It's late Sunday, or early Monday, whichever way you look at it. I dunno these days. I work from home at the moment, and each day tends to blend in with another. I'm currently trying to take the first 68,000 words I've written, and redo them in the style of a similar book my publisher is releasing before mine. What Fun!
What I can't help thinking is that this current task is somewhat editorial, and I'm being paid to be a writer (they know I've been an editor before though, and I think this is why the boundaries are blurring somewhat). But hey ho, I'm slowly getting there, having spent much of last week re doing the synopsis because I have quickly learn, that whatever you start writing, will not be what you finish writing, publishers have their say in your work too, coz they're paying you, and until you command the fame to the equivalent of Stephen King, you kinda gotta do what's expected. Hey I didn't know, this is my first book for chrissakes.
But I had a pleasant evening off on Friday. Myself, the Happy Pig, and other contemporaries of ours decided on impromptu beer for that evening. And yesterday I did a combined late dinner with a friend (by combined I mean she cooked some of it, then I did some). We had a break in between courses to catch a late bottle of wine at a nearby bar, having heard the neighbours party getting a little unhygenic (two guys decided it would be funny to pee in their pond, whilst trying to identify whether there was any sign of life in there). One of the girls then comes out and accuses of them of doing the obvious, to which they completely deny. By the way we're getting all this from behind a fence, we can only hear what's going on, and thank god for it.
We also watched the movie Sunshine, a film by Danny Boyle that I keep making all my friends watch. If you haven't seen it, try it. It's Mr Boyle basically going ' I loved the look of Alien and Event Horizon, ' here's what I can do.' - It's bloody marvellous ( I also love Alien, and quite enjoyed Event Horizon, helped by the fact that a friend of mine was one of the model makers on it).
Speaking of tense clostrophobic sci-fi, I have recently been witness to the playing of Bioshock, and fully intend to play it once the book's done). I am a huge fan of it's spiritual predecessor, System Shock 2, which even though it came out in 1999 is still regarded as one of the a) best games ever created, and b) one of the scariest. Of course coming out in '99 means that the bloody thing won't run easily in 2000, XP, Vista, or anything with a state of the art Video Card or more than one processor.
But I did it - a bit of routing around on the net and I soon found the main bugbears, namely the multiple processor problem. I have a dual core system, which means when you first load system shock, you have to alt-tab out, ctrl-alt-del, go to processes, find the two files that are runnining, and make sure only one CPU is dealing with it through the affinities option. The pain is, you can't make it permanent, and this has to be done every time you load it. But hey the satisfaction of overcoming another windows problem is my bread and butter - I love to tinker about with stuff.
Anyhoo back to writing...
What I can't help thinking is that this current task is somewhat editorial, and I'm being paid to be a writer (they know I've been an editor before though, and I think this is why the boundaries are blurring somewhat). But hey ho, I'm slowly getting there, having spent much of last week re doing the synopsis because I have quickly learn, that whatever you start writing, will not be what you finish writing, publishers have their say in your work too, coz they're paying you, and until you command the fame to the equivalent of Stephen King, you kinda gotta do what's expected. Hey I didn't know, this is my first book for chrissakes.
But I had a pleasant evening off on Friday. Myself, the Happy Pig, and other contemporaries of ours decided on impromptu beer for that evening. And yesterday I did a combined late dinner with a friend (by combined I mean she cooked some of it, then I did some). We had a break in between courses to catch a late bottle of wine at a nearby bar, having heard the neighbours party getting a little unhygenic (two guys decided it would be funny to pee in their pond, whilst trying to identify whether there was any sign of life in there). One of the girls then comes out and accuses of them of doing the obvious, to which they completely deny. By the way we're getting all this from behind a fence, we can only hear what's going on, and thank god for it.
We also watched the movie Sunshine, a film by Danny Boyle that I keep making all my friends watch. If you haven't seen it, try it. It's Mr Boyle basically going ' I loved the look of Alien and Event Horizon, ' here's what I can do.' - It's bloody marvellous ( I also love Alien, and quite enjoyed Event Horizon, helped by the fact that a friend of mine was one of the model makers on it).
Speaking of tense clostrophobic sci-fi, I have recently been witness to the playing of Bioshock, and fully intend to play it once the book's done). I am a huge fan of it's spiritual predecessor, System Shock 2, which even though it came out in 1999 is still regarded as one of the a) best games ever created, and b) one of the scariest. Of course coming out in '99 means that the bloody thing won't run easily in 2000, XP, Vista, or anything with a state of the art Video Card or more than one processor.
But I did it - a bit of routing around on the net and I soon found the main bugbears, namely the multiple processor problem. I have a dual core system, which means when you first load system shock, you have to alt-tab out, ctrl-alt-del, go to processes, find the two files that are runnining, and make sure only one CPU is dealing with it through the affinities option. The pain is, you can't make it permanent, and this has to be done every time you load it. But hey the satisfaction of overcoming another windows problem is my bread and butter - I love to tinker about with stuff.
Anyhoo back to writing...
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
I missed the system shock games when they were out , i must go back and check them out. And i recently re-bought grim fandango after losing the original before completing it so thats something todo soon