A Distraction Called Skyrim

I took a wan­der, it’s fair to say, and met a friend, the other day… just kid­ding, I’m not going to badly rhyme this entire thing.

It’s been a cou­ple of months since I last poked my head from the sand, but that’s OK. After writ­ing and pub­lish­ing, pro­mot­ing and try­ing to get into new things with older things bark­ing at my heels, I needed to take a break. Autumn approached, as did the hol­i­days and through it all a game I knew I would be tak­ing time out to play Skyrim (DOVAHKIIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).

So, I did. I’m glad I forced myself to ignore the inter­net, the writ­ing — the think­ing on plots and char­ac­ters. I’ve fin­ished watch­ing all my sto­ries: Board­walk Empire — Amaz­ing. The Walk­ing Dead  - WTF? Dex­ter — So far, so shitty. Accord­ingly, I now feel like get­ting back into every­thing. Granted, it’s now Christ­mas, but what­ever. There’s no right or wrong time to play with your art, so I’m not going to wait another two-weeks for cold January.

I’ll be back in the sad­dle and post­ing my goings-on. Not in this post though, this is just a quick hello from me to you. :)

  • http://twitter.com/NickEnlowe Nick Enlowe

    Fus-Ro-Dah! Uhh… I mean… What’s this ‘Skyrim’ you speak of?
    Watched S1 of Walk­ing Dead. That was pretty awe­some. I have S2 (part 1) primed and ready to watch at any­time.
    Dexter’s gone a few sea­sons too long before reveal­ing its endgame, but I think the upcom­ing two sea­sons should be inter­est­ing (since they will be the final two seasons–even though IMO it should only be one more sea­son instead of two). I per­son­ally like Break­ing Bad and Game of Thrones the best right now, but it’s all good stuff. The wor­thi­est of distractions!

  • http://ryangsanders.com Ryan G. Sanders

    I had to con­cen­trate and fin­ish the main quest in Skyrim, just so I could put it down and move on. So many side quests and dis­trac­tions in the game alone it could (can) go on forever.

    The Walk­ing Dead sea­son 1 was great, but the sec­ond really fal­ters and mean­ders for a long time. The end episode — the last fif­teen min­utes in fact — were what saved it from horrible.

    Dex­ter, yes… watched it, loved it, for what — five years now? But this last sea­son, eh. So bad, just lame. He needs to go to jail for a sea­son, then bust out at the end and walk off into the sun­set with Har­ri­son. THE END!

    Break­ing bad was scar­ing me for a while there — get­ting quite dodgy and bor­ing, but they pulled it back at the end. Phew. Boss was a great drama on STARZ with Kelsey Gram­mer as well.

    Game of Thrones, well, not a HUGE fan, but it was VERY enter­tain­ing. Sea­son 2 in April, any­one? Been watch­ing Spar­ta­cus as it’s just started up again, and Home­land, which is inter­est­ing, if not amaz­ing like every­one said it was.

    I ended up pick­ing up RAGE (game) and play­ing that through Jan­u­ary, and fin­ish­ing it. A lot more casual and no need to spend hours in the world. A quick 30 mins here and there and it was done.

    …and as you can see from later posts, I actu­ally started writ­ing things again. That’s what you get for play­ing MASSIVE open-world RPGs, I ‘spose.

  • http://twitter.com/NickEnlowe Nick Enlowe

    I did see you’ve been quite pro­duc­tive lately. I really like the flash you’ve been writ­ing. Been mean­ing to do weekly excer­cises like that myself, but I always end up feel­ing guilty about not tend­ing to the things I’ve already got on the front burn­ers.
    I know what you mean about Skyrim. I played only until I reached the top of the moun­tain, then stopped and put it away. I decided to put it down because I didn’t want to get too addicted. Maybe I’ll reward myself with the rest of Skyrim once I com­plete my revi­sions.
    Have you seen the BBC Sher­lock series? I’ve been enjoy­ing that as well and since it’s only 3 episodes a sea­son, it’s much less a commitment.

  • http://ryangsanders.com Ryan G. Sanders

    I fig­ure the lit­tle shorts I’ve been doing are a great way to keep my sense of imme­di­acy in check — those whole ‘This is a GREAT idea, I MUST write it NOW, gah ugh!’ moments.

    And, fun­nily enough, I think August McCrae and The Wendigo Hunt are two of the best things I’ve writ­ten in, well, years. I con­sider them both of bet­ter qual­ity than May, and pos­si­bly And The Stars Ran Red.

    It makes me look at my future plans for books and realise, ‘Hey, I got to do them as good, oth­er­wise what’s the point’?

    In say­ing that, maybe short sto­ries are my forte? Who knows.

    Oh, and yes! We’ve watched Sher­lock. We tried to start them a few months back, but for some rea­son, got derailed. Then we man­aged to watch the first a cou­ple of weeks ago and we were hooked. We watched all 6 (series 1 & 2) on 6 con­sec­u­tive nights, haha! Mini movie-nights, as they were. Great show!