December 22, 2009
Since finishing Looming Thunderheads, I have been working on a lot of projects that are not reflected on my front page’s ‘Current Project’. At first I intended to delve into Death and Life, but I got distracted by applying for school. Since Jenny is having such a good time pursuing her MFA degree, I felt left out. I signed up for and took the GRE in October and scored fairly well, so I decided to apply for an MA English Lit program. I spent a lot of time gathering information and preparing my application (writing the Statement of Purpose, revising a ‘Sample of Critical Writing’ (which I will put on the site soon), contacting people for letters of recommendation (I have no contact with previous professors and I am sure they wouldn’t consider recommending me), and getting everything finalized and submitted). I finally got everything together at the end of November and sent in my packet at the beginning of December. I’ve been agonizing over whether or not I’ll get in ever since.
In the course of that, I stalled on Death and Life and turned instead to Between the Stars. It was probably the work of putting together query letters and submission information for Looming Thunderheads that made me want to write a story easier to sum up. But even that story gave me trouble, and I couldn’t figure out a good way to approach it.
Then, as a way to rest my mind, I installed Visual Basic 2005 and started programming. It had been almost a year and a half since I had programmed anything, and that had only been a few days’ worth before I started the Angie rewrite. So, for the past few weeks I’ve been programming various aspects of the current idea of ‘The Universe Game’ (I discuss that in an essay). I first wrote a rendering engine for a vector-based, 2D object system, then I wrote the rudiments of a physics engine (2D collisions). Finally I spent a few days building the framework of a server-client network system on which to build a shared world experience. The Client processes the game in Turns, which it receives from the server, but those turns are rendered in ‘Frames’ to give a smoother animation. This requires a slight delay in Player Command processing, as commands get sent to the server, which then broadcasts them back to each client for simultaneous execution. I deliberately made the delay 600 milliseconds, which is an eternity. Eventually, if I get back to working on it sometime next year (2010), that will probably be reduced as latency drag gets ironed out in playtesting. I believe I have a robust framework (the 2D vector graphics, the rudimentary physics, and the Network) on which to build the game. The only thing to do now is to flesh out the game itself.
Meanwhile, however, I’ve turned back to Death and Life. I’m borrowing a Kindle from the Library so that I can read PDFs of my original manuscripts (for what was then The Invasion) as research. I have already gotten nearly halfway through that reading (much of which makes me cringe to know that I actually wrote it). The story is going to be dramatically different, barely recognizable, but there are a few pieces I want to keep, things important to the themes. The main character as I now envision him is so radically different that I’ve renamed him.
So, as my front page still declares, Death and Life is still in the ‘Planning’ stage. I have written a little bit more on it, but not much. I will update again soon.
Oh, I should mention that I also spent a little time watching the entire 5-season run of Six Feet Under. I’ve said it elsewhere, but it bears repeating: that show is undoubtedly among the most moving and meaningful works I have ever experienced. I wept at its ending.
One thing I’d like to say for Six Feet Under is that it doesn’t fall into the trap that a lot of ‘naturalistic’ works do: that is to say that it doesn’t trade the ability to really say something for its attempt at a ‘realist’ portrayal. It maintains a naturalistic rendering throughout, but still manages to really dig around in messy material in a revealing way. That is really hard to do, and sometimes I think a lot of work is lauded merely for its mimetic quality, the mimicry of ‘real life’ that doesn’t actually try to make any comment on that life. Six Feet Under succeeds wildly.
Filed under Death and Life, Writing.
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