Well, I did it. I shored up my courage and I...canceled God in the Machine.
I was nervous about doing it, I felt ashamed for it, as if I'd given in. In a way I have. These things don't work for a huge number of reasons. For me, the series worked all by itself, but *I* couldn't physically manage it. I talked about it a bit on the site.
Ten minutes after pulling the episodes and writing my apologetic newspost, I felt 1) Relieved at not having to turn out another episode and 2) Excited that I can now spend today, tomorrow, and ever-more time working on my Rome novel. Really excited about that.
I think those two feelings confirm that, shame aside, this was the right thing to do.
...
Yesterday, Rllgthunder mentioned in a comment section that I'd been blogging a lot more. The reason for that is, I have dramatically scaled back exactly what I'm doing on the computer. I have limited myself to E-mail, to posting on this blog, and to posting on Lori's blog. That's it. No IM, no AW, nothin'. If I want to kill time beyond that, I go off onto the internet and read interesting articles and learn things. Or I read...books. Mostly, because none of those things are immediate interactivity required (the things I'm limited to), it means I'm more easily willing to forget about the browser and just write away. I've done nine thousand words in the past two days. I don't know how much I'll get done today, but by Saturday night, I full intend to hit 80,000 words in my Rome novel.
I mapped it out. I was planning for two weeks until the end of October, with a few random days on the side for God in the Machine episodes. Now, I have over two weeks -- almost three? -- to finish writing Rome. I can absolutely do that. Then, for November, I will put Rome totally aside and write the first draft of The Nondescript for NaNo. Then, come December, I will return to Rome to edit and revise and start sending out query letters (don't make me write one. Please? I hate query letters) and trying to sell it.
I figure mid-December, early January, I'll start writing God in the Machine as a trilogy of books, which I can do without losing anything from the story.
So there's my day. I'm going to go have a celebratory drink of tea in honor of failing at the online game. (Smiley face goes here.)
Addendum: I have just realized, with no small amount of irony attached, that in a post made on this very blog in January of this year, I touched upon...well...mostly everything that I'm touching on right now. 1) Robots. 2) AW 3) Trying to get away from technology. Yessir, when it comes to consistently touching, I'm your guy. (Please don't send me to jail.)
Icky Thump
Friday, October 12, 2007
Posted by Peter Damien at 9:13 AM
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5 Angst(s):
Retreating is just advancing in another direction.
But I'll say one thing - It's making me feel better recognizing all those feelings you're having :)
Oh good, we can all just mutually feel better. :)
When Zach wants the car in twenty years or so, I'm going to remind him of this and tell him "No."
Er. Not that I have a car. But I will totally not let him drive my wife's car.
...
Now that I think about it, another major problem was the series itself: Writing as robots, dealing with robots, around robots is not easy in the slightest. If this had been a series with people...who knows. But with the robots? It definitely needs the longer development time of a novel to get it sorted out.
It's gonna make a smashing novel, too.
And not at all like that smashing sound of a 16-year old driving his mother's car for the first time :D
Hey Pete,
Don't feel bad about it. It's happened to the best of us. Better to cut it off now when you know it's not going well then drag it on any further and make your life miserable.
Yeah. Yeah!
And this way, when the story is published in proper book form, Michael Bay can come along and make a really terrible movie out of MY robots too.
But that's neither here, nor there.
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