Quick read, promise! My last few posts have been quite self-indulgently long…
What am I writing?
I’m working on a new novel! I’m considering it my love letter to nature. It’s incredibly challenging to me for several reasons, and I can feel myself scratching and clawing at something great. I am writing better because it is a challenge, and pushing myself out of my comfort zone. Following a simple plot and pushing to grasp complex and loveable characters. This is the most discovery writing I’ve ever done, meaning I have a loose plan and I’m figuring out a lot as I write. Which is not how I typically do things. Scary.
This feels like a many-revision piece. Really fighting myself to get a rough draft done before baby girl arrives. That way I can spend our first few weeks together reading the work and contemplating revision direction.
What am I reading?
For the last few weeks I caught myself in two slow-starting books. I continue down the audiobook tract with the Wheel of Time series, Eye of the World. I don’t intend to read all fourteen novels in the series. Similar to Dune, this is a classic I want to cross off my list. I am a fantasy fan, after all, and many put this on the short list. I think I may have enjoyed physically reading it more than listening. It started slow and my attention has waned. But I’ll finish.
I continue sporadically tearing through Writing Down the Bones. There are a few chapters that have really hit home. It deals primarily with the meeting point of the spirituality surrounding, and practice of, writing.
I love combing through the book sections of thrift stores. We have a nice place in the next town over, so when I saw a well-loved Jurassic Park for $0.50, I had to have it. Then it sat on the shelf for a few weeks calling to me! I’m 250 pages in now, and it took a long time to really speed up, but I’m finally reading some scenes where the dinosaurs eat people (takes about 100-150 pages). Which is cool. Crichton is very detailed and attentive, and spent a lot of time convincing the reader this is a realistic world. But for anyone that knows the movies, all the hints about the danger of dinosaurs fall on bored eyes. I know it all goes to hell in a hand basket, and that’s what I want to read! But it really started picking up.
What do I recommend:
This may be my first anti-recommendation. Perhaps a warning. This is for all my people that are missing football: I’m recommending a phone game, but also warning to be careful because it is very addictive.
Retro Bowl. An 8-bit football game that, frankly, has everything I want. In-game, you can juke while running. You slide your finger to launch the ball downfield. You can tuck it and send your QB dashing ahead. You can kick field goals, or try. You don’t play defense, it is simulated. The opposing defense lines up in 2-high, single-high safety, or shows blitz. When they put single coverage on my 5-star wideout we all know it’s gotta be aired out. When they blitz, the TE usually finds an easy outlet. You can audible based on QB proficiency and call TOs to manage the clock. I have each quarter set to the default 2min, so a game is played in usually 5mins.
But you’re also the manager of a 10-man roster. The guys work on a simple 0-5 star talent system. They gain XP based on a number of factors. They have contracts, there are free-agents, and there’s an in-game economy based on your popularity and how much you’re winning.
There’s also a college version, which is the same base game but with scholarships and GPA’s. Yes, I also downloaded that one.
There are like, no ads! Very hard to find a free game that doesn’t make you click through or watch minutes of ads.
Tread carefully. I’ve been able to keep myself disciplined with it. But Retro Bowl is a drug.
<3
Z