Saturday 19 October 2002

Pic of the day: Should be familiar to some: The Civilization III main screen. Wish I could see it more often, but now I remember why I don't.

My own pace

I played Civilization III today. It was fun. Eventually I gave it up, though, because of my hand and wrist and shoulder. And I thought about how ironic that was. Civ3 is a turn-based strategy game. Nothing happens until you have finished your turn. You can take your time. You can leave the computer, take a walk, cook dinner, stretch and exercise, and come back and continue where you left. There is no pressure of time, none at all. And yet ... I wore myself out. I did not leave, or look away, or stop hovering over the mouse and keyboard.

The game did not set my pace. I set my pace, and it was way too fast for me. (Ironically I am less hurried in multiplayer games where the game sets the pace.)

It is the same thing with writing, I believe. I could take pauses. But I don't, not until the pain sets in. Because my brain sets the pace, and my hands try to follow it. But my brain is too fast for my body. This may be entirely because of the body, of course. Anyway, the effect is that my body tries to follow, and wears itself out.

***

I hope my desktop computer is back till November 1st, for NaNoWriMo. Unlike the portable, it is able to run speech recognition software, albeit with a certain tendency to error. (It has trouble with the letter "l" in particular.) But my computer has been repaired on since September 12th. That is a really long time to repair a computer. I will give them a little bit more time, but I will have to report it stolen if they can't account for it within the month. This is one of the bigger electro chains too, not some shoddy corner shop.

Then there is always Dasher, the input that is like a video game. It is fun, and probably not so slow once you get used to it, but the PC version is poorly integrated with the rest of the software, unlike a keyboard. Besides, you'd like punctuation. The Pocket PC version is slightly better but still lacks comma, semicolon and others of my favorites.

***

Speaking of time and NaNoWriMo: I see that 3 years ago today, I rebooted my Thaumaturge story. As always, it stopped by itself after a while; but ideas from Thaumaturge are slated for inclusion in What daydreams don't tell. In fact, one of the basic premises for Thaumaturge was to question the whole superhero / supervillain paradigm, and replace the good / evil axis with knowledge / ignorance. Things that make perfect sense when you are ignorant, like raising the dead, are very dubious once you think them through. If you first break the rules by resurrecting one person, are you not at the same time killing all the others that you let stay dead? Regardless of your personal morality, that's how it is likely to look. Which is why my thaumaturges were always reluctant to do anything super except in private. Once you start catching people who fall from skyscrapers, it won't be long before people jump from skyscrapers in order to meet you, and you will be blamed when you aren't there for them.

Sounds like prime NaNoWriMo material to me. But when I wrote my first few Thaumaturge stories 3 years ago this month, I either hadn't heard about NaNoWriMo or I believed it to be a purely American thing. (With the name, that seemed reasonable.) I am pretty sure I've seen some of my fellow journal writers do either NaNoWriMo or some competitor ... the thing about writing a novel in a month seemed familiar. Not sure if any of them finished. Not many do. Probably not I either: My brain may be able to easily write 50 000 words in a month; my hand is another matter.

***

On a related note, I was surprised (to say the least, more like shocked) to see that it is now 3 years since I dabbled in that story. I believed it was about a year ago. Perhaps I just don't have any good way of dating events that mostly take place in another universe. Or perhaps time has finally caught up with me, as it does with elderly people. "No, grandma, that was not yesterday, that was 20 years ago." Good thing then that I have my journal, right?