World building is fun. And necessary, for quite a bit of sci-fi and fantasy writing and practically all role-play gaming. Unfortunately, it's too easy to get caught up in building awesome worlds, and lose track of what it's all there for. I suffer this, pretty badly too, and it's the main reason why I don't get much writing (or game mastering) done.

This drives me nuts. I do quite a bit of writing. This blog, the occasional technical article, speech notes for Toastmasters, short stories, etc. And there ain’t nothin’ worse than a big load of writer’s block coming down and just making it impossible to write down what’s in your head.

I wasn't able to write a proper flash fiction story this week, but I did write something... Here's a "fiction snippet" which might be inspiring for others as it is for myself.

Despite having never been Outside, he longed to go there. Whereas almost all the other residents of Arcohome didn't care, or even think, about the outside world, Raymond couldn't keep his mind off of it.

I've got a few writing projects on the go right now, all of them going slowly and poorly:

A small café on a quiet street. The buildings around here are old and worn. They look as if only the collective will of the local inhabitants are all that keep them from collapsing from neglect.

If you've played my game from the first TOJam, you will have probably noticed how it gets slower and slower as play progresses. For my first foray into .NET game development, I had developed the most absurd entity management system and relied on the garbage collector to take care of matters.

Big freakin' mistake.

So... If you've been following my cryptic and infrequently updated Twitter, you might have gotten an inkling that yes, I am once again exercising my writing "skills" and producing yet another fantasy story. It is about the quest of a young man who must do the impossible to save the god he worships.

For those of you who actually read this blog, my profuse apologies for my horrible lack of posting over the last month. While some of you might think it has to do with my novel for NaNoWriMo, the truth is that many things have been getting in the way. If it were just my NaNoWriMo entry, I'm sure that my wordcount would be much higher than it is right now.

With NaNoWriMo 2007 entering its second week, participants should be at about 13350 words (give or take a few to round it out). Me? I'm at 1473 words. That's not for lack of trying, either.

The problem? I can't make as much time as I should to write, and when I do make time, I get stuck trying to push through my prose. A professional writer, I am not. However, if I can get myself to write about 2000 words each day for the rest of the month, I can still make the 50000 word target.

As I've been reading a lot more lately (what with my computer still not replaced) and have been entertaining the idea of fiction writing for some time, I've started considering whether I should take part in this year's NaNoWriMo or not. It would certainly be an interesting way to unwind after the madness of TIGC.