Play ALL The Games!

You might have noticed from the little list of my activities on the sidebar that I have suddenly started playing three different video games at once. I think my husband has been rubbing off on me. At any time he's got at least two different games going and he'll play a bit here and there when the mood strikes him, switching between games according to his whims (or depending on which one of us has dibs on using Steam, since we share an account). Normally, I start up a game and I play it through to the end, then I start a new game.

Lately I have been trying to hold off on getting too invested in anything because I am getting underway with writing the second draft of my novel. This is my first attempt at writing a second draft, however, and I am finding that it is a different animal entirely from the first draft. This time around, it is not the full-out writing frenzy that I go through in November. Most of the words and ideas are there already. It is just a matter of rearranging them, cleaning them up, adding a bit here and there, and so on. At least, that is how it is going for this specific project. I can think about other stories I've written and imagine how those would be their own beasts as well.

Anyhoo. My point is, abstaining from video games while working on my second draft has turned out to be not nearly as necessary as it was for the first. But at the same time, I also don't want to get so deep into a game that I get too wrapped up in the story and start slacking on what I am supposed to be doing. Keeping up that detachment has turned out to be pretty easy, as it happens, because I've been feeling the pull to replay a few different games of late. So I figured why not just get them all going at once. That way I can do a few missions here in one game and a few missions there in another, whatever feels like the best distraction/break for the moment.

Here's a glimpse of what I've got going on.

Dragon Age II:

My Ebon Hawke (yes, I went there) arrives in Kirkwall with her mother, brother Carter, and Aveline.

Her most current appearance. I figured she needed a new hairdo after a year in Kirkwall.

Dragon Age: Origins:

Finally decided to try the Dalish origin. Here's my Warden Farris Mahariel (on the right) with the oft-mentioned in DAII Tamlen.

Farris giving us a lovely example of the lack of expressions shown by PCs in DA:O while being lectured at by Marethari.

Mass Effect 3:

My Jordana Shepard import from my first play-through of ME and ME2. I tweaked her hair color and makeup a bit.

Here's a shot of her in game, looking pale as all get out. Gotta love how different they look from the character creator to the screen, don't you?

I'm pretty early in all three games still, Hawke is about halfway through Act I doing recruitment missions, my Warden just got to Ostagar and is about to start preparation for the joining ritual, and my Shepard is getting ready to go to Palaven. That gives me three pretty different flavors to choose from when I am in the mood to play. It's kind of nice, although I wonder how long I will be able to keep up juggling them. We'll see, I guess. I feel like it's actually kind of appropriate that I am playing all three of these games while I work on the rewrite, since I found a lot of inspiration from them in regards to secondary characters and place names and such.

As far as progress on the second draft goes, I have read through it and made my notes. Now I am doing a little bit of logistical world-building that likely won't actually appear on the pages but will make the things I need to add in a bit easier for me. After that I just need to outline the major changes for the draft by chapter and then it is time to jump in. My plan/goal is to get the world-building and outline done this week and then two chapters a week after that. Once I've got three or four chapters stockpiled, I'll start posting the new versions here, a chapter a week, on Thursdays.

Yay! I am excited to share this with you guys! After reading it again, I am really proud of what I've got. I still don't know where this story came from, but man, I am happy it dropped in. Hopefully you will enjoy it as well!