Hiddennode

Ah misleading titles, how you do nothing for my audience.

Oh wait, no, this one is actually relevant.

Last week I mentioned in twitter that I would be heading to doctor. Well, I went and returned not a few hours later. I come bearing something important from that fated meeting. Except for the whole “being morbidly obese” thing, I’m in perfect health. Well, at least my heart and cardio system is. Doc gives me a gold star rating on heart health and doesn’t want to see my mug for another year. For someone who is a Marfan’s Syndrome paitent, that long of a span is an amazing thing and it really points to a happy healthy heart.

That in mind, I need to work on getting the rest of the body healthy. This means one thing. Diet. Yup, time to get back on that horse. It’s time to take Raven’s advice and just try the cut carbs approach. The heart doctor suggested the same thing and well, stubborn as I am, I’m inclined to start listening. Only now I need support from Raven. This isn’t a line of “oh it’s her fault” thing, but just a mention I need her help in my cause to get thin but not suggesting some of the foods stuff that I really don’t need (like awesome but bad for me pizza). I need to get that whole willpower thing to turn it down, but it does help to not even have the temptation in the first place.

Speaking of, Raven’s back in town. Picked her and her friend up from the airport Friday night. Nice drive there, not so nice on the way back. I crashed hard that night too (Sleep wise). Got home around midnight and slept until 10. I guess the week caught up to me. Or maybe it was waking up at 5:20 Friday morning.

I want my weekend back.

jdiehl

So I found an interesting site: http://www.wesleychapelforums.com/. Don’t recall if I’ve mentioned the city I live in, Wesley Chapel, but yeah that’s where I live, and this morning I found a website dedicated to that city. From what I’ve read, this isn’t the first version of the site, but it is the most recent. They are just getting started out so I’m going to do what I can to be involved. Who knows, I might just make a friend.

So my sister-in-law found out there’s going to be a writer’s workship/meeting thing at a nearby Barnes and Nobles. As nervous as I am about being around folks I don’t know, I might give it a shot. I believe it’s part of the Florida Writer’s Association, but I’m not positive. I also believe it’s tomorrow but it might be next weekend. I know she said it’s the first Saturday each month, but this is the first one… I think. I admit, my information is shotty at best, but I can verify it when I get home later tonight. Actually, later in like an hour.

Leaving work early today for a doctor’s appointment. My cardiologist isn’t going to be happy with the weight, but eh, I’ve failed to lose it in the last year. Going to talk to him about special diets. No, I’m not interested in weight loss surgery. I’ll pass on that as it’s really only a temporary fix at best. Raven has been talking about maybe a liquid diet. Frightens me but if it must be…

I caught up 2000 words this week already. I have some more to do which I will do tonight after I get home from the doctor’s but before I head out to pick up Raven from the airport at 10pm. Want to get at least 5000 words out by tonight. Maybe more this weekend.

Okay, there, a real life update for once. Need to work some more of those in.

jdiehl

My personal productivity has taken a nose dive in the past week. The novel currently hasn’t been started yet (since I scrapped those 10,000 words), mostly because the time I normal would be writing has actually been taken up by the day job. This means I need to stop depending on the free time at work and start making time at home. Not going to be easy but it will be done.

As I’ve said, the Novel is at a standstill. I still have plans for completion by the end of summer for the first draft, so each day I delay means I’m just making it harder on myself. I’m still excited about the direction the story is aimed at so that’s not the issue. It’s just a matter of realizing I need to sacrifice free time for writing time if I’m ever going to become something more than a wanna-be writer. I’m not a novelist yet. Not until I actually finish a novel.
In other but related news, I’ve found some new Crack. Inside of the game City of Heroes, there exists the ability to customize the base of your super group. In terms of most MMO’s, think of super groups as the guild or clan. As your members fight as representatives of your SG, they will earn prestige that can be used to purchase useful items like storage racks and teleporters, to less useful but prettier items like technical looking toys or magical artifacts. In the game, various players have discovered you can “stack” certain items to allow an SG to build up an area in a normally impossible way. This has lead to a portion of SG’s into the habit of creating extravagant structures and designs. Within my Super Group, I am this designer. Namely because I’m the only active leader, but anyway… I’ve come to really enjoy making custom looking areas and chambers in rooms for the base. The only major problem is that I may be making too many items and such as I’m really starting to eat into the prestige. Most likely I will actually curtail this development until the base is at a more complete level. Besides… I need to start inviting more members to gather more prestige.

Looks like this is going to be a brief one. Odd that I both don’t feel like writing fiction or blogging. Gotta get myself out of this artificial funk and start writing again full time.

jdiehl

So after a month of feeling sick, I’ve finally reached a point of feeling okay. My teeth are reasonably well (mind you, the tooth still hurts where I had my surgery but not as much as it did prior to the removal), I don’t feel as achy as I had for the past two-three weeks, and I dare say I’m okay with the weather. April is starting to look good health-wise.

In writing news… Okay, I’ve changed some things. A number of things actually. I had reached over 10,000 words on the Novel but I’ve come to a conclusion: I’ve scrapped those chapters, found what I loved from it, and got rid of what was boring me to tears. A few characters are either toast or now secondary characters at best, and our protagonist has changed, but she’s just so darn cool I’m very happy with the change. Still the same world, a bit though it’s more developed. Maybe this will be my pattern with writing a novel. I get several chapters in, realize where I’m going, what I like, scrap what I have and get rolling from the beginning with a deeper understanding of everything I have and where I want to go. It’s not a bad idea so long as I don’t get much further than 10,000 words. Anything more and I’m now really wasting time.

Oh yeah, the goal of the end of summer is still in effect. Meaning I have about 21 weeks to write 90-120,000 words. That’s still between 5-7,500 words a week, which so far is easily doable. So here’s the plan: Write around 5-7,500 a week for the next 21 weeks. Complete the Novel by August 31st, 2009. Take September off from writing that novel (and start developing the next novel). Start editing the first novel once October rolls around and be finished with the first full edit of the novel by 2010. Once that happens, I’ll be trying to shop around with the novel, both for an editor/publisher and an Agent. Meanwhile, I’ll be getting to work on the next novel.

One key note is that I’m not going to work on two novels at once. It’s a bad idea for me, as I’ll tend to favor one over the other that will eventually lead to one of the novels being abandoned. I can plan out other novels, but I don’t want to start another novel until I’m done at least writing the first one. I’m not sure if I can write one while editing another one. I haven’t tried yet so I guess I’ll find out at the end of this year. I’m excited though, to think I’m actually going to finish a novel. I’ve crafted so many interesting worlds, to actually have a story in one would be a dream come true.

Other news… City of Heroes Issue 14 came out today and I’m already eager to play it tonight. Only 7 more hours to go! Gah!

jdiehl

PS. Stackpole is right. Align Full/Justify is soooo much nicer on the eyes, even on this blog.

Cross posted from dipsg.

Well, we’ve had this website for over a month now. In that time we’ve had a few new folks show up and sign up, but sadly, there isn’t a great deal of development within the site itself. This is disappointing but not entirely unexpected. Sadly, the $20.00 a month going into keeping this forum alive isn’t looking to be as worth the price. Frankly, with my pay cut and other finical needs, I could use that $20.00 for other important matters. With that in mind, www.dipsg.com  running IBP is going goodbye.

This is not the end of the website or the forums though. My primary website has the ability to host a forum for free and we will be able to handle our needs. I don’t like losing the great tools from Invision Power Boards but frankly as I’ve said, it’s not worth it with the activity.

That said and done, here’s what’s going to happen. The IBP board is going poof. I will be setting up a new board under the hiddennode web server that will still be accessible via www.dipsg.com. This should happen this weekend. Please take the time to setup your account on the other server. I’ll be setting up the board soon. The Layout will be different, by the way. The site will no longer be focused specifically on the dynamic ip super group. Instead, I’m going to focus the site on being a general gaming community site. There will be a section for CoH and the SG specifically.

If you have any questions, please contact me on ventrilo or send me an email at admin(at)hiddennode.com.

Thanks,

jdiehl