Greetings From Wilson!

Quiet Time

Taylor Vincent — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:22:56 +0000

Lan keeps yelling at me for not updating this blog, but I don’t really have much to say. She was always the primary audience anyway, and I can always call her, and soon I won’t even have to do that.

Fact is, writing fiction is a great creative outlet, but I get the same rush, so to speak, from writing for the Roleplayer’s Lament, and I have a way bigger audience and way more positive reinforcement there. I’m not ungrateful for the fans of my fiction, but when I want to write, I’d rather write there because I feel like I’m accomplishing more, y’know?

In the meantime, this site’s probably on a bit of hiatus. I might even come up with a static page to demonstrate that fact, but we’ll see. If anyone needs me, you know where to find me – Le Twittre, and RPL. Plus there are always my existing stories as seen on the sidebar and menu at the top.

For now, a friendly - hm. Not ‘goodbye,’ but ‘hang on a minute.’

Biffed It

Taylor Vincent — Mon, 31 May 2010 19:39:05 +0000

So I’m already giving up on that writing thing. I’d decided so last week, but I’m explaining now.

Essentially, I don’t want to half-bake good ideas when I don’t feel like writing. I’d rather put more time and effort into other things – Courtney, WoW RP, the Roleplayer’s Lament. RPL especially is something where I know I have an audience, one that seems to like our work, and I really want to write when I know people will read it. I do want to keep writing, WoW, Wilson, and otherwise, but I’m not going to force anything. Instead my energies will go toward things that are less exercises in writing and instead on things that are actually useful.

I hate to cut this short, but I’m in the middle of some RP with Courtney, which is one of the more-important-than-writing things. Poof!

Week One

Taylor Vincent — Mon, 24 May 2010 02:44:59 +0000

Welll I’m one week into my thing and I’ve already failed.

Perhaps I should explain.

I just finished up an entire short story that when converted to courier new is exactly six pages. It’s entitled The Argent’s Finest and can be found here for now. I’m gonna add a real page for it tomorrow, methinks, but the fact is that Scribd’s features make it much easier to upload things. I don’t know if it’s more annoying to read something in narrow-Wordpress-vision here or Flash (soon to be HTML5) embedded-o-vision of a PDF over there. My general lasiness has me very tempted to stop posting things here and just divert everyone that way. I’ll have to see if signup is required for comments and things like that.

For now, enjoy the story. I’ll do the rest of the work tomorrow when it’s not so freaking hot.

Quickie Update

Taylor Vincent — Sat, 15 May 2010 06:09:54 +0000

Almost forgot! Here’s a slightly edited version of all of the poetry that I pumped out this semester. I’ve entitled the collection The Lies We Believe. Enjoy.

Proud of My Failure

Taylor Vincent — Sat, 15 May 2010 05:23:04 +0000

Back in Monroe. It feels different here. It smells different than Madison. I miss State Street a bit already, but no matter.

I’m sure that there are plenty of real writers that would laugh at me and call me a complete scrub for what I’m about to say, but I don’t care. I’m a lazy and easily distracted individual, but I want to do more writing. Therefore, I’m employing the age-old principle of shame to get me to write more. This is me making a promise that I will output, on average, a page of writing a day. That’s not a lot for most people, but professionals probably don’t have work at C-town and Civilization IV distracting them. This is in addition to the one post a week I’m aiming for on The Roleplayer’s Lament. So. Every Sunday night, I will check in with my progress for the week. If I don’t put out seven pages a week, I am a failure, but I intend to not do that. Wilson, WoW, otherwise, I’m cranking out seven pages a week of Real Content. It might not be much, but it makes me feel like a big man.

There’re lots of occasions when I can’t seem to write anything substantial. I don’t really want to cram a lot of filler into the Cliff’s story I’m working on, since of all the subplots in Wilson, that’s the one I like most. So chances are that if I can’t think of anything brilliant to write, I’m going to start something else. There’s a tiny Saelar & Brux story floating around in my head right now, and I also want to get to work on a Wilson story about the town’s sesquicentennial that isn’t a ripoff of the Simpsons any more than anything else on earth is at this point. We’ll see how that goes.

It’s late, I’m tired. The Page-a-day challenge starts May 17 at 12:00 AM. If I don’t have seven pages written by May 23 at 11:59 PM, I’m officially the worst writer ever. Excluding everyone here.

Sneak Peek: Resistance

Taylor Vincent — Sat, 01 May 2010 17:27:29 +0000

No, not the Muse song. The new story I’m working on! With class dialing down and with a semester that I’ve spent mostly writing-free behind me to recharge my resentment batteries, not to mention another story of mine getting published to boost morale, I’m trying this whole “writing” thing again. It’s been too long! Please share and enjoy this new taste of my (everyone’s?) favorite fast casual restaurant:

Clarissa watched Clarence trot back into the office with a smirk on his face as she stood in back getting a drink. She’d heard the proceedings and knew that Clarence had won, the Cleaners had lost. With their defeat, Clarissa felt the mantle land on her shoulders, the feeling that most people only feel in a ninth inning, a fourth quarter, or when everyone else has been shot in Counter-Strike.

“It’s all up to me,” Clarissa mumbled.

“Get back to work!” Clarence called out from the office.

Clarissa carefully set her cup of Diet Pepsi down and shuffled back up. It truly was up to her. The Cleaners would behave now for fear of their jobs. The teenagers that worked nights wouldn’t care, the kitchen crew wouldn’t notice, Denise didn’t question the authority of males, and Twinkie, well, Twinkie was obsessed with ornithology this week. That might sound impressive, but it was only an offshoot of his obsession with dinosaurs last week. Clarissa would have to be the hero. There was just one problem.

“I know you don’t like me,” Clarence had said when he called Clarissa into the office the day after his promotion. “You think I’m cruel. You think I’m downright evil.”

He’d started pacing across the office with his hands clasped behind his back at this point, and Clarissa dropped her face into her hand.

“That will change. You’ll come to understand my methods. You’ll even embrace them.”

He paused and looked at her. Clarissa sighed loudly and threw up her hands. “No, never,” she shrugged out.

“Oh, yes, and sooner than you think. I’m going to drive you crazy the same way I was driven mad,” Clarence said.

Since then, Clarissa’s morale had been sapped daily by her new job. She felt another little piece of her grey matter flake away as she pushed the button on the headset.

“Thank you for choosing Cliff’s, how can I help you?”

So I’ve Been Quiet.

Taylor Vincent — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 20:53:49 +0000

I know. I haven’t been writing, really. That’s the sad thing. School takes it outta me. All the reading I do to “learn” from, instead of to learn from, and I have been having to crank out poems nearly every week, which is where most of my creativity has been going.

There is one thing worth mentioning, though: Things are looking rather up.

I also managed to get Always Happy to Serve You published in the Edgewood Review, much as I did A Dark and Stormy Night last year. I think last year’s was the better story, but apparently this year’s contributions sucked or the editors liked my story more than I thought. In either case, I am honored. I’ll have to get a pic of me holding it or sommat.

That’s all for now. More writing to come once I’m out of school. I wanna do a thorough rework of Everybody Knows Everybody Here to make it into an actual story and not a treatment of one, and I have plenty of unfinished things to either finish or prolong Inuyasha style. We’ll see.

Lame

Taylor Vincent — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 13:34:36 +0000

After some schedule wonkiness in the due dates of our poems, we’re back to an every Wednesday scenario. And yes, typically I do end up writing these the morning of that Wednesday. This week’s contribution to the vast expanses of unknown and irrelevant art is What’s Cool, a reply to the poem of the same name by Mark Leidner. I don’t know if it exists in any legally reproducible way online, but I’ll find out. In short, his poem discusses what’s cool, coming to a conclusion of sorts that only those that are totally fluid in their entire belief structure are “cool.” That’s the way I read it, at least. My piece provides my own cynical, hypocritical, and paradoxical view, and you’re free to enjoy it here. And, of course, the rest of my poetry can be found via the link up above, tucked away into that banner image which I really need to replace.

I Assure You that I am a Boy

Taylor Vincent — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:04:54 +0000

So. Ever since Courtney went and saw Wicked, I’ve been kind of investigating this whole ‘musical’ thing. The only one I’ve ever seen, at least professionally, is Spamalot, which was great. What I’ve discovered is that when an entire nation of people can break into song as convention, you end up with really, really catchy songs about weird things. Like hating people.

Long story short, I’ve had What Is This Feeling? stuck in my head for about twelve fucking hours. Somebody help me.

I Should Really Just Relax

Taylor Vincent — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:10:26 +0000

Take one part energy drink, one part Lovecraft, one part eclectic collection of music, one part Monster a-Go-Go, one part deadline. Combine; shake well. You end up with something that technically fulfills the requirements for my ‘poetry with a visual element’ assignment. It’s called In the Not-Too-Distant Future, Somewhere in Time and Space. You’re welcome to take a look. I really hope the wall of text in it still makes sense when I’m back on a normal sleep schedule.