Sunday, November 8, 2009

Novel writing is hard.

Hi gang! Not many blog posts from me here as November gets going, but for once I have a good reason! This is NaNoWriMo month, the National Novel Writing Month, and I, your humble blogger, was stupid and crazy enough to participate. Look, you can see me right here! That's me! My own page! It's like I'm famous! Yay!

If you're not familiar with NaNoWriMo, it's a collective bit of organized group insanity, in which tens of thousands of people around the world voluntarily agree to set a personal goal: We will each write a novel, in 30 days. More specifically, we need to write 50,000 words in 30 days. There's no "prize" per se, other than the bragging rights that you did it, kind of like running a marathon.

The beautiful thing about it is that they--the organizers, I mean-- go out of their way to empower you to write crap. Because, obviously, unless you're some kind of insufferable demigodlike prodigy, that's what you're going to write in 30 days. All you are really doing is writing a first draft. Which anyone can do of course, and which many of us writerly types say we are going to do "some day"---but what NaNoWriMo forces you to do is commit, to keep going, to not bog yourself down in blood-from-a-stone word-by-word hyperediting or self-criticism. You can't possibly make the goal that way. And so, you write write write. I'm going to quote directly from the official website:

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.


For someone like me, this was just perfect encouragement. Knowing that the official group is giving me permission to suck has given me the strength to just do it. And as I'm seven days and 10,000 words into the writing, I can testify in a court of law: My book sucks! My god, I never knew how hard it was to actually do the things that novelists do. I've written, I'm sure, millions of words for public consumption by now, but never in this form. The closest I've come is the Mankind's Last Hope play/sitcom that I co-wrote with my pal Cecil Vortex, but, ya know, that was 1) a co-writing effort and 2) a script, a different beast entirely.



Two images from the live production of Mankind's Last Hope--also with a character named Xanthor!

Not surprisingly, the part that's coming easiest to me, in the novel, is the dialog writing. Lots of fun and I think I've managed to concoct a few laugh lines. The Xanthor sections, too--the mock high fantasy--have been a blast to write so far. But all the rest of it? The character arcs and scene-setting and pacing and descriptive text? So out of my league here. Kinda wish I'd taken more creative writing classes right about now, which would have helped me get experience in some of the basics here. Essay writing, critiques, confessionals, all that I can do, for the most part. But this? This is like telling me to fly a plane.

Still, I persevere! Why? Because NaNoWriMo has given me permission to suck! As I sit down early every morning to grind out 1600+ words a day, I just do not look back. I have no idea where I'm going, who all these characters are yet, and only the vaguest notion of how it's all going to end. But who cares! What laws am I breaking? The chance that anyone is even going to read this first draft, at all, are slim-to-none (sorry!) But if I can emerge at the end of 30 days with a 50,000 word "finished" clump of garbage, it at least gives me something I can actually do a rewrite or edit of, something I didn't have 30 days earlier, and it, if nothing else, is one of those classic "learning experiences" that are so good for all of us no matter how much they usually blow.

Anyhoo, that's what I'm doing this month! So forgive what's likely to be the even-less-frequent-than-usual blog posts. Maybe I can post the occasional excerpt. Maybe. Oh, and, please keep your comments/criticisms/suggestions about EA.com coming, as I'm still actively reading them all and bringing them up with the staff. Lots and lots of work-in-progress behind the scenes at my day job. It may take awhile to see the fruits of my labor, but hang tight. The Master Plan is in effect.

Happy Sunday, everyone!

59 comments:

nlohr said...

Keep on truckin! As a fellow NaNoWriMo-er I've made sure to buddy up with your profile on there under my username nickux. I'm just a few words shy of 12,000 and let me tell you this is tough stuff. If you compare writing in NaNoWriMo to trekking to the summit of Mt. Everest, 50,000 words would equal the 29,029 ft. peak. In those terms, base camp at 17,000 ft. would be just under 10,000 words. So we're still just starting if you look at it that way but we gotta keep climbing that bar graph on the Nano Stats page to make it to the top. Good luck and happy writing!

Irwin said...

I'll say this--not to be a brown noser--but out of all the nanowrimo novel descriptions I've read yours has by far the funniest premise. It'd be a shame if no one ever gets to read it. Well, good luck. And maybe we'll see each other at the finish line. I only now get why many a novelist cry, "Writing is hard work."

Troy Goodfellow said...

You know, this always sounds like a neat idea, but:

a) Even with permission I have a hard time turning off my internal editor. My blog once had almost a dozen have finished posts because I couldn't make them work right.

and

b) Fiction is hard. I have this urge to keep moving the plot forward to the end, so I am not a natural story teller. Suspense? Obstacles? Pfft. Just get to the conclusion.

Good luck with Xanthor, the Eye of Argon for the 21st century!

wkdesigns said...

I see that you are falling behind on your daily word count goals! Better get moving! :)

Jeff Green said...

Yeah. Blame Dragon Age. :)

Anonymous said...

Writing a story is the hardest thing you'll ever do, because nobody's making you finish it like in school

Anonymous said...

Good luck! I completed NaNoWriMo with two or three days to spare in 2007, and it was eye-opening. I've been meaning to try it again.

Anonymous said...

If you had said to me that the zombie-novel was going to be the next big thing, or even that an incredibly cheesy series of teenage... sorry, young adult... vampire novels would become a major smash hit, I would've said, yeah, well crazy things do happen in publishing, but that will NEVER happen.

So I suppose that there's room for a fantasy novel that's cast in the same mould as Hitchhiker's?

Well, good luck with that.

The thing is, I've never quite understood why people feel that they need to sit down and write like this?

Writing a novel should be an enjoyable process, and something you feel compelled to do, not because you feel guilty that you haven't been doing it - if you're not writing everyday, then there's probably a reason for that. People always say, oh but I have to work, and when I come home from work I'm too tired to write. Or they'll make the excuse that they only get two days off each week, and that during those two days they need to rest and relax in order to re-charge their batteries.

Simply put: those people aren't writers.

Rather, they're people who are in love with the 'idea' of writing.

If you're a novelist - even if you're an unpublished novelist - then it means that you spend an inordinate amount of time alone writing fiction. If you're not spending your every available moment either writing, reading, or thinking about fiction then it means you're not a novelist.

Writers always right. Am I write?

Jeff Green said...

Anonymous,
You are totally "write." :) And I'm no more a novelist than I am a game designer (DOH!). But that can't hurt the lot of us from trying, right? It's a fun exercise!

Jonah said...

That's awesome that you are participating! I am as well, though I'm already way behind where I need to be.

I've added you to my buddy list, Jeff. I hope that's OK.
Mine is here:
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/546723

Tristessa said...

Yeah, this is something interesting isn't it? I've churned out bad fiction before but this time it has the backing of thousands of other people who are doing the same thing.

Since you probably don't get to stumble upon any of my blogs like you used to when you were back with the 1UP crew, I'll repeat what I recently said there...

I once wrote a 135 page novel in a week and a half when I was about 13. And it was terrible. The story involved a small town sheriff and his wife, who "worked at the zoo". She was warning that too much chemical dumping was driving the alligators crazy - and killing their food source. So, naturally, they were about to storm the town in a feeding frenzy. Even though a few people went missing already, nobody believed her and the sheriff had to go around telling them they should listen. People just said that he only believed her because she was his wife. Then there was about 50 pages concerning hoard of alligators attacking the town. The book only came in at just over 110 pages, so I had another wave of gators attack. The book was hilarious...mostly because of awful dialogue and shoddy science that I got from watching late 70's 'nature attacks' movies. I wish I still had it but I lost it somewhere over the years.

I'm no stranger to speed novel writing. This time, there's a big difference. When I was 13 I thought I was writing something good. This time out, it just feels weird writing something that is knowingly bad. Don't get me wrong, I still like what I'm shooting for and so far it has a lot of parts that I think are genuinely funny, it's just that there are so many stretches that feel like 'placeholder text'.

I'm with you on the dialogue. I feel great whizzing though all the banter between the characters. I feel really awkward pouring through all the transitional text and descriptive sections that will most likely get the axe in later editing. In it's final form, what I'm writing can't possibly be longer than 140-150 pages at best.

Great to hear that you're keeping up for the most part. I fell a bit behind early last week because I got sick. It lasted four days and sitting at my computer was a chore in that state (and I had no laptop). Now it's catchup time over this coming week.

Looking forward to seeing an excerpt or two =)

hair salon london said...

I know its NaNoWriMo...National Novel Writing Month. but we celebrate a NaBloPsMo...
National Blog Posting Month ..and i have been posted 7 blogs...

wkdesigns said...

Blame Dragon Age? :P
I have been editing a story I wrote many years ago to work as a story for a module that I am creating for the PC version of Dragon Age. I am also 45 hours into the game itself. Not to mention being a full-time student working toward a degree in programming.
I have time!

However, if you must blame anything for eating up your time, at least it's a great game!

Good luck!

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Lee Benningfield said...

'Cudgel' was definitely the best game in the Xanthor series. They took everything that was great about Dagger of Xanthor and just refined the hell out of the gameplay. I can't wait to read the inside story behind this classic PC RPG.

Jeff Green said...

LOL. I know I've arrived when I get the "Please help I need money" spam on my blog. Yay!

Sully said...

Something I found very useful while writing a novel is to re-read what I wrote the day before every morning. That not only let me catch up on what was happening, but let me edit as well. Another useful thing is to have a sheet of graph paper with number markers on it, so after every thousand words, I would fill in one square. At the end of a writing day, it was very gratifying to fill in like, 3 squares in bright red. It's a very tangible and graphic way to witness your progression. Another way to mark this progress is to actually print out that day's work, and add it to a growing pile beside you. Whenever you take a break for water or coffee, you can flip through the pages and feel the wind of your work breeze back in your face. It smells absurdly sweet, and is incredibly encouraging.

Anonymous said...

David, WTF?

'Cudgel' was a piece of shit? It was released in November, and then patched something like five hundred times within the next six months. The reason for this was pretty obvious - they wanted to ship this thing in time for the big Christmas sales.

It shocks me that ANYBODY would think that 'Cudgel' was better than 'Dagger'. (No, seriously, joke post?)

You are aware, I would hope, that most of the design team that worked on 'Dagger' formed their own studio, and DID NOT work on 'Cudgel'. Tell me that you're aware of this? It wasn't even the same team, guy.

'Cudgel' was filled with broken quests and bugs that caused CONSTANT CRASHING TO THE DESKTOP - this isn't even to mention the quite frankly abysmal frame-rates. Seriously, what game were you playing? (And please don't tell me that this game worked for you on your system... because that's just complete and utter crap... I'm sick and tired of people telling me that Cudgel worked perfectly fine on their system... complete crap... no way did this piece of crap work on your system.)

Shockingly, I made it all the way to chapter two before finally throwing in the towel - that was easily... by a country mile... one of the most frustrating experiences I've had in gaming... ever... finally I just gave up and said, oh well, it's back to Oblivion.

Cudgel, which I had waited three years for, was a day one for me, and it was easily the most profoundly disappointing game I have ever purchased.

To each his own, I suppose, but yeah, whatever.

EDIT: Also, the collector's edition was the worst collector's edition I've ever seen. The so-called cloth-map was so faded that you couldn't even make anything out, not to mention that it was about the same size as a small mouse-pad. I pre-ordered this game from EB and was supposed to get an in-game bonus item... but the code simply didn't work. Um, okay, that's called false advertising.

Snickering Corpses said...

Best wishes to you for your nanowrimo efforts! I keep being tempted to do it but haven't actually tried it yet. I wonder if I should be insane and start it with 1/3 of the month gone?

On the EA website, my own number one comment would be, as a fan of old games under the EA umbrella such as the Wing Commander series, the EA website does not really seem to offer much for the classics. It's a sales site, of course, so it makes sense it focuses on the newest thing, but it would be nice to be able to register and have a listing of all my old EA games inside my EA account, for instance.

Anonymous said...

The title of this blog is pretty annoying.

Novel writing is hard.

"Oh I'm Jeff Green and I'm having a tough time with my novel, and actually I'd rather blog about the troubles I'm having than sit down and actually write."

Man up, god damn you.

Why not take some inspiration from those who preceded you? Hemingway, for example, was a five-hundred-words-a-day man. Didn't you ever read "A Moveable Feast"? I highly, highly recommend it to all transpiring writers. Read this book and you'll begin to see how Hemingway structured his entire life around his writing. You won't, in other words, ever read Hemingway saying, oh, novel writing is hard.

Maybe if you were to man up you might even get some decent copy onto paper. Then you and your wife could book a trip to some southern resort, and you could leave early with plans to meet her down there, and she could try and surprise you by bringing your work with her on the train. Then, maybe, she could pull a Hadley, and leave your work on the train, and then you'd have the excuse not to work anymore.

Jesus, this blog used to be witty, insightful and highly entertaining (though not necessarily in that order): blah, blah, blah, what the hell happened here?

William Jefferson Clinton

Jeff Green said...

Hey Clinton, I voted for you twice, and now you come to my blog and diss me? Fuck you!

Anonymous said...

Hugely looking forward to the Bad Company 2 interview - I read at Gamespot that Dice is trying really hard to please the PC crowd for this game.

I'm more of a single player guy, so I'm really looking forward to this game.

Also was I ever surprised to learn that Mass Effect 2 will be shipping in January. I sure hope you schedule some Mass Effect 2 stuff for us on the podcast. That'd be great!

The Goose.

Mike said...

I'm with you Jeff, Novel Writing is hard. I participated in NaNoWriMo 3 years ago and finished my word count with half a week to spare, but the other 10 people who started with me all washed out in week 2. If you can survive to week 3 chances are you will finish.

The best part is, after an edit or two your NaNo novel can look pretty good. Since you are a writerly type, I think yours will turn out well in the end, and I have nothing but encouragement for you. It is a great experience to sit back after the dust clears and think to yourself, 'I wrote a novel.'

To all the haters on the blog, fuck those clowns!

Anonymous said...

Mike, just to clarify: the 'haters', as you call them, were only joking.

This is a cool blog, and there shouldn't be any bad air in here over something that really should be seen as a joke. We all love Green here. Bill Clinton was just ribbing Green, and I believe that Green knows that.

Of course we support Jeff in anything that he does!

... except this. Why does this guy continue to believe that he has creative powers? I hope he posts his... ahem, 'novel', on the net when he's finished (if he finishes - and that is entirely up in the air... if I were a betting man...), because I could quite frankly use a good laugh after the month from hell which I've just experienced!

Pele

Cliff said...

A message for Bill Clinton: Stay away from McDonalds. Go with Sonic or you will have to get another heart operation. I also think that getting a vegi 12" sub from Subway is a great deal.

Oh and you Jeff: Do you think that Dragon Age is the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate 2? (Which you have not finished I might add).

Good luck on your writing Jeff.

Brian said...

I can't tell you what a relief it is to see a real writer spell it "anyhoo". That's how I'd spell it, but I've been starting to second-guess myself after seeing it written "anywho" so many times.

P.s., my wife succeeded in the NaNoWriMo challenge last year!

Anonymous said...

Oh my god, check out that link - look at all those delicious looking oriental babes!

This blog just keeps on getting better and better.

Kind of reminds me of the old CGW days when you'd read about gaming, and then flip to the back of the mag for some nice softcore porn. Ah, the Johnny Wilson era. Boy did that guy ever know how to run a magazine.

Writing a Research Paper said...

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Sofia said...

You are aware, I would hope, that most of the design team that worked on 'Dagger' formed their own studio, and DID NOT work on 'Cudgel'. Tell me that you're aware of this? It wasn't even the same team, guy.
Thanks Nice Post Goood

Anonymous said...

Green, heads-up, there's a huge 5-day sale happening at Steam. Every 24 hours a new set of games will be released.

I'm thinking that Resident Evil 5 will be put on sale tomorrow, or this weekend.

I actually bought RE5 just now at D2D for 50% off, and am really looking forward to playing it this weekend. I've also got my eye on Dawn Of Discovery at D2D for 50% off.

My hope is that Need For Speed Shift will go on sale at Steam, even though I just bought Grid for $7, which was a part of Steam's sale today.

Wow, what an amazing year for PC gaming - and look at how next year begins, with Mass Effect 2, Star Trek Online, Bioshock, and Assassin's Creed 2 all following one another literally just weeks apart. (I've been gaming since 1985, and I've never known a year that began the way that next year will begin.) This present spell that we're in feels like a golden age of gaming to me. There are just so many great games out there right now.

What a wonderful time to be a PC gamer.

By the way, I'm hoping that you'll write a gaming blog to wrap the year up. I suspect that your personal game of the year will either be Arkham Asylum or Dragon Age. They were both great games (and maybe I might even finish DA one day). But for me, hands down, the best game of the year was Risen.

Risen was my sleeper hit of the year AND my game of the year - a completely transporting title that had me riveted to my PC each night for two weeks straight. I even phoned up my sister one night and told her that I wouldn't be coming over for dinner because I wasn't feeling well... balderdash - I was feeling perfectly fine, but I wanted to stay at home and play Risen.

The Goose.

Anonymous said...

Ugh, Green, not too long ago you mentioned playing Majesty 2 - yeah, I bought it as well. Charming, charming game.

Steam is selling it for $10 today.

That just breaks my heart. Ya know, the case can be made for not buying any games at all near launch, but rather waiting a little while for them to go on sale. What the hell is going on in the gaming industry - the shelf life for a new title seems to be about 2 months now? I don't understand how Arkham Asylum can be on sale for 50% off this rapidly?

I guess that games are becoming like movies - the first week is all important. You either make a killing at launch, or you don't make anything at all hardly.

That said, I don't see myself not buying Mass Effect 2 on day one in January. Or rather, I see myself buying it. When it comes to gaming I have zero willpower.

Anonymous said...

Woe is me.

We're not going to get another blog from Jeff for a while - and I know why - because he's using himself up writing that damned novel of his. (And by the way, I think it's maybe worth mentioning, before delusions of grandeur set in [and that could happen here], that Hemingway wrote 'The Old Man and The Sea' in six weeks - yes, six weeks.) But anyhow, the dude's using himself up, I know he is.

A female blogger whose stuff I love to read isn't posting either because she's about to give birth to twins. Another guy I follow wrote about discovering that his roof has been leaking, and that he needs to have it re-sheeted, and re-shingled, which was something he could've done without since one month ago he lost his job - then he came down with the swine flu and we've not heard from him since. Things have gone eerily quiet.

What the hell is the matter with these people? Work through it, I say.

That said, I guess I just have to keep on visiting a certain website and putting up with stuff like this:

"Dragon Age junkies rejoice! Bioware has just announced the first downloadable content for its epic RPG will be available this Holiday season. Just in time to avoid your annoying extended family!"

Who wrote that? I'd say that the person who wrote that is taking a pretty big risk. I mean, it's not politically correct at all. A person could get fired for writing that. I'd fire the person who wrote that. Then I'd hire myself to do the job. I could do the job pretty easily too - my word-count would be staggering. The entire website would collapse under the weight of my verbiage.

Also, Trine is on sale for 24 hours at Steam. Is it worth it for 10$ - I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking about it.

Joe Dimaggio

Zenin Murawski said...

Congratulations on finishing your novel Jeff!

Anonymous said...

Thank god he finished.

Now maybe he'll write a new blog.

Unknown said...

Congratulations on your 50000 words! Hopefully I get to read it some day.

Unknown said...

We can only hope so. haha.

One more thing, I'm digging the news articles you've got on EA. I'm not going to lie, I've never visited the page before, but it really is neat having some semi-editorial content on such a corporate website.

Anonymous said...

I have a question that isn't appropriate for the mailbag column - but where did you get your copy of The Saboteur? Is this an early release version which you got because you're an employee at EA? I thought that The Saboteur wasn't going to be available until next week? (Steam isn't listing it for sale at all.)

Over at one of the forums we've been wondering about this game - based on what little we've seen of the gameplay, it's really tough to tell if this game is going to be a sleeper hit, or if it's going to be the dog's dinner.

I'm happy to see that your initial impressions are positive. Also, did you know that console gamers will be charged a 5$ fee for a 'nudity DLC' (the DLC basically strips certain females of their clothing), while PC gamers will have the nudity already built in - just one more reason to be glad you're a PC gamer, I suppose.

jackhook said...

Hey. Good job on reaching your goal. Any chance we'll get to read an excerpt sometime soon?

cap said...

I heard you finished your book on out of the game and I've gotta say i REALLY want to read "The Cudgel of Xanthor". Please release it...I don't care about typos or continuity. I'm sure this book is really funny. Who knows maybe it'll catch on and you'll be the next J.K. Rowling and become a billionaire! Then you can give me half for inspiring you to release it. :)
Seriously, release it!

Anonymous said...

LOL!

Did you hear about the plot - the decisions that get made during the creation of the game have an impact on the world itself, because of course it's a double-narrative!

Ha!

Just what the world needs - another story within a story.

Who knew that Green was capable of this? How does the novel begin: with a dream sequence maybe?

Irving Berlin

Iam Adush said...

Hello? hello? Jeff where the hell are you?

Unknown said...

Apparently "Updating Blogs is Hard" as well.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, so it looks like I damned well figured it out.

Jesus, we're fools. We're fools, everyone of us.

You know how somebody you know will have all this credibility? You just blindly trust them, right? When they tell you something big you just accept it. Right? Right?

Wrong - every now and then 'a stable person' you know will catch you completely off guard and will just totally flip out. I've seen this happen on multiple occasions. People crack under the pressures. Happens all the time. I'm seeing a lot of it happening lately via the blogs I've been reading. This economy we're in has just been wreaking havoc on people's lives's.

This supposed novel which Green has written - um, has anybody here actually seen it?

No they have not.

I'll tell you what I have seen though. The Shinning. It's a great movie and I'd highly recommend it to anyone here. In this movie, Jack Nicholson, basically shuts himself off from the world and attempts to... ahem... 'write his novel'. Make note of the words 'attempts to' because if you're wondering whether or not it worked out for Mr. Nicholson I can tell you now that it didn't. Short story: he ends up trying to murder his family.

See where I'm going with this?

Yeah.

Deeply, deeply disturbing.

(I wonder what his family thinks about this? Green probably emerged from his room every night with a great big grin on his face: "I just wrote another five thousand words!" he would've said. Yeah, that grin is just disturbing. Deeply, deeply disturbing. What was he really doing in there?)

Norah Jones

Fred said...

Happy 1 month and 1 day anniversary of the last time Jeff updated his Blog!

Clifford said...

Hey Jeff! Updated your blog! Man we go through this every month. Jeff update update update we say. Jeff will come back with some excuse that some donkey kicked him in the leg and he was all out of whack.

I am not swearing (I should!) but I am holding back. Really Jeff you are really letting us down. We have folllowed you for years. We come to this blog because we love you and you guided us to the best games. We loved the work you did on CGW and GFWs.

So get out and update your blog.

Jan 2010 Jeff updates his blog. Worthless piece of @#$%^.

Fred said...

Dude, Clifford, get a grip man. Jeff has no obligation to us to update his blog constantly. If he has something going on, he'll post. No need for the guilt trip, man.

Clifford said...

Thanks Fred I'm better now. I was out of line. I need anger management sometimes.

Happy holidays to everyone here. Or to Jeff happy Hanukkah.

Anonymous said...

Green, remember a while back when you jokingly said that you were going to out-source your blog to India? - well, you don't have to.

I will do it.

---------------------

Hi gang!

Not many blog posts from me here as November gets going, but for once I have a good reason! Remember that time when I collapsed and ended up in the hospital - well it happened again! In fact it happened right before I was about to write a new blog. In fact, it keeps on happening every time I sit down at my computer to write a new blog! Imagine that! All this passing out, of course, prevents me from blogging. It's difficult to blog when you're a permanent Fall Risk, like myself!

I've also been involved in a group project.

If you're not familiar with NaNoWriMo, it's a collective bit of organized group insanity, in which tens of thousands of people around the world voluntarily agree to set a personal goal: to avoid updating our blogs!

The beautiful thing about it is that they--the organizers, I mean-- go out of their way to empower you. Not that I need much encouragement not to blog. In fact I don't need any encouragement at all! I love not blogging!

I've also been busy with my Christmas shopping.

Because of the limited window, the ONLY thing that matters really is that my family buys me more gifts than I buy them!

Actually I've been short of funds lately, and have been doing some things late at night in order to supplement my income. I've gotten to know some guys who work on the corner. For someone like me, this was just perfect encouragement. Knowing that the official group is giving me permission to suck has given me the strength to just do it.

And as I'm seven days into this I can testify in a court of law: I've really learned how to suck! My god, I never knew how hard it was to actually do!

Not surprisingly, the part that's coming easiest to me is the banter I have with my clients when we're finished. I've managed to concoct a few laugh lines.

Having to work at this, as well as my job at E.A., has been difficult. Still, I persevere! Why? Because everyone has given me permission to suck! And I love it! As I sit down early every morning to grind I just do not look back.

Anyhoo, that's what I'm doing this month! So forgive what's likely to be the even-less-frequent-than-usual blog posts.

Also, I've been writing a novel. Maybe I can post the occasional excerpt?

Maybe.

Do you guys want a good laugh? Read the excerpts from my novel and I promise you that you WILL laugh.

Thanks, kids. See you in the New Year.

Jeff Green.

Fred said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Fred said...

Wow, nice update Anonymous!!!! I guess Jeff's been busy writing his novel thing. He's hit 50,000 words, so I assume he's finished it. Novel must be pretty hard since it's preoccupied Jeff to the point where he can't logon to his blogger page and at the very least press his elbows into the keyboard and update us with a kindly "fdgfskkjkijhjmdcdsdssdhjkl;" or two, but I guess that's what Twitter is for. Jeff hasn't put up an excerpt on his nanowrimo page, but his synopsis sounds great. I wonder if "The Cudgel of Xanthor" will be set in the magical world of Nargol?

Clifford said...

Bravo Anonymous Bravo! A great performance!

You are the Jedi Master now. Heck, you have the job now.

Arrrgh! Walk the plank Green-----

Anonymous said...

Hey anonymous,

Why don't you steal Jeff's blog and keep posting while pretending to be him? it looks like he doesn't cares anyway...

Anonymous said...

Great now we have this ahole spamming your blog, that's it for me... good bye everyone

Anonymous said...

Hey, it's the Nike shoes guy!

I love this guy. This guy was here back in the summer too - I think when Jeff had the swine flu.

By the way, did I mention why they decided to call it the swine flu? - it's because when you get this disease you have an overwhelming urge to phone up the person who gave it to you and say to him: "You swine!"

Ha ha haaaaaa!

Merry Christmas, Green!

Merry Christmas, everyone! (Merry Christmas, Nike Shoes Guy!)

Clifford said...

I come to this blog to bitch about how old it is and wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

Nike shoes beat it!

Anonymous said...

Steam is having a massive Christmas/Winter sale right now - and even D2D is getting in on the action... those guys put a game called Space Siege on sale for $10.

I had never heard of Space Siege, so I Googled it and was led to a review.

I started to read, and thought, hey, the tone of the writing here, the sarcasm, I've seen this somewhere before? Then I looked up and saw a picture of Fall Risk.

Wow, that was a pretty brutal review - that must've been one of the last reviews you wrote, Green? My favorite line from the review: "... it's like a baloney sandwich, in that it gets the job done."

Ha! Like a baloney sandwich!

The question now is, does one shell out ten dollars for a baloney sandwich? I am shocked at how many games I bought this year. Shocked isn't even the word - disgusted might be a better way of putting it. Some games I spent literally two hours playing before moving on to something else (can anybody say ARMA 2?).

xian said...

oh, jeffrey. you never needed permission to suck.

Matt said...

Please please release the novel :)

Fred said...

Rise from your grave! What a necro post!! Fuckin' spammers