even at low price tags, readers aren't willing to invest much money into a short story. But 50 to 60 cents is better than nothing, indeed.

I'm actually in very much the same boat as you are, except that I'm less worried about self publishing and more worried about polishing my full manuscripts. Still, the idea of writing something easy on the side, like erotica or flash fiction, for self publishing is definitely appealing.

But in the end, I'm continually drawn back to my manuscripts. There's only one I'd remotely consider self-publishing, and only because of the subject matter. I can't imagine too many parents would be thrilled with their kids going out to a bookstore and blatantly returning home with a story about gay youth and suicide. For me it'd be a matter of making the material as available as possible, and affordable too, and goodness knows publishers like to set sometimes ridiculous prices on their "property" (many ebooks being the same price as paperbacks, price set by publisher, as well as some crazy high prices for hard cover books).

 

[TMS]

Good luck to you too. When it comes to the short stories, I'll probably publish them in little mini-collections. For example, I have three right now that I'm revising, after which I might put them out there, or wait until I have a fourth to go with them.

 

[Faust]

I think collections of four or five would be your best bet, indeed. Something I've seen others do as well is offer a single short story for free, to get their name out there, and then release a collection of stories for a free. That way people can have a taste of your style, and then be potentially more willing to put money into it.

 

[TMS]

It's time for the first of my sporadic updates on the new forum. Here we are in the last month of the year (and, according to a certain "Mayan prophecy," the last month of the world), and I'm trying to pack a lot into a little bit of time. Tonight, for example, I was hoping to finally put up the overdue next chapter of The Call, but as late as it is it may have to be tomorrow. Also on the writing front I'm trying to finish the sixth and final short story for my first Kindle collection, Odd Lodgings. My goal is to have it done before New Year's so I can start off 2013 as a published author.

Then there's the matter of Christmas gifts for the forum. I would like to have the first set of Digimon Tactics out in time for the holidays, though that may be a stretch with so much already on my plate. I'd like to make a bonus Christmas-themed card available on Subspace, and don't want it to be out of season. Something else I'm going to be sharing with everyone eventually is a bunch of translation work on player's guides for Japanese Digimon games, including Digital Card Battle, Digital Card Arena, D-1 Tamers, Digital Partner, and Pocket Digimon World. For now, though, I think I'll focus on Tactics, unless there are any objections.

 

[TMS]

I've come up with a plan that should hopefully get everything finished in the time frame that I want to finish it. I don't really have any reason to tell everyone, but I guess you can take away from it that if all goes well I should have both my first collection of stories published and the first set of Digimon Tactics available by New Year's, or even Christmas.

I've set some daily goals for myself on progress to be made. 1000 words a day on the last story for the collection, written in the morning and early afternoon, before my parents get home. Finishing up the text on 15 of the remaining Tactics cards while they're home and up. And finally, 500 words on The Call after they've gone to bed and everything is quiet again.

If I can stick to that rate, the text for the remaining cards in the set should be done within a couple weeks. That won't mean I can release the set immediately, but it's something. After that I'll need to make sure that the cards are (relatively) faithful to the anime in terms of battle outcomes, figure out the cost for all the cards, and make the cards themselves with the various art and flavor text using Garith's templates. After that it won't be long before a general release.

 

[Inpu]

Did you have any luck on asking garmmon to help with the Wallace stuff, or do you need me to try it again? Ayerg...I still have to do translation work for Clone, too, as well as the umpteen Dictionary profiles I've been waiting to get to.

 

[TMS]

Actually, I haven't asked yet. It hasn't been high on my priorities, and I didn't want to bug anyone until it was.

 

[TMS]

Looking back through the history of stuff like this topic, my journals, and the group which consists of my friends and I on Facebook is always a rather sobering (and sometimes depressing) experience. It seems like I never make any of the deadlines I set for myself, or that really any plans work out as they're supposed to. Here we are halfway through 2013, and I'm still not done with either of the projects I was hoping to finish in 2012. There's really no good excuse, just laziness, at least in the case of writing. I was planning on waiting to post here again until I had actually made some progress, but, oh well...

There's also my tendency to become interested in new projects before I finish the current ones, so a while back I made a file giving me seven slots for various projects. My goal is to finish one of these seven before moving on to something new. Right now, leaving out the uninteresting busywork, it looks something like this:

Career Writing - Odd Lodgings
Fan Writing - The Call
Video Game - Luigi's Mansion: Dark MoonGame Creation - Digimon Tactics CCG
Reading - The Face in the Window (Chris Woodyard)

The "Career Writing" and "Reading" categories will probably remain constant through the rest of my life. The other stuff may be more variable. There's a ton of other games that I want to get around to doing, including a series (or two) of games made using the RPG Maker programs and another CCG based primarily on classic (pre-WWII) literature in the horror, fantasy, science fiction, and mystery genres. For something more Digimon-related, I might try and get people involved someday in the creation of a system for a Digimon RPG a la Dungeons & Dragons or Call of Cthulhu, though I don't plan on doing so unless I can generate some real interest for it. I'm worried that Digimon Tactics might not reach a very wide audience, but I was going to finish that game regardless, since I've been trying for years and years to make my own Digimon card game.

I'd also like to get back to my little translations of Japanese Digimon books and taking pictures of them. I have guides done or nearly done for Battle Evolution, the Battle Spirit series, Digimon World 3, and Digital Card Arena, though I'd like to get some pictures of the books before sharing them on the forum. I'd also like to go back and do a more thorough inspection of stuff like that in the back of the Official Big Picture Books.

Anyone who's interested can find links to my previous translations and pictures in this thread (I should probably add this to my signature or something):
http://withthewill.net/threads/13090

Not much has been happening in the real world. My father had a bit of a medical scare and a minor surgery, but he seems to have gotten through it okay.

Well, thanks for reading. Hopefully before long I'll have some more exciting news.

 

[DigiTamer Rikun]

I'm feeling a bit braindead from studying for finals at the moment, so I don't really know what to say, but I read it.
The games sound pretty cool. I've been trying to focus my studies more towards things related to programming and game design (have been failing miserably at the former, though), so I might be interested in hopping on any game-related projects...

 

[TMS]

Things have been going pretty slowly for me recently. Tomorrow I have a meeting with someone about writing some articles, though it isn't the start of a major career or anything. I've woken up, as I sometimes do, to the fact that I'm running behind on my life. I graduated college well over a year ago, and have yet to get any of my professional writing published. Not because of issues with publishing, but because my first book is still not ready. The project should have been mostly complete by the time I finished school, which makes the situation more galling.

To make a long story short I've decided to finally settle in to a regular work schedule, limiting the time I spend during the day checking the forum and various other websites and focusing wholly on writing. Other projects and interests can be reserved for the evening. I'm also going to try adjusting my schedule somewhat for business purposes, waking and going to bed earlier than I've been used to. I doubt anyone here would have noticed the change, but I thought I'd announce it so that people would know that I might not be nearly as involved around here as I might otherwise have been.

The good news is that the final story of my first collection is nearly done. After finishing it and editing it, I want to take a look at the previous stories and make sure they're up to par (I know that there's a few which need expansion), and then I should be ready to see about getting the collection published as an Amazon e-book. For those of you who may be interested in my various non-professional projects, I don't think that the change of schedule will make too much of a difference to them. Most of what I'm cutting out is a bunch of sleeping in and wasting time online.

 

[Py687]

Good luck keeping to your schedule, I've personally always had trouble following them.

I'll grab a copy once it's out, I finally started reading "The Call" and am very impressed. Looking forward to seeing what you've worked on these last few years.

Though, no guarantees I'll actually have time to read the book.