Alienation

 

(image from Gamasutra article)

I'm doing better at the game than I am at the novel. Either of them.

It seems like a joke. 2020 has been such a rough year, I'm relaxing by playing a game where you run around an exploding space station chased by an un-killable monster.

(Really, Fallout 4 made more sense. Rather like Skyrim, where you can purchase a pre-made home, the ability to craft a nice player house in Fallout 4 means the best part of the game is, after a long hard day, relaxing at home playing a character who is relaxing at home.)

Anyhow. Alien Isolation has been good at addressing a fault I have in playing. I tend to want to play meticulous, planning the optimal way to go and reducing risks. Well, the Alien itself is randomized. It can -- and it will -- pop out with no warning and kill you on the spot. You can hide, and you can throw noisemakers to distract it, but it learns; if you throw too many distractions it will learn to ignore them. And it will figure out there's someone around throwing them. And it will look for you and if you stay in the same hiding place too long it will find you.

So it is actually a better plan to keep moving, take chances, and deal with failure and having to go back from the last save point. I had a much easier time with that once Ripley found the flamethrower, though. Up until then, if the Alien spotted me, I was dead. After that, I was willing to all but walk up right behind it. Because as long as I had a few squirts of fuel left, there was at least a chance I could frighten it off long enough for me to escape.

(The most satisfying moment I had in the game was actually before I found that flamethrower. I managed to pop a molotov cocktail right in the thing's face. Got killed by Working Joes a few minutes later but boy did it feel good to watch the Alien shriek in dismay and run away.)

***

I won't get notes from my other potential beta readers for weeks. So I'm trying to do the edits this weekend and make the book purchasable by Monday. 

Every time I sit down, though, I have a "who am I to be trying to do this?" moment. Weird. I think it is the character. Or maybe the real-world setting. I never had this kind of reaction when I was writing science fiction. But this series, every time I try and work, I get hit by Imposter Syndrome.

When I'm in the groove, I am Penny. I just write in her voice, and write her thoughts. But it is never easy getting back into that character when I've been away from it.

***

I went and got another book on Japan. I caught a podcast interviewing the author and it sounded so interesting...

I may have to give up the idea of pushing the Japan novel out in four months. I've been at it for two months (well, I've been revising the last one all month) and I still don't have the plot.

Armies always plan for the last war. This book is in reaction to the last book. I want a big, obvious plot with known stakes that shows up on page one. No more slow burn. I also want an antagonist that is visible and known and that the reader can hate and want to see defeated.

At this point I haven't even decided if this "external" plot needs to be linked in any way -- physical, thematic, allusion, whatever -- to the "internal" plot. Which at least is looking fairly solid. This may be another thing I need to unlearn. I've gotten too used to plotting from the inside and it doesn't lead to big flashy "world saving" plots. 

Maybe I need an Alien to chase me. Some sort of editor-alien, looking more than a little like Brandon Sanderson I imagine and screaming about "show don't tell." (Or possibly it is a Queen Alien and the repeated cry is, "But, Jenna...!")

Anyhow.

I had one Kindle page read a couple days ago. I mean one page. That's as far as they got. That's...not helping.

So. I need to fix some things. There are places that I thought were in character but my beta thought was objectifying, and I don't have to agree with that to agree that they don't benefit the book sufficiently to be worth struggling to keep.

So I need to go into the "shot in the bum" sequence and...

...I can't do this.

Turning off the editor now. I'm going back to getting killed by an Alien.