QUOTE (nezumi @ Jan 4 2013, 07:23 PM)

Well thank you very much! Adding your knowledge to my brain-trust

Not all of it! I have many secrets! Muwahahaha-
hack cough wheeze.
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5,000 words of crunch in 6 hours? Wow, that seems crazy-fast. I'm going to imagine that this is because you have years studying under the great writing masters in Tibet (rather than what it probably really is; all that time working in the writing mines).
The Tibet thing isn't that far off. My every job for the last fifteen years or so has been either straight-up data entry (which is why typing speed doesn't really slow me down), or actual research and writing. Getting an MA in History and freelance game writing have a surprisingly similar core skill-set (and working on the one has certainly improved me in the other, and vice-versa). And, like I said, I tend to write stuff that doesn't
need a lot of research. I know the Tir inside and out, so when I sit down to write something about it I get out Nigel's classic sourcebook and
SoNA, sure, but really the odds are good I'll never
need to open either of them. Why? Because my brain-space is full of the history of a pretend elf country and the imaginary statistics of make-believe teams playing a sport that doesn't exist (for instance), and I work very hard to make that sort of trivial information useful in what passes for a day to day life.

I also have a tendency to not think about things I'm supposed to be thinking about, and instead to just kind of daydream game stuff (or, for instance, to lie down and
not-sleep, instead of lie down and sleep, because I'm tossing and turning and coming up with whole paragraphs or stories, word for word, while I should be sleeping); my wife has gotten used to me just getting out of bed sometimes to go type for a couple minutes, and then scurrying back to bed.
So often what happens is I just kind of half-assedly think about gaming stuff in my idle time (or in the car, or when I'm grading quizzes, or whatever), and when it's time to actually sit down and write, I type upwards of 130 wpm, so
voila shit gets done. I have the luxury -- and it very much IS a luxury -- of also not having any kiddos, having a flexible work schedule, and having an awesome gamer wife who indulges me. So I
can idly think about writing and research and stuff all the time, and then dive headfirst into a keyboard to furiously type it up on a whim, whenever I want to. I did three of the
Elven Blood adventures, from conceptualization to completion, in about two weeks of casual work between semesters (while also working up syllabi and lectures and junk, just hopping from Word tab to PowerPoint tab or whatever).
I mean, the careers I have (freelance writing and adjunct faculty) don't exactly bring tremendous wealth, fame, job security, or benefits, but they
do bring great flexibility, so that I can...keep doing them...and...and...dammit. Now I see how they've got me trapped.

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I feel like you answered that with the "I write 5,000 words an hour, with lunch in the middle"
Seriously though, I appreciate your taking the time to answer. It seems like a very different perspective from Patrick.
Well, we see eye to eye on a lot of Shadowrun stuff (and we are both in each others' "inner circles" of freelancers we immediately send stuff to), and Patrick's a great buddy of mine, don't get me wrong...but aside from that, and the whole Texas thing, Patrick and I have way different outlooks in the gaming 'verse and responsibilities outside of it. The dude's juggling kiddos and a full-time regular job. I don't know how he gets
anything done. It's all I can do to keep my three dogs alive, grade quizzes every now and then, and remember to pay a few bills on time. He's also been with the game a lot longer, so many of his experiences will have been with whole different groups of people. So even discounting that our lenses might be different, he's had different bosses than me, different crews to work with, etc, etc. A different perspective makes sense to me.
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EDIT: Just mentioned this thread to my wife and she asked how big the average pitch document is? How quickly do you get a response on it?
I aim for a page, in that I feel like it's my job to sell them on something quickly instead of rambling on. There are times that is an absolute nightmare for me. It took me the better part of three days or so to finish the
pitch for
Neat, because I was just so worried about explaining every nuance of the pseudo-mystery, how cool individual characters were and why they were important to Kincaid and the story, etc, etc, and I was trying to cram it all into one page. It was absolutely stupid of me, but it's my self-imposed pitch length, and for some moronic reason I decided to stick to it for a novella. There are whole chapters of that piece, and
many whole fiction projects, that have taken me less time than just that pitch did.
I figure I can pitch Jason something pretty brief and answer questions later if he needs them. So far it's mostly been "Okay, I trust you, type it up," and I increasingly suspect it's because he
knows that an additional pitch is often going to actually take me longer than just writing and submitting whatever I have in mind. The intro fictions to several recent sourcebooks have been, start to finish, one hour jobs for me; if I'd had to stop and keep explaining ideas and stuff to get the okay ahead of time, it likely would have tripled or quadrupled that, easily.