Signs and Portents and Prophecy
Oct. 6th, 2003 09:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rowynLut bought seasons 1 & 2 of Babylon V on DVD today. Seson 2 is a belated birthday present to me, and season 1, he said, he got for himself. We watched the first three episodes of season 1 tonight. Much to my surprise, I remembered all of them.
I didn't start watching Babylon 5 faithfully until, I thought, the end of Season 2. I'm sure that I can't have seen more than a couple (if that) of the first season episodes on their first airing, though it's possible I saw all of season two when it aired; by then I had moved to Ohio to be with my then-boyfriend, Jon, who was an ardent B5 fan.
But I'd definitely seen all three of these. Either I saw them in re-runs, or I watched them on tape from a friend's collection; I'm inclined to think the latter.
In any case, I quite enjoyed seeing them again. It was neat to catch little bits of things that happened early on and connect to much later events. And to realize that, since I never did see season five (no spoilers, now!), I still don't know how the whole story ends. And probably won't until season five is released on DVD, presumably some time next year. But watching the 48+ hours of B5 already available on DVD will probably take me a while. Probably won't take me until mid-January and the release of season four, at this rate, but still, it'll keep me busy for a bit.
I also did some work on Prophecy tonight. October is off to the same woefully slow start that September was, and I determined to turn this around. I haven't, yet, quite, but I made progress.
During perhaps fifteen minutes of my lunch break, I wrote about 300 words of "A Doll's Life" and found myself thinking that it really doesn't take me any time at all to pound out a chunk of that. I probably would've finished it tonight if I hadn't left the file at work. Anyway, I thought "If I can write 300 words in 15 minutes on one story, I ought to be able to do the same for another." Yeah, "A Doll's Life" is closely plotted out. But, frankly, so is Prophecy.
To that end, I decided to approach tonight's writing from a different perspective. Instead of telling myself "I'll do 500 words" I resolved that I would work on it for thirty minutes, and that would be it. No "I must commit the whole evening to it". Nope: thirty minutes.
I didn't set a goal for how much I would write in that thirty minutes. My only criteria was that I had to spend thirty minutes working on or writing the story (looking at the outline to choose a part of the story counted, as would any necessary research -- locating names, etc.-- but just reading snippets I'd already written would not). And if I couldn't think of anything to write, then I could stare at a blank screen for thirty minutes. But I couldn't open a webbrowser or chat with Trask, or otherwise distract myself. I could write, or I could be bored.
I wrote 475 words. Beat being bored. ;) I've decided to re-cast the way the scene I was working on went. It included some amusing dialogue that I think is wasted on the throw-away character I gave it to, so I'm going to put it into the mouth of a more significant figure instead. In any event, the experiment worked well. I think I'll try it again tomorrow night.
But for now, I'm going to give my wrists a break. G'night, Livejounal.
I didn't start watching Babylon 5 faithfully until, I thought, the end of Season 2. I'm sure that I can't have seen more than a couple (if that) of the first season episodes on their first airing, though it's possible I saw all of season two when it aired; by then I had moved to Ohio to be with my then-boyfriend, Jon, who was an ardent B5 fan.
But I'd definitely seen all three of these. Either I saw them in re-runs, or I watched them on tape from a friend's collection; I'm inclined to think the latter.
In any case, I quite enjoyed seeing them again. It was neat to catch little bits of things that happened early on and connect to much later events. And to realize that, since I never did see season five (no spoilers, now!), I still don't know how the whole story ends. And probably won't until season five is released on DVD, presumably some time next year. But watching the 48+ hours of B5 already available on DVD will probably take me a while. Probably won't take me until mid-January and the release of season four, at this rate, but still, it'll keep me busy for a bit.
I also did some work on Prophecy tonight. October is off to the same woefully slow start that September was, and I determined to turn this around. I haven't, yet, quite, but I made progress.
During perhaps fifteen minutes of my lunch break, I wrote about 300 words of "A Doll's Life" and found myself thinking that it really doesn't take me any time at all to pound out a chunk of that. I probably would've finished it tonight if I hadn't left the file at work. Anyway, I thought "If I can write 300 words in 15 minutes on one story, I ought to be able to do the same for another." Yeah, "A Doll's Life" is closely plotted out. But, frankly, so is Prophecy.
To that end, I decided to approach tonight's writing from a different perspective. Instead of telling myself "I'll do 500 words" I resolved that I would work on it for thirty minutes, and that would be it. No "I must commit the whole evening to it". Nope: thirty minutes.
I didn't set a goal for how much I would write in that thirty minutes. My only criteria was that I had to spend thirty minutes working on or writing the story (looking at the outline to choose a part of the story counted, as would any necessary research -- locating names, etc.-- but just reading snippets I'd already written would not). And if I couldn't think of anything to write, then I could stare at a blank screen for thirty minutes. But I couldn't open a webbrowser or chat with Trask, or otherwise distract myself. I could write, or I could be bored.
I wrote 475 words. Beat being bored. ;) I've decided to re-cast the way the scene I was working on went. It included some amusing dialogue that I think is wasted on the throw-away character I gave it to, so I'm going to put it into the mouth of a more significant figure instead. In any event, the experiment worked well. I think I'll try it again tomorrow night.
But for now, I'm going to give my wrists a break. G'night, Livejounal.
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no subject
Well written, good characters, and they don't suffer from amnesia after every episode! :)
(My only complaint is that the background music isn't as good as it could be. That and the fact that Commander Sinclair was replaced. I'm afraid I preferred Sinclair to Sheridan, but that's a fairly minor point.)
Anyway, enjoy! :)
Scott
no subject
Date: 2003-10-07 09:21 am (UTC)And that is the crowning glory of Babylon 5: continuity. And not just soap-opera continuity, where things change willy-nilly but none of it adds up to anything, but a story's continuity. Things are shown and happen and change for a reason. It all adds up.
This is still quite a rarity in TV, from what I understand. "Murder One" and "24" did/do have an ongoing story to tell. But "episodic" or "soap opera-like" still seem to be the dominant motifs of TV. Of course, I suppose I shouldn't talk, not having watched a current TV show at all in at least two or three years. :) (For all practical purposes, I haven't watched TV since 1997.)
no subject
It exists for educational shows and maybe the occasional movie that I tape and then probably don't watch.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-07 09:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-07 11:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-06 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-07 09:13 am (UTC)Watching the first episodes again, I can see a lot of the rough edges. I think most of the actors "settled" into their roles later in the series. Only Garibaldi (sp) really looked and felt at home. The dialogue and the acting got better as the series went on, I think.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-07 04:43 am (UTC)As for myself, I've got absolutely no discipline whatsoever for working on Akoma. =P Last night, I spent several hours just doing tedium: creating tables, calculating statistics, polishing up rules. The total word count added from that was pretty minimal ... but I'm up past 99K now. Probably once I slog through the price lists, I'll be well past 100K. And I have a definite deadline for that: the heroes in my campaign are finally heading into civilization, so I need to figure out how much it'll cost for them to spend their recently acquired copper katangas. =)
Anyway, I really look forward to seeing the next Prophecy installment, and I really hope that changing your method can help you get more fired up about it. It's too good to fizzle! It's destined to be completed! ;D Hee hee!
no subject
Date: 2003-10-07 09:41 am (UTC)...
And in exactly what sense of the word "discipline" is this not "disciplined"? Goodness, wuf! You've done all kinds of research for this project, as well as numerous drawings -- not to mention all that writing! Sheesh! Who cares if you've got daily targets or whatever? You're making lots of progress, and you're not spending months ignoring it or anything. Ya got results; hardly matters what your method is. :)