“When writing doesn't work, the writer is assumed to be the guilty party.”
Teresa Nielsen Hayden

author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

actually writing blog

Mission Accomplished.
Sat 2005-08-27 22:53:42 (in context)
  • 47,202 words (if poetry, lines) long
  • 76.75 hrs. revised

Chapter 9 is over, and with it Part 1 ("Above")....

"He's gone."

"What do you mean?"

But I was broken. I only knew two words.

"He's gone."

Tomorrow, I'll be working on Chapter 10 and Part 2 ("Below"). This will involve some revisions to the chapter outline, no doubt, and once more cracking open the 3-ring binder containing the manuscript's first draft, which I hadn't touched since hitting Chapter 5, the first chapter that had to be rewritten from scratch.

Yesterday turned into my day off for the week (I say that so smoothly, just as though taking a day off per week was part of the original plan) because of a friend visiting from out of town. More a friend of my husband's, part of his core gaming group, but, hey, I like him just as many bunches, and once in a long long while I'll play too.

Like last night. After the six of us went out to dinner at Acqua Pazza (which, sadly, seemed to be having an off-night; better luck next time), we headed over to the largest house of those at our disposal, broke out the soda, beer, and espresso, and made some characters for this crazy AD&D/White Wolf hybrid system that my husband and our out-of-town friend had gone and thunk up. The intent was to keep the Dungeons & Dragons setting but ditch its play complexity, replacing D20 and rigid class concepts with the D10 "dot" pool those of y'all familiar with Mage: The Ascension or Vampire: The Masquerade might recognize.

And just to make things even more absurd and chaotic, John tossed into the mix a deck of Story Cards he bought at Gen Con Indy. Each card contains a very simple phrase and description: "Insomnia." "Surprise summoning." "Mistaken identity." These are dealt to the players. With them come the power to briefly take over the role of Dungeon Master/Game Master/Storyteller; you play a card and say how its contents happen in the story. For instance, during the requisite tavern meet-up at the beginning of the story, my character finds herself inadvertantly recruited for bartending duty. I play "Mote in eye" and say, "Suddenly, the bartender gets something in his eye!" John, our GM, rolls with it. "The bartender goes into the back room, clutching his eye and saying something about a splinter." At this point my character urges the rest of the party to leave the bar, right now, before the bartender recovers and sets me bussing tables or something.

It all worked surprisingly well. Resolving conflict becomes very simple when you don't have to memorize different dice combinations for each possible form of weaponry; a Ranger type just rolls the amount of D10s corresponding to DEX plus her Bow skill, and there you go. And everyone was eager to play their cards--on NPCs, on themselves, on each other. There's a "Lust" card in that deck, did you know? Yeah. One of the other players thought it would be funny to play it, resulting in my character having an unpleasant close shave with an amorous purple shrub. Ew.

We didn't get home until something like 2:00 AM. Lots of fun. We should have friends fly in from Paris more often.

Tomorrow the crew's coming over here to play a 13th Level AD&D adventure; I think I might sit it out due to my inexperience with straight AD&D at any level, and also due to some serious clean-up needed in the guest bedroom. Before that, of course, I mean to crack open the manuscript of Drowning Boy and really try to wrap my head around the order of events in the next few chapters. Sharks, assumed-dead family members, and mermaids. That's what I get to deal with over the next few writing sessions. Wish me luck...

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