Wonderful Procrastination

On Valentine's Day, people began posting up pictures of Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII. This made me feel nostalgic for the original Final Fantasy XIII, a game which I abandoned some time ago when I felt like I wasn't doing anything in it any more. (Then my brother bought a new PS3 and my save data was erased forever. It's a long story.)

With all of this nostalgia kicking my ass, I started a new game.

And I haven't stopped playing since.

Okay, that's a slight exaggeration. I mean, I've attempted to maintain a social life since I started playing. And I've been writing and reading and watching Grimm (I got Season 1 for my birthday!) but other than that I've been returning to the game. It's been wonderful.

I forgot an awful lot about the game, and replaying it is giving me a chance to see why I loved it so much to begin with. I think I appreciate the battle system a little more, now, than I used to, too. I like the Paradigm Shift. I like the need for strategy and forward thinking and focusing on different skill-sets and techniques.

Most of all, I love the story. I love how complete the religion feels in the Final Fantasy games. I like how expansive the worlds are, and how everything fits together wonderfully. I like how much the characters are forced to grow, and how the dynamics of the game are affected by the relationships between characters.

Case in point: Eidolon battles. Each is based on the type of person the character is. I've done three so far, and what I can determine already is: Snow has a need to protect people, and so the Shiva Sisters needed him to be defensive; Lightning felt guilt about Serah and Hope, and so had to help Hope to beat Odin; and Sazh felt anger at Vanille, and so was required to help her while she helped him in the battle against Brynhildr. (Those make more sense when you play the game, but to avoid both spoilers and the need to explain how to play the game, let's just leave it at that. Essentially, what was happening in the story determined how to defeat the Eidolon.)

It's been wonderful, and I'm determined to play until the end, this time. I want to finish the game, and give XIII-2 a try, before moving on to Lightning Returns. To give people an idea of where I am in the game, I'm still on the Fifth Ark.

This isn't the first time I haven't completed a Final Fantasy game, of course. I gave up on Final Fantasy IX back in the day, because I couldn't figure out what to do. It was as simple as that. This was in the days before Internet access was common. (I also technically abandoned Final Fantasy VII, when I couldn't defeat the final boss. I also couldn't go back and train more, so I was essentially screwed, and returned the game to my older cousin who had given me a loan of it.)

Eventually I'll play it more regularly and less sporadically (you know, I'll play for an hour a day or something, not for several hours some days and not at all on others) but for now I'm just going to enjoy getting back into world that's been built up around the series. Sure, it means not doing other things, but getting to play a game I couldn't play a few years ago because of college is important to me, too. One of the few reasons I actually want to own a PS3 is for the Final Fantasy games. (And just for the record, I think I prefer them to the The Elder Scrolls games!)

Day 22: Unexpected Procrastination

Today, I took break from everything.

Some friends and I arranged to go to Dublin Zoo. We met in the afternoon, after picking up bags full of snacks and junk food (okay, it was ALL junk food) before heading in, where we wandered for hours looking at all the animals we'd seen the last time we had each been there. For me, it's been three years since a visit. Not much has changed, though they appear to be minus a lion (which is minus craic) and have changed the rhino, gorrilla and elephant habitats.

Naturally, I had to pay a visit to the red panda. Adorable as always, and sleeping lazily. We also went in search of the sloth. The epitome of the sin, they sat in a box, asleep, one on top of the other.

I think the lazy animals appeal to be because I empathise.

Anyway, I expected that to be my day. I thought we'd go the zoo, eat junk food, maybe go for actual food afterwards, then head home. And things kind of worked out like that. We did get food afterwards. But we didn't head home right away. We ended up going to the cinema.

From animals at the zoo, we went to Monsters University. My love of Pixar knows no bounds.

I can't remember the first film too well, but MU did not disappoint. It was a fantastic film, we weren't the only adults there, there was plenty of fun, and we get the college experience.

The only problem with all of this fun is that I didn't write today. I'm not even upset over that. Everyone has to take holidays every once in a while, and it's been a while since I've actually had a chance to spend a day with friends, mucking about and being tourists. I'd do it again in a heartbeat if it meant getting to see them.

Day 10: Procrastination

I find that with one of three books written this month, I've begun procrastinating a lot more. Fun, right? Not for my word count. The exact level of progress on The Blood of Leap is... non-existent.

However, I did manage to finally upload the trailer for The Hounds of Hell!

It's a thing, now. I can be happy about that. I can also finally stop focusing on that aspect of the book and start focusing on other aspects of next week, including:

1. The flash stories I want to publish next week.
2. The publication of The Hounds of Hell.
3. The completion of The Blood of Leap.

Yeah, that has to happen, and soon. I think tomorrow, in between the make-over of my bedroom and the occasional descent into madness, I need to write a lot. An awful lot. Thankfully I have no social life to speak of for tomorrow, or for Friday (most of the day, anyway), so I can work on getting a lot of the book written in the next couple of days.

If things go my way, I hope to have 10,000 words written by the time I leave for the cinema on Friday night. That's a bit ambitious, but I'm going to make a start on the writing tonight. This is partially to avoid going near my room, which I have reason to believe is still a furnace. (I learned from yesterday not to spend all my time in my bedroom, and commandeered the kitchen.)

I imagine I'll have approximately three hours to write tomorrow, not including blogging time. That's the potential for 4,000 words, I think. Which means, by those calculations, I'll be writing for a bit over five hours on Friday. Thankfully, writing is fun. Even if going out and buying comic books, and making trailers, and drinking a ridiculous amount of water, is also fun. (Wait, drinking water isn't fun... I just needed to survive this unbearable heat.)

So, there's that. Me being behind, me planning on catching up, me going insane, possibly being over-hydrated and bound to face the consequences tonight... good times, am I right?

Gripped by Exhaustion

It took me some time to actually get up this morning, by which time all hopes of waking up early to write were dashed. With a number of other factors then contributing to the time-suck of the day, including eating, chores, laziness, Skyrim and The Walking Dead (dammit, why did we start watching that...and then keep watching until season 1 reached a finale?), I quickly ran out of time in the day.

I managed to write a sizeable chunk today, despite these various distractions, but about half as much as I would have liked to. It means I still have a lot of work to do, and only a couple more days to actually get it all done.

This might mean not doing very much in terms of television or PS3 for the next while. That's a sacrifice I'm willing to make, if it means getting this book written.

The thing is, today's work was the most fiction I'd written in a very long time. It took a while to get back into the rhythm of things, to find the words more easily. I didn't just slip back into writing fiction like it was riding a bike. I wasn't just shaky at first; I was incapable.

With the chapter I'm currently working on coming to an end, I hope to beat these mental blocks. That's all they are. I'm out of practice with fiction. The ideas are there. The words, not so much. It's a different type of language to writing a blog post every day, or writing a poem, or writing non-fiction.

The actual story is going well, though. While it's more of a struggle to write it than I'd like it to be, I'm having fun with it, and getting the basis for the book in place. I've even introduced a new character to the series. She can drive. She knows my protagonist Fionn. She's going to be more and more kick-ass as the story goes on. I can't wait. Strong female characters are always interesting to create. While her role in the story will be understated by certain characters, she's integral to the development of events in the book.

Just so you know.

Anyway, in other news:
- My desire to write a zombie apocalypse novel has only increased since watching The Walking Dead season 1.
- I'm scheming something, as I have a tendency to do.
- New Comic Book Day...just, that. Tomorrow. As always. Yay!

Days off spent in College

...or, how I like to find new and interesting ways to procrastinate!

So I decided that I'd walk into college today, like I did yesterday, and walk home as well. Can I just say now, downhill walking is deceptive when you have to take the same route home! Nice and relaxing one way, torture the other way! It added five minutes to my journey having to trek uphill! That's not fair. I was hungry. On the brightside, I had had a breakfast and a lunch... which is more than I can say for Liam, who had to leave shortly after five to drive back to Meath. All of a sudden, Liam is broke and can't afford to even buy himself a cup of coffee (so I bought one for him...when someone says "I can't even afford a coffee" and you're spending the day in the same room as them studying, then you can't really ignore them if you can afford to buy them said coffee.)

So, ten kilometres... that's not fun. That's the total distance I walked today, excluding the travelling about the college. So I suppose it's not a total for the day, but more a total for the trips to and from college. (It just reminds me of Tommy Tiernan, saying he had to walk fifteen miles to school. Uphill. Both ways!)

On a lighter note... except for the weight in my bag... I had my laptop with me. I felt very happy to be able to save myself some printing money by just looking at documents on my laptop instead. Power Save is a hero. And then I had the IT guy from France set up the Internet for use in the college (which actually caused me problems when I got home...). So I was able to go on Facebook and Twitter in college, without having to go to the computer rooms!

I did do some study, of course. I'm a good little nerd. I got through the Galilean Ministry of Jesus (don't worry, I won't bore you with the details) and I got my notes on the Decalogue written up (the Decalogue, for those who don't know, is just the fancy term for The Ten Commandments).

But then there was more procrastination. Anthony and I traded YouTube knowledge; I showed him John WIlliams is the Man (look it up!), and the entirety of Meet Sam, the Movie, while he showed me things like a Carlow nutcase and a song about Jesus that was very hilarious but made no sense.

And as a closing term word... Paddy Reilly really ought to return to Ballyjamesduff sometime soon...