Month: September 2007

I stared down at the lonely few numbers scattered among empty spaces on the form. At the top was boldly emblazoned “Character Sheet.” I’d filled out similar forms before, but according to different rules and over a decade ago. Role playing games are full of numbers which affect other numbers which affect what the character can and can not do in the game. Even in my roleplaying heyday (20 years ago now) I was never in it for the numbers. What I enjoyed was the community creation of a story where one person, the Game Master, creates the plot and setting. Everyone else creates a character. All these elements are thrown together and an adventure begins to emerge which is different than anyone expects before hand. I love the interaction of characters and plot bouncing off of each other. It is why I write fiction.

But before the play, comes the character creation. I remembered loving role playing games, but felt overwhelmed. Howard, of course, had his character all ready to go. Howard games every Thursday night, so he isn’t out of practice. He was the reason I sat there, with empty spaces daring me to figure out how to fill them. It was a chance for us to play together, to laugh together. Such time is critical to maintaining a solid relationship and for us it had been very sparse lately. So I was there despite my worries about the cost of the time and of the creative energies which such a game requires. Howard helped and the spaces on my character sheet began to fill.

There are two common approaches to take when creating a character. One is to ask “who do I wish I could be,” the other is to ask “who would be an interesting character for this game.” Going the wish fulfillment route is difficult for me because I’m pretty happy with the person I am. But the person I am doesn’t make a very good character for an adventure story. So, I looked closely at the setting and the other characters. I created a character who filled skill gaps and who would bounce interestingly off of the other characters. Lady Brona Raylethorne was heavily lifted from the cartoon character The Tick, but I thought that would be fun. Unfortunately part of why The Tick works is because he strings together elaborately odd mixed metaphors. That is incredibly difficult to do on the spur of the moment. We began to play and I found that I was not doing my justice to my imagined character.

I got better as the game continued. Everyone did. It is the nature of role play that the characters and players develop together as the game continues. The magic of the game is in the playing. I became so completely absorbed that hours disappeared without notice. It all began to flow. There was much laughter and adventure. It was so fun that, rather than break up the game, we moved the game to our house so that I could tend to my kids and still play. Playing with the kids around worked far better than I expected it to. We’ve all agreed that we’ll play at our house again. I walked away from the game spinning thoughts about the characters and wondering what will happen next. I want to play again. Only this time I want to manage the kids better (things got a little chaotic at bedtime) and I want to watch some Tick ahead of time so that I have some of those lines in my head.

I know several writers who keep both Livejournal accounts and Blogger accounts. They post everything to both accounts. Since I’ve begun following some blogs over at Blogger, I signed up for an account. (http://onecobbleatatime.blogspot.com/) This means I can comment without having to type out those annoying “prove you’re not a spambot” strings of letters. This leads me to wonder whether I should start cross posting everything. If you have an opinion about why cross posting would be a good or bad thing, leave a comment below.

A good night’s sleep can work wonders. I like my kids again. They’ve gone back to being generally agreeable and cute rather than screaming, kicking balls of emotion. I’m going to make them go to bed early again tonight and see if this is a repeatable miracle.

It turned out to be a very good thing that the kids were in bed early. Thursday is Howard’s gaming night. The GM for the game had a crisis which left the players at loose ends. They all came over here and tip toed into the house so as not to wake the children. It was a really fun couple of hours. Howard cooked some food. There was talking and laughing. Then we watched Back to the Future. I was really glad that my rough evening had such an enjoyable end.

Today was happy and productive for me. I got to field a bunch of emails from people who are excited about buying sketch editions of the next Schlock book, but who needed special help for one reason or another. I love answering that kind of email because only a little bit of extra effort on my part makes people effusively happy. I figure the extra effort is only due to these people since they’re paying our bills.

One week until pre-orders open. I need to run some orders through and make sure that everything works the way it should. The store had a pretty good stress test with the last book release, but we’re doing some different things. I need to test those.

A couple of years ago I met a very nice man named James Dashner. He was one of a group of people that I visited with at Conduit in 2006 who inspired me to work toward my own dreams. I think the biggest indicator for the success of a writer is that they know other people who have succeeded. A couple months later I lured James and his family over to my house for dinner so that Kiki could stare in wonder at the author of the Jimmy Fincher Saga. She had him sign books and still has them stashed away in her room where no one else can damage them.

James is a fun guy to be around and is just getting ready to leave his day job for a career as an author. I’m very excited for him. As part of this move he’s begun a blog of his very own, The Dashner Dude. As is true with most new blogs, he feels a little lonely over there and would like some company. You can click the link and meet James for yourself.

This entry was made primarily because James offered free books for blog links. I like free books. But honestly, I like James even more than free books and I’d love to see his career as a writer soar.

It is not usually possible for a single child to maintain a tantrum for two hours. However if three children trade off tag-team style, they can make sure that the screaming does not stop. Sometimes it was in surround sound. I spent from 6 pm until 8 pm just managing tantrums. The tantrums are a direct result of lack of sleep, so I bundled all three into bed as fast as humanly possible. Now it is just Kiki and me and silence.

Link’s sources of sadness:
Friend A sent him home because friend A wanted to play with friend B instead.
Friend A lied about the reason for sending him home.
Life is not fair.
We didn’t do allowances today.
He didn’t want to do his homework.
He was itchy.

Gleek’s sources for tantrum:
Kiki won’t let Gleek use Kiki’s CD player.
Bestfriend is grounded and can’t play.
Link got a bath and Gleek didn’t.
She didn’t want to eat what I served for dinner.
She was hungry.
Patches wore her rollerblades.
I scolded her for kicking Patches because he was wearing her rollerblades.
Life is not fair.
She was starving.
She didn’t want to go to bed.

Patches’ sources of sadness:
Gleek kicked him.
Link got a bath and he didn’t.
He needed a bandaid for an invisible wound.
He didn’t want to eat the dinner I made.
He was starving.
He couldn’t find his blankets.
Life is not fair.
I made him go to bed.
I wouldn’t read Harry Potter tonight.

I have not changed anything in our storefront for months. I was braced for hours of frustration trying to figure out how to input new products. There was no frustration at all. In fact I figured out how to add the option so that people can pick a character for their sketched edition. We’re also considering adding an option for “special handling” so that people who want their books to arrive in pristine condition will be able to have that.

Yay! It’s working!

Howard and I have a very important rule for our marriage. Any time we are afraid to tell the other about something, that something must be told. The fear of telling communicates that the topic has emotional freight which must be examined together. Most of the time we’ll think it all through in advance before bringing the subject up, perhaps even planning the wording we’ll use, but we find a good time and talk the thing over. An example: Suppose Howard and I have agreed to diet together, but I bake cookies on his night out and eat them all up. Afterward I realize that in addition to breaking my diet, I also broke a bargain with Howard that we would diet together. I am afraid to tell Howard about the cookies, but I have to do it. Not telling in this context may seem minor, but it sets a pattern of concealment and deceit which could lead to some very unpleasant places indeed. So I pick a quiet time when Howard and I are both ready to talk and I tell him about the cookies and about feeling awful because I hid the cookies from him. Then Howard tells me it is all okay and he doesn’t care that I made cookies. And we are right with each other again. No secrets.

I love this rule. It is the core of why our marriage continues to be strong despite everything. But even good things can cause occasional complications. A pile of unpleasant stresses happened last week. They were stressful for Howard and for me. Because I love Howard I did not want my emotional reactions to the stresses to cause him more stress. There was and is a whole pile of things that I am afraid about. But if I was conscious of being afraid of them, I would have to talk about them with Howard and potentially add to his list of stresses. So I hid my fears deep inside my brain, so deep that I didn’t know they were there. Unfortunately the fears were like a geyser. I had to exert constant effort to keep those fears suppressed. The result was that I spent 4 days in a near constant anxiety state. My heart raced and sometimes even palpitated. I felt shaky. I felt scared with no reason I could see for the fear. And I was cold. All of this gave me brand new fears for my health and worries that I’d developed an anxiety disorder which would interfere with all the things I need to be doing.

I couldn’t keep it up. Geysers of emotion will not be denied forever. I’ve now talked with Howard about the biggest pieces and will continue to talk about the littler things as I realize what they are.

Biggest fear: We’ve been living on the cartooning income for a year now. It is a miracle that we can make a living this way. I love this life. I am afraid that this life was a loan rather than a gift. I’m afraid that we won’t sell enough books to cover the next six months of expenses. I’m afraid that we will fail and will thus let down all the people who have found hope in our success. That last is a big one. It has made me so happy to be a cause for hope because some people have so little. It hurts to think we might be cause for someone to despair.

Biggest grief: I’m sad for the chunk of money which will never arrive. I’m frightened by the debt holes that we have to fill. I’m frightened by the further dent that will be made paying for the printing of this next book. I am a financial squirrel and it drives me crazy that I have so few resources in hand to cover pending expenses. We have lots of assets to borrow against, but I don’t want to borrow at all. I want to have cash with which to pay bills.

Biggest despair: Over the last week or so, I have spent lots of time wondering why I bother to write. I found myself despairing that my writing was worth anything. The despair made no sense because nothing about my writing has changed since last week when it all felt fine. Then I realized that the advent of the financial crisis makes me want to scramble to find money where ever I can. At this point my writing can not bring in any money. I’ve sold the story that was ready to go. All the other writing is still in process. My writing could not help me solve the current financial crisis so I was subconsciously wondering whether it had value at all.

Other stuff:
The sale of the first Schlock book moved us from a place where we had to pinch every penny into a place where I could occasionally buy things new. I truly did enjoy the challenge of doing things like providing Christmas for less than $100. I enjoyed going to garage sales and keeping track of food inventories. But it was a lot of work and time. This week I found myself staring at needing to do the same sorts of scrimping, only I no longer have the time. Back then my job was to make the money last. Now I’m also doing book layout, and shipping, and writing. I’d much rather keep these new things than go back to the scrimping. I’m afraid that I’ll have to go back.

I remember how stressful pre-orders and book shipping were the last two times I did it. I’m afraid of the incoming stress.

I’m afraid that I won’t be able to do the layout that will need to be done for the book after this one.

I am so afraid of so many things and I can’t seem to stop. I want to stop, because these fears aren’t useful. They keep getting in my way and tripping me when I want to run and solve problems. And that’s why I was suppressing. I wanted to just get things done and fill the financial holes. Once the holes were filled then I’ve removed the causes for fear. Problem solved. Only apparently I’m not allowed to skip the step of actually feeling afraid and admitting it.

“Woe is me” isn’t very fun to read, nor is it very useful to anyone. Since “woe is me” was the theme of yesterday, I did not post. In hindsight it makes sense that I had to have a day to emotionally react to the events of last week. I was too busy to react at the time. But the emotional reactions aren’t useful since I’ve already formed a plan for going forward. Instead they were a thing to get out of the way.

The mood of the day was also not helped by the illness I’ve picked up. It makes my heart race and my limbs feel weak even when I’m sitting still. The feeling is similar to post-adrenaline-rush. It took me awhile to figure out that the sensation was an illness because the swollen lymph nodes and creeping headache are much more subtle signs to pick up. The clincher though is that eating vitamin C restores me to nearly normal. (Wish I’d figured that out yesterday instead of this morning.) Unfortunately the racing-heart and weak-limbs feel very similar to fear reactions. In fact for much of yesterday my back brain kept deciding that since my body felt afraid, it should provide a reason for the fear. So it kept throwing “reasons to be afraid of the future” into my forebrain. It took me awhile to see that loop and break it.

Considering the amount of stress I was under last week, I should not be surprised that I’m sick. Hopefully it will be a short illness. I’ve got things to do and I’m really tired of reminding myself that I’m not really scared. I’m just sick. I will get better. I want to tackle the things that are coming with joy at the challenges, not fear of failure.

When considering a child’s birthday party the first question I ask is whether I really need to have one. If I can find a different alternative that will still make my child happy, then I’ll do that. Some parents love to run kid’s parties. I do not. I don’t hate it either. It is just a lot of work and thankless effort. There are few things more engrumpifiying than to spend hours preparing a party, hours at top speed running the party, then to have one of the guests complain because the prizes aren’t big enough. (I would have liked to provide bigger prizes, but I was out of time and money. Since this particular child ate his weight in pizza, I’m pretty sure he got his money’s worth.) This year it was very apparent that Link needed a party. I’m not sure that Link has ever had a big birthday party. Most of his birthdays we invite a friend or two to join us for an activity of some sort. This year Link wanted an all-out Mario Party birthday. So that is what we did.

Know the children you intend to invite. I happen to know all of the boys who came to the party. Half of them are in my cubscout den. The other half will soon be. I’ve had all these boys at my house before, so I knew roughly what to expect. I also knew that most of them would be happily involved with the party I had planned. I would never plan such an elaborate scheme if I did not know the guests in advance.

Parties always begin with an awkward phase where some of the guest have arrived and some have not. It is good to have an activity that people can join in easily, but which provides some focus to the gathering. Otherwise the guests will be tempted to pull out toys and I really don’t want to be tripping over toys later. Sometimes this activity is a craft or a coloring page. For Link’s party we just provided pizza to people as they walked in the door.

The core of the party is the games. It is important to keep everyone focused on playing games together otherwise you have children wandering off to examine presents, or open presents, or get out toys. The last thing you want is children bouncing around like super balls while you’re trying to get them to play musical chairs. One of the keys is to keep the games short and focused. For Link’s party we used the Mario Party format of having a larger game broken up by mini-games. We laid out paper spaces in a trail on the floor. The kids rolled a giant die to move. Then they had to follow the instructions for their space. They were all trying to collect 15 beads by the time they reached the end of the trail. Some spaces made them lose beads. Other spaces gave them beads. Every so often a space would indicate a mini-game. The mini-games were really short. See who can blow the most bubbles. Throw three balls into a basket and get three beads. Draw pictures and see if the other kids can guess what you were drawing. That kind of thing.

If you’re going to do a big elaborate game like Mario Party, it is a good idea to play test it ahead of time. This week was insanely busy. We had no time to play test, so I adjusted the rules as we went. The required bead count dropped from 30 to 15. We ran out of Mini-games and so I declared all the mini game spaces to be +2 bead spaces. Patches took turns whenever he wanted to. Gleek took no turns at all. She was much more interested in making bead-and-pipe-cleaner art. Then halfway through the party one of the guests arrived late with his little sister in tow. Fortunately one of the other guests was unable to make it at all, so I had enough prizes. There was no way I was going to send away a little girl who had high hopes of attending a party. It was chaos. At least for me. I was constantly running, mediating, making sure that turns were taken, heading off tantrums from Gleek and Patches. Which leads to my next point.

If you’re going to run a big party, full of children, round up help. Howard was unavailable today. I knew that he would be when I planned the event. But then Kiki defected to a friend’s house because she didn’t want to be near a party full of boys. This left me alone with Link, 6 guests, Gleek, Patches, and one little sister of a guest. The fact that I was alone with all that, is my fault. There are people I could have asked to help. But I didn’t ask. It all turned out okay. I really think that all the kids had fun. None of the guests had any upsets. Gleek and Patches each had several upsets because I was unable to pay attention to them and soothe things over, but we weathered it all. But I wore myself out keeping everything going. If I’d had help the experience could have been more fun for me. And we might have gotten some pictures of the event. Link took some video and pictures with his new Vidster, but the image quality on that is pretty poor. Oh well. I didn’t have a spare thought to think about grabbing the camera.

After the games, everyone is wound up. This is when you do the presents. Some people like to do cake first, then presents, but I find that sometimes kids have trouble relinquishing ownership of the things they’ve given as gifts. It is easier to leave behind the pile of shiny things if there is a promise of treat food. Then while they eat. I stash all the presents in a corner so that they don’t cause fights later. Eating food usually calms the kids down some. That was the case with this group. We didn’t have cake, just ice cream. They ate it happily. Getting them all served was hard on me because I had to track all the requests for sprinkles or no sprinkles and glasses of water or milk.

The party can end right here. You can send the guests home. But we still had some time left, so I chose an activity that let the kids wind down a little and which required minimal effort from me. I turned on some Looney Tunes cartoons. I think for future large parties I’ll keep the time down to an hour and a half. That seems to be my limit for high-energy chaos management.

Have a quiet activity planned for after the party is over. After two hours of a dozen loud children, all I want to do is hide from children. For the rest of the day I send away all the kids who show up at my door wanting to play. If my kids want to go play at a friend’s house, that is fine, but I can’t deal with any extra kids here. We all need some quiet time after the over-stimulation of birthday party.