The Writing Desk of Jakebe Rabbit

Time: 30 minutes
Distance: 2.77 miles
Top Speed: 6.2 mph
Calories: 288

Yesterday I came in from work in a state. toob asked me if I was going to run, and I told him I had no time because I needed to shore up the D+D game and that would take all the time I could manage and still get to bed at a reasonable hour. He responded by talking me down from near-hyperventilation, giving me a backrub, going out to run *with* me and telling me to stay away from the computer and read instead.

So I had a glass of wine and started Watership Down, then played a few rounds of Peggle. I feel *so* much better, it's like night and day.

It's amazing to have someone who knows how you operate enough to step in and save you from yourself. I'm so grateful for him. :D

Best part? I've had a revelation about my Dungeons and Dragons game. I've been pretty controlling about the story and how it's supposed to go, and effectively creating an environment that limits the players and how their characters react to things. "No, you're supposed to be heroes!" I think most of the trouble begins there, where I'm too focused on telling the story in a certain way to let it go naturally, to let people follow what they find to be most interesting. I can take steps to correct that now.

The same thing extends to all aspects of my life. I've been more and more afraid to just let things go; there's this unspoken mistrust about everything around me (especially at work) that makes me think nothing will be done right if I'm not influencing it heavily. It's a pretty fucking arrogant way to think. I really should stop that.

If any of you catch me trying to be some kind of (insert label here) -zilla about something, would you kindly smack me down? Much appreciated. :)

I did not post yesterday, so I'll have to make this one fairly substantial and give you two of the things that I'm grateful for.

I'm grateful for the rain. We got a pretty good rainstorm here yesterday while we were grocery shopping, and while it wasn't the most convenient time for it, it was good to be out in. Ryan says that the reason people dislike getting wet is because they have the expectation of being dry. Get rid of the expectation, you learn to be OK with being out in the rain. I hereby submit that this is the most Zen thing he's ever said. :)

Rain on the rooftops and the sidewalks always makes me feel comfortable and mellow. I'm a lot better about being rained on, but I still think it's best to enjoy it indoors. ;) There are so many things to be done; book reading, coffee drinking, lounging, snuggling, that sort of thing. It's OK to be leisurely during a storm if you want, and here in California there really aren't that many times where it's OK to be leisurely.

I'm also grateful for music, in general. There are a lot of ways one triggers memory, but music is always one of the most powerful for me. A conversation about Garth Brooks albums puts me in a very specific headspace; being in high school, staying up late to do homework and play card games that I had invented for myself. Cold winters sleeping in a living room that was converted so that my sister could have her own bedroom, getting up early and listening to WPOC while reading some book or another. Matchbox Twenty puts me in that space between high school and college, where I was working two mall jobs and hopping onto FurryMUCK from the Towson Public Library. Third Eye Blind puts me at St. Mary's University of Maryland, walking towards poetry readings and Pagan Student Union meetings with my battered Walkman. So forth and so on. It's another particularly soothing influence on me that I'm really glad that I have in my life. Reminiscing on all of the country I used to listen to really makes me want to buy Dwight Yoakam and The Mavericks, and Mary Chapin Carpenter, Pam Tillis, Diamond Rio...

Maybe I should stop now while I still have a bit of musical respect left amongst my friends. :)

Anyway, I'm feeling a bit better from the other day, where I was just down from...calling everything into question. It's a necessary part of the process for me, but my ego takes a few hits every time. I really shouldn't take myself as seriously as I do.

Most of my writing energy is currently being taken up by my Dungeons and Dragons game, run on every other Tuesday. It's been a blast so far; I've got a really great group that keeps me on my toes constantly, with a very wide range of interests and abilities. Right now I'm trying to fit all of the puzzle pieces together more or less, so that the characters get comfortable with each other and the players all get comfortable with me, and vice versa. Through little tests here and there, I think I'm getting a better handle on who everyone is and how they like to play. The players have been constantly surprising, which just rocks. It throws me for a loop every time, and they're not letting me get away with things they don't agree with.

The story is taken from my last D+D game in Arkansas, which did not end very well. There were a lot of things I could have done better with that one, but the main thing was making sure to pay attention to the players and why they were there. I think that, when push came to shove, my running style was just incompatible with the playing style of a few players; they were looking for a different experience from what I was giving, and I don't think I was sensitive enough to that fact. This time around I'm trying to be really careful about determining what people want, and finding ways to give it to them. I *hope* that I'm doing an all right job with it. Everyone seems to be pretty satisfied, which is the important thing.

The plot begins a bit before it did in my Arkansas game; the players are converging in the capital city of Splendor to celebrate the new floating castle constructed by the High King and Queen. They come from all different parts of the kingdom, from all walks of life; a barbarian and a dwarf from the frozen tundra of Morein, a bard seeking his fortune away from his homelands in the Duchy of Summer, a mage whose family sent him away from the southern duchy of Feingold to study magic, and an elf who comes from the lands of the Eldertree. They happen to be staying at the same inn, and through circumstances beyond their control, get roped into being dragon-dancers for the big parade.

The dragon, once it reaches the castle site, unleashes a missile at the castle instead of the fireworks display they had been told would happen, and the party finds themselves unwitting accomplices in an assassination attempt. They're now in hiding with a mage who's saved them from certain death (treason isn't to be taken lightly), but whom they don't trust at all -- especially when he gives away a secret the bard has been harboring for sometime now. This last game ended with some peace being restored with a reluctant apology, though there's still a lot of...mistrust all around. That's certainly fun, and it was oddly thrilling to watch the party unite in their hatred of this particular NPC. ;)

Anyway, they're in these strange woods where all kinds of odd things happen; a very strange wolf attacked our barbarian already, leaving the party with a deep-seated fear that he's been infected with lycanthropy. There's a wild elven child as well, ghostly dancing lights, a bear and...other things. The party has been getting information through their bard and mage about exactly what kind of woods they're dealing with, and they're a bit ill-at-ease. Another thing I really want to be sensitive about is not throwing in too much too soon; in the Arkansas game things unfolded a little too rapidly and the party got hopeless as a result, which is one of the things that lead to its dissolution. I do trust these guys to handle whatever I throw at them, but I also need to learn the value of giving them only one thing at a time.

Multiple story arcs, I've found, don't work as well in games as they do in other episodic forms of storytelling, like television. :) I thought that giving characters a "B-story" that provides clues to the over-arcing plot or a personal character arc might be a good thing to work in, but it tends to leave the party torn on which path to take and makes them feel overwhelmed. I think there's a way to have multiple things going on at once, I just need to be better at signalling what is an interesting tidbit that should be tucked away for later, and what requires immediate attention.

Though, now that I have a bit more time both at work and at home to work on writing things, I'll be trying to (finally) edit some poetry and write short stories. As usual, the less said about this, the better. Though there is an exercise up on writerrabbit that I'm kind of pleased with. Please go check it out if you've got a free moment.

toob and I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest last night, and I really liked it. It was fun and clever and well...exciting. The swordfights were amazing, especially the three-way between Sparrow and Turner and Norrington, and the set-up for the third movie was pretty well-done. Better than the first in almost every way! I shudder to think what daroneasa thought of the Kraken! Also, pirates arguing the etymology of a word is just a shining example of great comedic writing. :)

I had a dream last night that I got my paycheck from Bookbuyers, and it was a lot smaller than I was expecting it to be. Disappointed, I rooted around in the accompanying paperwork for an explanation and found a second check. Combined, the two was a month and a half's work; I was pretty happy. Then I got a third check that was even bigger than the other two combined. I was thinking, This has to be a mistake. I woke up just as I was about to tell my boss about it. The moral of the story? Orange juice and mouthwash don't mix. No they don't.

Oh! sailor_atma is starting up a D+D game! Hooray! I will be playing a gnome cleric, toob will be an elven ranger, and mut will be playing a human fighter full of finesse! This is inherently amusing to me. :) No word yet on possible other players, but I'm excited already.

Now, it is time for breakfast and tea.

Wouldn't that be awesome?

( Whoo, this turned out to be kind of long. )

Good lord, it's been a busy week.

As usual, work's been semi-monstrous. Lots of books, no room, the usual type of deal. Thankfully I've been busting my ass, staying longer hours, all that, just to catch up to the point where I can start trying to get ahead once more. Unfortunately, this has been seriously cutting into my writing. :/

I went to the dentist yesterday. Two of three worst cavities were filled, so I can theoretically eat things again. This actually makes me very happy, and I plan on taking full advantage of it! Unfortunately, hard things are still out because of the filling on the site of the future crown, so it looks like boiled carrots for me from now on...and less in the way of hard pretzels, which is another thing I love.

Dr. Beavers, as usual, did good work...though I spent a lot of time just waiting, and the whole thing took two hours when it could have taken about 45 minutes. They took a lot of care making sure I was good and numb before they did anything, and I spent most of the drilling being really curious about everything, all the sensations that I was experiencing. I also had a bit of a philosophical meditation on the nature of perception vs. reality, which is probably amusing only to me and is already fading into the stuff of dreams anyway. I also learned a lot about how to write about someone going insane and why, so besides getting my teeth fixed it was a pretty productive little visit.

Tonight is going to be all writing, all the time; GWO is coming into the home stretch and I'd like to finish it by tomorrow. That's because Cy's W:tA game is starting up again tomorrow evening. Hurrah, I get to play Dan again!

Anyway, that's a brief update. Will write more when I have the time.

Ooof, it's been a slightly hectic two days.

Tuesday, I threw my D+D game for a bunch of people...and I thought it was one of my best ever(tm). The pacing was good, the story was nice and self-contained (for the most part) and there are a lot of things starting to come together for the players. Though no one's really said anything about it, I think it feels like a lot of those little clues and happenstances that seemed isolated before are finally starting to come together and a...picture is developing. Though I could be wrong. :) My biggest worry is...getting the party to operate at more of an even keel. Even during the fight there was quite a disparity in participation. And Odis is getting a pretty big head about his mage, so there's the impulse to just throw stuff at him, but that might just get the rest of the party killed. :) I'm faced with the challenge of finding a way to keep the game interesting to a wide confluence of personalities and someone with a not-insubstantial ego. ;) So that's the biggest challenge; the game changes immediately once the plot is revealed and while I don't mind that, I wonder if the way things have developed has been...just right. Well, I mean, of course it hasn't, but...what could I have done to make it...more mysterious yet interesting, without sputtering between too much information and too little? I really should have kept better notes after the games; hell, in general. :) That's one of the best lessons I've taken home from all of this...keep *extensive* notes about player reactions, and be as specific as possible. Also, I could have arced the transition from commoner to hero classes a little better. Ah well, c'est la vie.

Yesterday, work was fairly insane. In addition to having piles and piles of books to shelve there was an *enormous* order to take care of. Some outfit in New York that specializes in rare and special photography books suddenly pounced on our selection, to the tune of $1300 for 3 books. I can't even imagine paying that much for a book...unless, you know, there was a first edition signed Hesse or something. :) And even then, I would have to learn German to *really* enjoy it. ;) By the way, did you know that the craze over first editions is really a holdover from Victorian-age England? According to the way I hear it, first editions were really tiny printings of anywhere from 200 - 1000 printings to see how the public would react to the book. Based on the feedback and/or buzz (and the ridiculously easy British libel laws), the publishing house would edit the book and print a much larger second edition would be published or...not. In many cases, the first edition of a book would be drastically different from the final version that we've come to know and love. Since we have focus groups and advance review copies and all that stuff now, there's no need for the small first printing any more...but people still go crazy over it anyway. We have...maybe four or five first editions of "The DaVinci Code," and they're selling for upwards of $75.00. Which isn't *quite* so big a markup as other books, but that's a significant pop in the four or five years it's been out.

Tangent! The three books were really expensive, and the customer is keenly interested in buying more from us. Which is just awesome. Even with the bookseller discount, the sale ends up being near $1200, which makes Charles giddy with happiness...which makes everyone *else* giddy with relief. If ever there were a moment I understood intimately the Anya-ian joys of niche capitalism, it'd be right now. :)

Anyway, juggling that internet order along with the monstrous stacks of books was a real...challenge. I tend to get rather tight-lipped and easily flustered when I'm overwhelmed with stuff, and part of it's just a show to Charles and Don that I *am* working hard at this, and this *is* a lot of work for me to do day in and day out. It's not a 16-hour day or quite as involved as anything having to do with computers, perhaps, but it's decent, hard work...and compared to a lot of my coworkers, my workload is substantial. I worked quickly all afternoon, making sure that not only the books were organized on the brick-and-mortar shelves, but that this order and the others that came through were filled to spec. (Some online book buyers can get really finicky about merchandise.) So I do all that, get ready to run the credit card through...and one digit in the credit card number for the photography order is missing. Unf. I call the customer's workplace; he's gone home for the day, so I'll have to wait until...well, today to fulfill the order. Write a note for Charles about it, and stew about it for much of the day. Well, at least until dakimov called me to keep me company for a couple of hours. Thanks Dad. :)

I've been trying yoga about three times a day for the last little bit, and it's been helping my back *immensely*. There's a lot less tension there, though I can feel the knot against my right shoulder blade people have been talking about now. Oof. It doesn't feel like it's ever going to go away!

Also spent a good bit of the last few days checking other dentists about the tooth situation; it turns out that $100+ is standard for fillings these days, and *no one* uses metal any more. Which, hey, probably great, but...damnit, no one's going to see the bottom of my upper molars anyway. ;) Anyway, I have a tentative date scheduled for Feb. 20 with Dr. Beavers. Since his prices are comparable and everything, loyalty wins out over convenience, I suppose.

Anyway, it's time to get ready for work, officially.