(April Fools Post)

Update: Okay, this was confusing enough people when it was still April 1st, but since people are still stumbling across this post for the first time, I'm just going to say that not a word below is true. It's fiction, like much of what I write. This was my April Fool's post for the year.

( Behind this cut is a tapestry of LIES. )

Thankfully, this one isn't an April Fool's post.

I've been dealing with maintenance folks in and out of here over the past two weeks, but it appears we now finally have a working, non-leaking bathtub again. The last remaining leak seems to have actually been in the valve where the faucet got turned on... it was spraying water inside the wall.

There's still some work left to do in terms of patching and neatening things up, but the bathtub is at long last usable.

Red light, green light.

For a lot of people, the hardest thing about writing is getting started... as the NaNoWriMo folks observe, writing a novel is a "one day job", as in "One day, I'll do it." (Paraphrased from memory, that may not be exactly what they say.) Anna Paradox has written some great material on the subject of just sitting down and writing.

I know so many people who carry around notebooks... or flash drives... full of Notes™. Detailed Notes™ describing their story's world, its characters, their backstories, their families, their families' backstories, etc. When they have enough, when their Notes™ are done, they'll be ready to write their epic fantasy trilogy.

But of course, there's always another fact to hash out, another wrinkle in the timeline to iron out, another character to dream up, another land to detail... and of course, nobody's ever really ready to write a novel.

Trying to prepare for it is like beginning the journey of a thousand miles by visualizing every single step. Not only will this likely take longer than the actual journey, but assuming you ever get going, you're going to keep finding your pre-plotted mental image is at odds with the reality unfolding before you.

Wow, that's actually a better metaphor than I thought it would be.

I know all this... but the whole "getting ready" thing is an insidious and attractive trap. "Any job worth doing is worth doing right," and all that. I keep finding myself thinking in those terms about Star Harbor. I suppose that's not surprising, since Star Harbor includes things I filled notebooks with all the way back to middle school. I held onto a dead computer far longer than I needed to because its antiquated hard drive contained GURPS stats for a bunch of superhero characters I've not yet used. And every time I fall behind in Star Harbor, I start to think, "It's such a large and intricate universe. I can't just dive back in. I have to figure things out."

But I don't have to. I know this universe. I know it better than I know the MUniverse. I know it better than I know this universe, probably. There are very few characters in the Harborverse or the Sands of Time I couldn't spit out a line or reaction for in response to any given situation, and the exceptions are characters that don't come up that often.

So, anyway, tomorrow SHN will get its first update in however long it's been, and then I should be well and truly firing on all cylinders... and I'm going to bookmark this post to remind myself not to overthink. And anybody out there who's planning on one day taking their notebooks full of names and dates and turning it into a story... seriously, go for it. If you don't feel like you've got a handle on your characters, you'll get to know them faster through writing them. Everything else will come as needed.