Adrian Faulkner's Blog, page 29
December 16, 2020
The 2021 Writing Roster – The Climb #662
I need to start creating some codewords for my various writing projects. It’s not that I want to be all super secretive, it’s simply that as I plan and gather ideas, I want to collate everything under one name. Most of my projects don’t have titles; that comes much later for me. And “Book About A Mage, I’m not sure what yet” isn’t a great project title.
Sometimes a book has a name (rather than a title); or at least something to work with. Mostly, when the ideas are ...
December 15, 2020
2021 Plans – The Climb #661
Today was a bit of an admin day. Whilst I’d caught up with all my editions of The Climb, I still had a bit of admin from the last couple of weeks to sort out. Some of this I had already started, such as going through my open tasks and rescheduling them. But other things, such as doing my weekly plans and reviewing prior weeks hadn’t been done since Shadowlands launched.
I’m starting to work on my 2021 plans, and at the moment they seems a bit unexciting. A lot of th...
December 14, 2020
Raid Night! – The Climb #660
I’ve been looking forward to tonight. Just like my writing earlier in the week, this feels like the culmination of many months of work in Warcraft.
I’m raiding again.
I first started raiding back in Wrath of the Lich King and the Uldar raid. I was playing Unholy Death Knight and the fact I’d got myself into a guild and was raiding was actually a big deal for me after years of playing other parts of the game. I’m still friends with those people to this day.
Most of my...
December 13, 2020
Pokemon Go December Community Day – The Climb #659
Come the end of the year, Niantic holds a special Pokemon Go weekend where all the Pokemon from the year’s previous community days spawn. It’s a great way to catch up if you missed any of the days, as well as get some extras and evolve them for the community day special move.
Inevitably, every year there are some community days that are incredible and you want to use to stock up, but most are a bit meh!
Because, despite the lockdown, I’ve been pretty good at playing ...
December 12, 2020
Caught Up – The Climb #658
It’s a little ironic that just as I catch up with myself, I find it’s Friday with a busy gaming weekend ahead. Saturday is the end of the year Community Day in Pokemon Go and Sunday is my first raid in World of Warcraft. Whilst neither will take up the entire day, they will dominate it, which will mean little further progress before Monday.
But I found myself getting into a great writing rhythm today. I did a bunch of work on this new draft, interspersed with bits of...
December 11, 2020
Clearing The Backlog – The Climb #657
After several days, and a lot of work, I finally cleared my backlog of The Climbs. It comes at the same time that I went and bought a couple of gear pieces in Warcraft to get my raider up to the required 170 ilevel needed for the raid on Sunday.
Whilst theres still a lot to do, I feel like Ive cleared my own backlog, both of Warcraft urgent tasks as well as some of my writing admin.
The trick now is to capitalise on this and move forwards. Theres a feeling that...
December 10, 2020
Warcraft Wednesday – The Climb #656
Wednesday is my allocated Warcraft day for a number of reasons. First, and foremost, I like the alliteration. But also, its the weekly reset day for Europe. That means, weekly quests reset on a Wednesday; patches tend to roll out on a Wednesday.
After a couple of solid weeks playing the new expansion during my WoWcation I wasnt feeling burnt out. Obviously I dont want to be totally burnt out on Warcraft but I do want to get to a stage where its not the primary...
December 9, 2020
He’s Making A List… – The Climb #655
My life is all about making lists currently.
After two weeks on WoWcation, there are a lot of tasks I need to do. These range from creating editions of The Climb for each day I was off to patching a couple of HEMA websites I look after.
I use a variation of GTD to manage my tasks. The basic idea is that you have a bucket for all your incoming tasks and then at a set time during the day or week, you triage them so the important tasks get done first and the smaller...
December 8, 2020
Back To Work – The Climb #654
The first thing to do is make a list.
I started this yesterday. And yes, a large part of it is to write up and post two weeks worth of The Climb. Regardless of whether anyone reads them or not, the idea is to get me back into the habit of writing. Small spurts of 500-600 words, recording the stats in my Writing Metrics log.
Theres other stuff to be done as well. Each edition of The Climb needs a thumbnail. In 2020 where Ive spent so much time indoors Ive tended...
December 7, 2020
The Last Day Of WoWcation – The Climb #653
Today is the last day of my WoWcation. Whilst I still have a mountain of things to do, I feel the two weeks of solid gameplay have got me to a point where I feel quite bedded down. Two main characters have been leveled; Im now deep into the main endgame with them doing dailies and weeklies; Ive started gearing those mains; All my alts are in Oribos and some are already leveling up further; all have learnt their professions.
Its been a busy couple of weeks, and Im...
