August, 2010:

I went with some friends to the Goetta fest in Newport, KY this afternoon. (And Mom, if you’re reading this, tell Papa I saw a Goetta vending machine, and that I would have snapped a photo for him, but there was a line in front of it so I couldn’t get a clear shot.)

It was pretty hot outside and the friends I was with wanted to go see Inception at the AMC on the Levee since it was *right there*. I was totally down with that because even though I saw it last weekend, I was completely excited to see it again because I loved it so much the first go-round. The only problem was, they wanted to see it on IMAX and we had 2 hours to kill til then. Because my friends are awesome, they decided to go to the Newport Aquarium to kill some time until the movie. I had never been before, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

As we walked around, I made a few jokes about some of the decor, and about the awesome water tunnels you get to walk through, where the fish, etc are basically swimming right overhead. I was like, “Sweet, when I become an evil super-villain, I am totally installing one of these in my underground lair.” Ditto for the awesome black-lit glowing squid on the wall, I decided that will be painted on the wall of my underground palace of evil.

This is all jokingly of course, til my mind started spinning out some future story arcs for Scurvytown. And oh boy, do I have some fun in store for the citizens of the town. Because I may be the Mayor of Scurvytown, but I love my readers!

More and more, as I think about it, if I decide to do NaNoWriMo this year, I am probably going to set it in Scurvytown, and try to hack out as many episodes as I can in the entire month. I doubt I can manage 30 episodes in a month, but as each one is roughly the equivalent of a day’s worth of writing to stay on task during NaNo, it certainly would be quite the feat.

Anyway, as per usual, going someplace new and having new experiences once again ignited a literary fire under my ass. Now, I have enough fuel to get me through the rest of the summer, and that’s a very good thing… for me, not such a pleasant thing for the residents of Scurvytown, considering the big shake-up that happened in this week’s episode, it’s going to be a lot of fun seeing where the future takes them.

And now, to finish editing that episode and post it so folks can finally read it!

Now that I have an idea to focus on for this week’s episode, I find my next hurdle: keeping that focus and building something constructive and fun to read out of it.

Right now, I am painfully stuck. I stare at the screen, the words written so far, and I cannot seem to focus my thoughts on them. For the next few months, I can blame that one on the half-tab of speed I have been prescribed daily for a medical issue I am finally dealing with the right way. So tough to focus on anything when the speed is working its magic. Wow.

Last night, I did a quick and dirty outline to help me climb out of this little writing rut. I wonder if I go about these things in the right way? Today’s push to the finish line will be this: if I can finish a rough outline by 3pm, I get to go hang out with my friends: poolside, a margarita, and then Rock Band!

Hope to have fun on the other side of the next hour and a half!

One of the toughest things about getting started on each week’s new episode of Scurvytown is finding the time and the mentality to write after another long and crappy day’s work.

Right when I was getting to the super frustrated point where I just sort of force myself to write, I came up with a pretty good idea, I think. First up, going with my original thought of picking up where I left off last time. Second, it’s festival season, and it’s about time another festival reared its ugly head.

So I am 100 words into this week’s endeavor, which is pretty much where I was last week at this time. And this week, I don’t have an impromptu poetry project sprung on me. (Don’t get me wrong about that, it was super fun, and I need to do more of those in the future.) So, I went from feeling utterly discouraged and lacking the focus to even begin another episode, to kind of excited about where this week’s journey will take my characters.

It’s all about perspective, I suppose, and overall, when it gets rough, it really is best to just keep going.