David T. Allen's Blog, page 3

Japan Day 3: Thousands of Torii Gates

Most of day 3 was in the fox shrine, Fushimi Inari Taisha, where we hiked mountain paths dotted with thousands of vermilion torii gates. Afterwards, we visited the zen gardens at Tofukuji. To rest, we took a dip in a public bath, where I intentionally got zapped with electricity.

Following our bath was a light meal and sake at an Izakaya, or Japanese gastropub. On our way to bed, we stopped in a department store and took pictures of the most ridiculous capsule toys we could find.

Hostel

The p...

Japanese Kit Kats: The Tastening

I walked past our hoard of Japanese Kit Kats this week and noticed, according to the dates, that some had “expired” in January. I knew we had to eat them soon, in order to get the best results. So, on Friday, February 12th, we had The Tastening, in which Leslie and I sampled nine flavors and crowned a champion.

My only regret is that we didn’t buy every flavor that we encountered.

Acquiring Kit Kats

Our first purchase happened during our visit to Uji.

Uji is one of my favorite places, and I’...

Sprint 14: Career Change

January was a strange month. While Leslie started and finished editing Echo Chamber Heist, I ended up looking for and finding a new job. If it weren’t for Leslie, our manuscript would have stagnated.

Last Sprint

At the beginning of January, Leslie knew the pace she needed to finish editing by early February. She filled her side of the board. I followed her lead, forgetting that we normally just plan two weeks at a time. Two week plans let you adjust your goals halfway through the month in cas...

Blog Redesign #2

I believe in iterations. I love building a bare-bones product, using it, finding its faults, then making only the most valuable modifications. Time is short, after all. This article highlights some of the changes I made to the blog’s design last September.

Keep in mind that the latest design is just another iteration.

Comparing New and Old

Let’s start with the landing page, which makes better use of space now by including excerpts from book reviews:

The following is a red...

Analysis: Chapters Per Month (2015)

In 2015, we posted the full manuscript for Echo Chamber Heist to an online writing community. This article analyzes how long it took to post each chapter and how our writing strategy for 2016 has changed.

Note: The sum (42) is greater than current actual chapter count (35) because we closed and reposted some chapters.

Earlier chapters had been drafted four years ago. In some ways, this made it easier to get started, but our writing has come a long way since then. They had to be thoroughly...

Analysis: Chapters Per Critiquer (2015)

Last year, 65 critiquers gave feedback on Echo Chamber Heist in our online writing community. This article explores how many chapters each critiquer read and why people stopped reading when they did.

Critiques Finished Number of People 1 22 34% 2 9 14% 3 – 5 4 6% 6 – 10 9 14% 11 – 15 5 8% 16 – 20 6 9% 21 – 30 4 6% 31 – 35 6 9%

Twenty-two people read only one chapter; generally, this was chapter one. Here’s why people quit so early:

Many people quit a few weeks afte...

Japan Day 2: Aquarium, Osaka Castle, & Umeda Sky Building

Since we booked our rooms incorrectly, we only had part of one day to see Osaka. We didn’t have many plans, but Leslie’s top destination was the Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan, since it’s among the few aquariums that has a whale shark.

We spent a lot of time on foot, walking 29,800 steps, or roughly thirteen miles. This article is written from my notes on November 10, 2015.

Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan

I was hesitant to visit the aquarium, due to my unnatural fear of fish; knowledge of my phobia has enco...

Japan Day 1: Flight to Osaka

It is with great pleasure that I am returning to Japan, this time with Leslie. It has been five years since I lived in Sapporo, Hokkaido, but looking back is like watching a movie of someone else’s experiences now. I might even have a hard time believing I had ever lived in Japan, if it weren’t for recently seeing my old friend, Tomohiro Suenaga, when he came to visit Pittsburgh and we travelled together to New York City.

This first article is a bit uneventful, since it only covers our flight...

Sprint 13: A New Year

It’s been a year since we started using a cork board to track and plan our writing goals. In that time, we published our first novella, redesigned our site twice, finished writing Echo Chamber Heist, were selected for #PitchSlam, and had eleven agents request our manuscript. The board is here to stay, but our process will continue to evolve as we learn.

We’ve been gathering our finished tasks in a jar all year.

Like I said back in February, Leslie wanted to roll around in them o...

Writing Between the Holidays (Thanks Shovel Knight!)

The Christmas parties are over, New Year’s parties are coming, and it’s time to get back into the swing of writing. However, my mind keeps wandering … I’m worn out from all of our recent travels and need some time to recharge. I want nothing more than to sit on my couch and play Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows. Normally I’d just try to force myself to focus, but sometimes, you have to make a compromise.

Shovel Knight is a well polished NES style game. Playing it makes me want to hav...