At 2:30am (Wednesday morning) 15 December 2004, I completed my first draft of my first very short story. Total work time was approximately 3 hours and the story ended up being approximately 1700 words long.

Overall, I’m satisfied with the tone of the story, but it very obviously needs a good deal of work. There’s a major shortage of scenery making the story feel a little bit transparent to me.

Still, I’m anticipating that the second draft will not focus on that shortcoming, but rather on ironing out the story. The pacing jumps up and down and feels much too fast during the final sequence; perhaps I was getting too tired by that point, but I felt the need to drive through to the finish line. The third draft will almost certainly focus on the environment and fleshing out the not quite descriptive enough parts of the story. Hopefully without overburdening people with meaningless imagery.

I’m hoping the fourth draft will be the final draft. That will be the draft that, while not necessarily perfect, I intend to submit for public perusal.

So some of you may be wondering.. You mean you took over 2 weeks to even begin a story, and then you banged out 1700+ words in 3 marathon hours? What the heck were you thinking? What are you, some kind of crazy procrastinator?

Well yes, I am a procrastinator. That’s not what happened here, though. Well maybe a couple days worth, but that’s it! Honest!

I sat down several nights in a row and went blank. I knew what I wanted to write, but it wouldn’t flow. I even got 2 sentences written down once, but it died suddenly right there. It just wasn’t working. I didn’t understand. I had a nice quiet, serene environment. Dark office. Computer humbly awaiting my keystrokes. Nothing.

Finally I set it down and walked away for a couple days. Something wasn’t right. I was uptight about the lack of progress and that made it worse, night by night. So I pushed it aside and went away to do other things. Consulting work. Games. Family stuff.

Three nights ago I started playing online. The mood wasn’t right, though. I needed some music. Not just music, loud music. Yep, that worked. I sank right into the game and had a grand time. I started talking to people in character and had more fun than I’d had in a good long time.

While I was playing, story ideas and lines began floating into my head. Mind you, I was busy doing something else. I mentally filed them away and went back to playing. Still, I knew I’d made some writing progress without writing a single line.

The next night was a repeat of the previous night. I threw on my headphones so as to not annoy the family this time and the isolation was complete. I immersed into the game and had a grand time. Once again, story resolutions floated around in my mind. I began to suspect I had a solution.

Last night I donned the headphones once again. The loud music washed away the outside world and raised my creative energy level. I pulled out a somewhat neglected character to play on EverQuest II and he came back to life in my mind. This time I had a plan, though. I played. I quested. I let my mind soak his back up. Then I left the game for the night and opened up the word processor.

A minute of hesitation turned into 5, then 10. I knew I would lose the focus if I didn’t start something. A half dozen authors of books on the art of writing chose that moment to speak out in unison. “Just write it. You can fix it in the next draft.”

I started slowly. By the time I had finished the first (brief and terrible) scene I knew I had conquered the initial fear. I turned the music up one more notch, refocused on the story, and typed out a bit over 1700 words. I looked at the clock. It was 3 hours later, but mission accomplished. The first draft was complete. Its a short short story, mind you, but its the first step in the journey.

The rest of this page is spoilers
Stop reading here if you don’t want any inside information

This is, essentially, the origin story for my City of Heroes character, Grapen Warrior. Grapen Warrior is, in fact, a transition of an EverQuest cleric named Rizok. There is also what I feel is a better story that transitions Rizok back to EverQuest II that I very much intend to write. In fact, that story is one of the ones I have shared with people who have personally encouraged me so much that I am now at this point; an aspiring writer.

In many ways, Rizok is serving as a warmup for my Kilvari stories. I intend for the Kilvari stories to possibly lead into a short train of much older fan fiction type work. Afterwards I already have some ideas for original works that I’ve shared with no one. At least I hope they’re original. I guess we’ll just have to see if I can stick to this long enough for everybody to find out.