Brain Dump and MajorMUD

I know…I’ve been away from the blog for three days. Did you miss me? Trust is, I had nothing of interest to blog about. But, so you don’t feel neglected any longer, I thought I’d blog today. 😉

Tomorrow I’ll have a special guest! YAY!

What have I been up to? Let’s see… Weekend went by way to quick. There was lots of errands to take care of. This Saturday is my chapter retreat and I had to buy stuff for gift bags. I got them all together and ready to go on Sunday so I don’t have to think about them during the week. I feel so efficient.

I bought symphony tickets for Handel’s Messiah in December. I’m looking forward to that!

I finished my cross-stitch project – my In-Sync kitty for the bathroom. It’s cute. I forgot how much I missed stitching after being away from it for, oh, eight years. When I stopped, I had a toddler with very grabby hands who wanted into my threads and beads and needles. Now he could care less. 😉 I have another kitty project I want to do and then I’m going to try something big. I also have two unfinished projects (surprise!) I need to get back to. That must be my nature. I start something, get way into it and then…stop. I do this with my writing, too. I get distracted. But then, I’ve pretty much done that all my life about, well, everything. It’s a curse, I think.

Anyway, I digress. Back to stitching. I found it to be a wonderful brain dump for me. It’s really excellent downtime I needed. I finished off the revision of the gladiator book and sent it out to the capable hands of my CPs for their valued opinions. I’m looking forward to hearing back what they think. Even though I think it still sucks. 🙂 Isn’t it human nature to be harder on ourselves than anyone? I started to write again on the time travel but I’m having a hard time getting back into it. Mostly because I’ve been away from it for two months and lost all that great momentum I had. But I’m easing into it. I think that’s how it needs to happen to get back into the daily groove of writing. I know I can do it. I know I can write at least 1000 words a day. The mojo will return soon. At least, it better.

And since I’m talking about writing… I had a mini epiphany about the space opera I started. The one that finaled and then eventually one third place in that contest. Way back when I was much younger and before the Internet was the Internet (it was just BBSes back then with – GASP – dial up and 2400 baud modems!), I used to play this little game called MajorMUD. It was sort of like at text-based Dungeons & Dragons (yes, kiddies, you had to use your imagination – there were no cool graphics back then either). There was a gang of us wandering around Silvermere, the caves, the forest, and other various places killing the High Druid, the thrag, the Giant Spider and picking up whatever things the monsters happened to drop. I wore a golden breastplate and wielded a two-handed mace and was a healer and pretty much thought I was badass. And when I died, that meant all my stuff dropped where I died while my body ended up back at the Halls of the Dead. Which also meant I had to run naked through town square to the bank, withdraw money, re-cloth myself and get a new weapon and grab a couple of buddies and run BACK to the place where I died so I could get my crap. (Isn’t this story riveting? Yes, there’s a point.)  My best friend was Voodoo and my MUD name was Poison. All this to tell you that as I was thinking about my space opera and MUD all in one split second (don’t ask me why) and it occurred to me I should pay homage to those days of cave runs of so long ago. So in about three minutes, I’d invented a very colorful cast of characters that need to go into this universe. I get all warm and tingly just thinking about it. I’ve made some mental notes and when I have more concrete story ideas, I’ll be jotting them down.

In the meantime, I’m going to work on my time travel and when I get feedback on the gladiator book, I’ll polish it up and send it out again. I have big plans for 2011 but I’m not jinxing myself by writing them down. Every time I do, I fail miserably. Instead, I’m going to keep those mental notes in the back of my mind. Waiting for their turn. Because, one of these days, I’ll get to it.

And that’s about all I know today. See you tomorrow. Promise.