I don't have much progress to report today. Although I spent several hours working on the story yesterday, I feel like it was all spent just spinning my wheels in place. I wrote almost an entire page before I halted and decided I didn't really like the way it was going. After that, it just got worse: I wrote and re-wrote paragraph after paragraph, and never got past the same spot. All in all, it was a frustrating day, to balance the ecstatic and successful day before, where I completed chap
So, today is the last day for the judges to submit their entry scores for the IntyBASIC Programming Contest. As a judge, I took the job very seriously. I will be honest, though, it was a lot of work. It was also tough because you want to make sure to be fair and consistent, while at the same time you wish to promote and encourage only the highest quality standards for the community. I think I may have been too tough on some of the games, but it's because I think the talent is good and the
Well, I did it. I would not have believed it, but I was there, and I saw it, so I know it to be true. I did it. I finished the story. Phew! It now stands at a full 15 chapters plus the short epilogue, for a total of 83 pages. Here are some statistics, straight from the word processor:
Words: 29,615
Pages: 91
Lines: 2,621
Paragraphs: 654
Sections: 3
Characters (excluding spaces): 137,171
That includes the entire manuscript, with the title and dedication pages, and a
You know how in the Christmas Carol game the Bad Toy goes rogue and supersedes even the Snowman's reprogramming and attacks him? (Of course you know, because you is me -- the only reader of this blog. DOH!)
Well, I just found out why that happened. It turns out that the new model 3000 of the T.O.M.Bot, contrary to the earlier Toy-Of-Mischief 2000, is equipped with a new artificial intelligence chip to give him a little personality. The Snowman didn't figure this, so when he re-wired the toy
Never had a blog before, and probably never will again, but I thought it may be useful to type short entries of what I'm working on as a blog rather than abusing the "Status Update" feature. I intend to write brief updates on the progress of my projects -- both retro-game-related and not. I don't expect anybody to read this, so this blog is mostly for me: talking to myself keeps me sane, and helps me focus. I know that sounds sort of stupid, but it works for me. First of all I should state
So my 12 year-old nephew read the still-in-progress Christmas Carol story in a single sitting. Well, actually in two, as he took a break when we left to go to the movies in the afternoon. In any case, he finished it. Then, with my heart in my throat and a great deal of apprehension I asked him what he thought and he said ...
"It's good. It's really good."
Phew! I could breath again.
We were all standing in the kitchen, surrounding him: me, my wife, and his parents; a
Progress? Yup, we've got some of that. I started this project about a month ago. Well, actually, I spent a week just staring at the initial page I wrote six years ago. I'd like to say that I was planning the story arc and figuring out my writing style and narrative voice, but I was just staring at the document pretending to be a writer, while I looked for all sorts of other distractions like re-organizing my photos or updating my household budget (yes, I get very productive when I want to a
Following the advice of my 12 years-old nephew, I sprinkled the first few chapters with some elfy characters with proper names. It wasn't too hard, there were a few elves making an appearance already and performing some actions; they were just anonymous. I just added names to give them life.
You know what? I think it worked. The narrative feels more lively and the North Pole less impersonal. Santa doesn't just work with a bunch of elves, but with actual living helpers with real lives and vo
Back in Part XI I mentioned how I forgot to have Carol find a new uncharted tunnel -- which is important to the plot -- and that instead of going back and re-writing the passage to add the missing discovery, I decided to leave it as is. I then had to employ a special device to advance the plot, essentially just making Carol come back to the cave and do a second walkthrough looking for presents, just in case she missed some. I think it worked, since a lot of us tend to do this sort of thing.
I ended the last post suggesting that my motivation for finally writing the Christmas Carol story book had to do with a very special girl. Actually two. A lot has happened in the intervening six years since I developed the game and wrote the original single page essay introducing the full story. Since the game came out in 2012, I have not only grown older, but I've become a grandfather -- twice! I've seen my granddaughters grow up from little drooling pod-people into beautifully cute little
I've been reading this book my wife got me for Christmas called, "How To Invent Everything," by Ryan North, and I can't put it down! It's hilarious and uncanny and so entertaining! It's hard to describe what it is. It's not a joke book, but more like a history book, or a scientific journal, with a sci-fi twist. You know, it occurs to me that it's like a perfectly distilled mixture of James Burke's Connections with Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, with a sprinkle of Jared Dia
I was going to continue writing chapter 7 this morning and instead found myself playing with the font-sizes and paragraph spacing of the chapter titles. Darn! I am my worst enemy. Anyway, that took just about an hour (I am very dedicated to my fonts), so now I'm back to work. Only that instead of writing the story, I ended up over here, writing a blog post. Darn again! Oh well, let's embrace this moment. I'll convince myself that this is not a means to avoid working on the book, but ac
Last night my granddaughter spent the night at our house. I took the advice from carlsson and decided that, rather than read her another Peppa Pig booklet, I would just tell her the Christmas Carol story. Only that instead of reading it from my book-in-progress, I decided to make it up and give her the abridged "short-short" version, made up on the spot. And it went ... not too bad. Phew! Putting aside the newly acknowledged fact that I suck at making up stories on the spot -- I rambled a
I know it's been quiet around here in the past couple of days. You (if anybody other than myself) may think that I gave up on the blog or something like that, but nope. What happened was the best possible thing for such a procrastinator like myself: I worked on the Christmas Carol story. That's right! While trying to motivate myself to write another blog entry, my procrastinating mind conspired to find a distraction in order to avoid it -- and what did it find as the most appropriate distr
Progress! This past week-end my Christmas Carol short story reached a milestone: Carol met the Ghost of Christmas Presents. I mean really met him, as in she introduced herself to him. She did:
It's Carol's turn to scare the Ghost.
Why is this a milestone? Well, apart from being the point in the story in which we finally get a glimpse at the titular character, the narrative has now completed the full arc of the Ghost's persona as it relates to Carol's point of view: He is a
Well, look at that, I added a new chapter. This morning I woke up with a clear idea of how to connect the remaining pieces of the plot in order to reach the exciting climax. So, I went through the final sections of my outline to make sure I had everything covered. I added a detailed description of the plot points and the story beats I wanted to cover. It was more of a "brain-dump" of the visions in my head. After all that, I thought to see how it all fits into the chapters, and noticed tha
I have no progress on the story. None at all. Yesterday I celebrated my 14th anniversary so most of the week has gone into planning that epic event. It came out nicely. It's good to go all out once in a while and celebrate the important things. Anyway, I committed myself to offering a customized version of the Christmas Carol game for an AtariAge member who will be playing it in one of those 25 hour gaming marathons for charity. It's for a children's hospital, so I thought it was very fi
Following up on my last post, I did manage to finally fix and build the old Christmas Carol code. As expected, it only took me a couple of hours, maybe less, to get the code to assemble. That's with not fixing any of the old bugs -- I decided that for the sake of stability and expediency, I wouldn't mess with it.
As explained in the previous post, the issues had to do with the assembler changing behaviour. Normally this would be a bad thing to do for something already in production and in wid
Wow, still here, huh? I thought I was done with this thing. Man, oh, man, was I wrong! For the past week I not only proofread the book, but have spent a considerable amount of time doing some research on preparing query letters and identifying potential children's book publishers that could be interested in my manuscript. I've also written and re-written (and re-written yet again and again) my query letters. I even prepared a plot synopsis and chapter summary. Boy, that took a lot of ef
Guess what I did today... C'mon, guess! Yup, that's right: I played with the font size and margins again. I thought I had 21 pages, but I was wrong. It turns out I have written 27 pages! I feel so much more productive now. I think I'm done with the fonts and margins. It bothered me that the font looked so tiny before, and the truth is that it is a book intended for young children, so it shouldn't look too dense. It happened when I chose Baskerville. That font is very pretty, but boy
I screwed up. Not majorly, but I made a mistake in my story and painted myself in a corner. Darn. You see (well, I guess "I" see, for I don't expect anybody else to be reading this blog. I do read it, so I'm just talking to the other "me" who's going to re-read this one later). Anyway, where was I ... Oh yeah ... You see (tsk! tsk! tsk!), Carol found herself in the Candy Cove -- the last cave explored by the guy who made the map. He left it incomplete, and it's up to Carol herself to le
I recently received some feedback from my friend, the secret elf who's been reading the story, and he had some very interesting things to say. Among the praise and kudos (he says he is really enjoying the story so far), were some very sharp points on narrative devices that seem to have promise, but did not really work very well. The key argument was a question on what role does the Snowflake Gardens and its magical properties have in the story? Originally, as in the game, the Snowflake Garde
To fly ... or to boat ...? That's a question I have now, based on a dear friend's suggestion. She points out that a boat is too slow, so that perhaps the Evil Snowman could use a different mode of transportation to escape from the North Pole with his loot. My first reaction to this was ... hmm ... does it really matter? I mean, it is fantasy after all, and we've somewhat established (via an introductory letter to the reader) that "elf time" runs parallel to, but at a different scale than, "r
Phew! We're good. We can finally unclench now -- it's all good. As mentioned in the last entry on this topic, my grand-stepson step-grandson grandson-step -- Aargh! You know what? Let's call him Timmy. So, 9-year-old Timmy came to visit last week-end and he read the story in progress, which was up to 12 completed chapters by then. When he finished, he pronounced his final judgement. In his own words: "it's pretty cool." My wife immediately responded with, "so ... 'pretty cool'
As I wrap up the ending of the story, it occurred to me that it may be a good idea to offer a brief introduction, like a short blurb describing the world to be found therein. Then I thought it may be even better to offer it as a short letter to the reader, inviting them to believe in the world they were about to enter. You see, to me, Christmas Carol's adventure is more than a children's bedtime story -- it's a way to relive the magic and wonder of your very own childhood memories of Christma
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