I Can See The Finish Line (And A New Website!)

Hi all! This week's vignette was fairly short, a little less than 2000 words. But I had a good reason for slacking off, I promise - I built a website! Maybe you are there right now reading this blog post.

It turned out to be kind of a huge project. I decided to code it from scratch rather that use a website like WordPress, because I need the web development practice. It took me maybe ten to fifteen hours total? Some of that time was learning to use the tools. I used a CSS framework called Materialize. It's a great library, with lots of tools to align elements properly, really good responsiveness (i.e. sites that look good on mobile and on a computer), and cool effects and transitions. It wasn't too complicated to use, but I had some problems making my vision for the website conform to what the tools let me do. The back end (the server) is written in node.js, a well-known JavaScript server-side environment. I used a module called Express to handle HTTP requests, which actually lined up nicely with what I'm learning in Computer Networks class.

Onward and Upward

This week's (and last week's!) vignette was a lot of fun to write. It focused on the main characters relationship with his teacher/father figure, a historian and sociologist named Karl. As I laid out last week, it was actually three distinct stories that can be played in any order, just as the entire project will be a series of vignettes that can be played in any order. I had planned to add branching options that change each story based on the decisions the reader made in the other stories, but I ran out of time. I will still put that branching in, but it will have to wait until after I've written the rest of the vignettes.

Evolving the Plan

I really tried to think of a clever title for this post. Something involving evolution and adaptation. Eh, what are you gonna do?

So, here's the deal: I was too ambitious in my plan for the semester. School is really kicking in now, and I simply don't have the time to write a vignette every week. Luckily, the way I organized the project makes it very easy to switch things up.

The original plan was to have 10 vignettes, with some level of branching between them but with a mostly linear narrative. Last week, I detailed a design structure that would let me have more branching without actually having to write completely separate branches - the vignettes will be playable in any order, and the decisions the reader makes in one vignette will change plot points and enable branches in the other vignettes. That way, I can have high replayability without having to write tons of unique content.

Why Writer's Block Isn't An Excuse

Well, two weeks in and I'm still on schedule. That's a good sign! I wrote another vignette this week, about the main character's arrival to the great city of Adriata. Honestly, it was a bit of a struggle. I procrastinated early in the week, which led to a crunch later (hence the Sunday night blog post).

I feel like writing is difficult to schedule. Sometime I sit down to write and my mind just blanks out. There are certain ways to cope with this, like diagramming a scene or conjuring a concrete image in my head and trying to describe it, but it's not like a coding project where I have a clear list of tasks to accomplish and I can just push through it until I've accomplished them.

This makes it very easy to justify procrastination. "I've got writer's block, I can't work right now." Here's the thing: I don't really have the time for that kind of leniency. Not that I'm beating myself up, because things happen and schedules change - but the fact is, I have until the end of this semester, and then I'm starting my senior project and my independent study and my life gets too busy to do development on the side (although I am brainstorming ways I can fit bits and pieces of projects I want to do into that schedule). Anyway, the point is, I have 11 weeks left to write this thing. I'm proud that I finished this week, despite the slow start.