Adrian Faulkner's Blog, page 32
November 16, 2020
How I Plan To Adjust My Outline Process – The Climb #632
I constantly work on process.
It’s not that I rigidly stick to it. My approach to process has always been to find what shortcuts I use and make them the process. It means I constantly refine. There’s times when I make myself stay rigidly to it by way of an experiment to see if it is more effective. Other times I notice where my process breaks down and make adjustments accordingly.
There’s no one way to write. I know plenty of writers who get annoyed by writing advi...
November 15, 2020
6 Hours 40 Minutes – The Climb #631
6 hours and 40 minutes.
This is my life right now. The Warcraft Prepatch event dropped last week and it was something I’ve been waiting for so I could gear up all my characters. With it came problems.
There’s a currency the even gives, either by completing daily quests, or killing rares who spawn every 20 minutes. The rares have a small chance of dropping good level loot on their own, but because upon killing one you have to wait twenty minutes for the next, progre...
November 14, 2020
An Epic Fantasy Idea – The Climb #630
I’m not sure whether my brain does this to dick with me or whether the most attractive idea is the one you don’t have to write yet.
But, I’ve had the beginnings of an idea for an Epic Fantasy. My “plan” is to get the current NaNo novel first draft written by the end of the year. There’s lots going on these last couple of months and juggling everything is already proving a challenge.
But the idea is that come the new year I’ll be looking at working on a new Epic Fantas...
November 13, 2020
Getting Back On The Horse – The Climb #629
I’m starting to catch up with myself.
After last week’s air of doom and gloom in the greater world made me feel so negative and started clouding my judgement, I felt the need to bury my head in videogames for a number of days.
The trouble is that there is then a mountain to climb to get back on top of things: Editions of The Climb that need writing up, thumbnails that need creating. There are general admin tasks as well. There’s taking my ToDo list and rescheduling...
November 12, 2020
Shadowlands Pre-Patch Event – The Climb #628
Today was the World of Warcraft Pre-Patch Event.
Normally this arrives with the pre-patch itself but this year has been a little different, with the release of the expansion being delayed.
The Pre-Patch event is basically a limited time event where we get a taste of the bad guys we’ll be facing in the upcoming expansion. We had legion invasions for Legion. We had faction wars for BFA. And for Shadowlands, the undead have risen.
We had a similar event for Wrath of ...
November 10, 2020
Complicated Antagonists – The Climb #627
I’ve been catching up on His Dark materials over the last couple of days. It’s been one of those TV series I’ve been meaning to watch and I just needed the right time and mood to watch it.
Despite the movie of The Golden Compass being a complete mess, I have to say that I think the first season of the TV show is probably even better than the book.
There’s some strong visuals I love. The war machinery of the Magistirium juxtaposes lovely to the mystery and magic of th...
November 9, 2020
Mr Beast and Unnecessary Learnings – The Climb #626
There was a time when I found disappearing down a Youtube rabbit hole most annoying. It seemed to me to be the height of procrastination.
However, I’ve learnt to better use them so they don’t eat time and enjoy the weird places they take me.
In case you don’t know, a Youtube rabbit hole is where you watch a video, see another recommended to you, watch that and carry on until you are watching random stuff you’re not sure you are interested in or not.
I now mostly do it w...
November 8, 2020
Consistency Frustrations – The Climb #625
One of the good things to come out of Lockdown was that it gave me the push to restart The Climb.
Whilst overall, the idea is to create something akin to a DVD commentary on the making of any book, on a micro level, it gets me writing every day. When I wrote Action-Figure I’d have to bang out articles when tired and under pressure, and to some extent The Climb is fulfilling the itch that left.
I can write fast and accurate because I spent years having to do it. Like th...
November 7, 2020
The Razorcrest – The Climb #624
I’ve been a bit naughty.
As many of you know, I used to run a site called Action-Figure. We were the premier news site for collectible toys. It was a ridiculous amount of work for little to no profit but it sent me around the world. I partied and worked with major celebrities. It was a good time.
But I walked away from it over a decade ago to focus on my writing. The golden age had passed and after so much work I was ready to work on something new.
I do sometimes ...
November 6, 2020
Contemplating A New Beginning – The Climb #623
World events are such that I really can’t face writing right now, but I have been using the time to think about the start to this NaNoWriMo novel.
I built the plot very fast and as such there’s probably part of me that feels a little unsure of it. I used a lot of craft and technique to do this so it is sound…it’s just meant I’ve had to go in a little cold.
So this novel borrows heavily from something from popular culture. As part of the planning I identified key factor...
