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And as the day comes to an end, I return to my writing station to create a world where Sorcerer saves Girl from Monster because I can't be bothered to come up with names for my characters right now.
  •   2 comments
There's nothing wrong with using placeholders for names.
I have "Farm guy," "Buddy X," and "Buddy's assistant."

You're not alone!
The glorious adventures of spending an hour trying to find a word processor for my Kindle Fire only to find out it comes with one preinstalled that does everything I need.

I'm cutting myself a little slack because the word processor is a feature buried within the Files application.
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I have been through similar struggles with my Amazon device - they don't make it straightforward!
I need to learn to write poorly. Normally when I write, I try to find the perfect words, but that's inefficient. I need to shift my mindset to "I don't care how bad it is because I can fix it later" for the rest of this month.
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Yup, that’s the spirit! Write on!!
Someone teach us how to disable the backspace and delete button for NaNoWriMo.
A couple of months ago I bought a tablet specifically to be used as a dedicated writing device. Now I can write while lying in my bed and wearing my soundproof earmuffs and silicone color-changing dog lamp.

Last year I completed the 50,000-word challenge on a virtual machine running Windows Millenium Edition. My new tablet is far superior, if only because it doesn't crash all the freaking time.
For those of you struggling to come up with story ideas, here's a really quick and dirty structure I like to use, which I would describe as a simplified version of the Hero's Journey.

Part 1: Hero is chilling out but everyone hates him because he sucks at something
Part 2: Villain shows up to bully Hero but everyone loves/fears Bully
Part 3: Hero tries to fight Villain but Hero loses because Hero sucks
Part 4: Hero grinds for XP
Part 5: Hero tries to fight Villain again but Hero wins because Hero gained a bunch of levels

I'll be working on a few stories using this structure to get to 50,000 words. If you want an immediate example of the Hero's Journey, go watch the original Star Wars trilogy.
My life has reached a point where I have regular conversations with an AI chatbot about a 12-year-old sports video game.
And we've reached my favorite part of the year: the last week in October, where all of my writing progress grinds to a screeching halt because I want those words to count in November.

I feel like I'm committing the creative-writing equivalent of accounting fraud.
As a short, skinny nerd in grade school with almost no athletic ability, I decided to write a story about an absolute physical specimen of a student and put him in a mage's school to ensure his athleticism is of absolutely no use to him. And them I'm going to make the first turning point in the second act about how an enemy jukes him out and blasts the other party member in the face with a lightning strike.

Let no one doubt my pettiness.
I'm fascinated by how every little stuffed animal or figurine or pencil eraser I can find is a character with its own backstory. I just bought this silicone dog thing that's also a color-changing light, and it comes with a trading card that gives me its entire biography and personality. I can't even name him (and it is a him) because he already has a name.

Now's a great time to be a creative type. Just 3D print some small miniatures of random woodland critters and give each of them a three-or-so-sentence backstory, put them in a box, and sell them for USD$10 each. But be sure to design the box such that the buyers knows which of the 12 possible miniatures might be in the box, but has no idea which of those twelve miniatures they actually ended up buying. Then maniuplate the distribution table so some of the miniatures are "rare" or "special" (i.e., when you print your batch of wolves or whatever, paint some of them gold and the rest grey). This will ensure that buyers who want specific miniatures will have to buy 1-30 boxes until they get the one they want.
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It's a YouTube thing as well... People make money off of the unboxing videos, so that's factored into the original price. You should see the MGA blind balls in the toy section: $10.00 each, more or less.
And as I prepare for November by outlining another Medieval fantasy story, I get to my favorite part of this process: constantly opening new browser tabs to look up whether random objects had already been invented by 1066.

Because wizards running around shooting lightning from their fingertips at fire-breathing dragons flying in the skies carrying large bipedal wolves is one thing, but I'll be damned if my story includes something as egregiously unrealistic and patently ridiculous and as a warrior running into that battle with a flintlock pistol.
I'm so excited the weekend has arrived, so I can come up with all these plans to be super-productive, enact none of those plans, and spend two days beating myself up for accomplishing nothing. Hooray!
I decided I no longer oppose people writing "u" in place of the pronoun "you." I used to hate when people did that, but after studying ancient languages, I now question why "you" needs to be three letters long. The first two letters serve no necessary purpose, and they weren't even part of "you" until later - it was "þu" at one point. Replacing "you" with "u" wouldn't even be the first time we condensed a pronoun into a single vowel: "I" used to be "ic" back in the day.

Despite this, I remain committed to abolishing anyone who uses "comprised of" and "composed of" interchangeably.
I love when I'm at a church event, sitting at a table by myself and minding my own business, when someone walks up to me and asks if he can sit there. I say sure, and he lectures me on my insufficiently enthusiastic response. Then the host asks everyone to congregate in the center tables because it's supposed to be a fellowship-building event. The host also said it was okay if that would make you feel uncomfortable. Apparently, everyone but me ignored that second part. Someone else then ordered me to join her table - a command I promptly disregarded (by the way, when I say she ordered me to join her table, I mean her exact words were "get over here").

And people wonder why I don't like attending social events.
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Yup
I bought a cool new Bluetooth keyboard for my writing tablet. The buttons are responsive and have a nice texture to them. The keyboard came with an instruction card that tells you to (1) remove the paper tab that keeps the batteries from making contact with the terminals, (2) enable Bluetooth on your device, and (3) pair the keyboard to the device.

So I remove the tab - which I am told will make the keyboard turn on automatically - and...nothing. I press all the buttons, and...nothing. The card says I can keep the keyboard paired to three devices and switch between them with function buttons, so I press those buttons, and...nothing. I go to the manufacturer's website, hoping to find a copy of the owner's manual, which I don't find. The website gives me the same three-step process as the card. I took the batteries out and put them back in, thinking they weren't making a good connection, and...nothing. I replaced them with known working batteries, and...nothing.

After 15 minutes of frustration, I stumble upon the unlabeled on/off switch on the side of the keyboard that the instruction card couldn't be bothered to mention.

Why is all this preferable to wired keyboards again?
  •   1 comment
Oh no! You have a defective keyboard! *Sob*
When I was in church this past Sunday, a young child informed me that I was a level 1 robot made of literal garbage. He then used his mind-control powers to force me to cast fire spells on myself and burn myself alive.

I gently informed him that I was not at a high-enough level to cast any fire spells at all - let alone on myself. After about ten seconds of staring blankly into space, he resigned himself to giving me more levels so I would be powerful enough to damage myself.

That's how you battle children during imagination playtime: utterly destroy their initial plans, but leave the door open for them to save their campaigns through creativity and problem-solving.
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I'm glad my nephew prefers to partner with me and save the world still.
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