Again, I spent some time playing around with Corona’s section (and, yes, I am still aware that we’re currently in Cronos’ section), which led me to fiddling around some in the peripheral materials. I’m refining the backstories of a few characters and such. You know, it would appear that I haven’t done a single non-human family tree up until now. Odd… Anyway, here’s to making some actual progress on the relevant chapter tomorrow.

I did a little conceptual work on the fight scene for Cronos’ Chapter 2 and I think I’m ready to go forward. Ironically, the actual writing I got done was on Corona’s Chapter 1. I decided I needed to scrap most of it, so I really felt compelled to get that knocked out. (Even though it’s far from being knocked out.) It’s definitely looking like you won’t be seeing the chapter until next week, but I’ve got a small token gesture that I’ll be posting to the site that might help tide you over.

My relationship with The Trident War Chronicles has been a complicated one. Its origins lie in a PnP strategy game I attempted to design back in high school. It was loosely based on Ogre Battle (or rather, what I could gather from articles on the game in Nintendo Power, as I wouldn’t actually play a game in the series until Ogre Battle 64, which came later). However, back in those days I wasn’t as meticulous an archivist as I am now and I wound up destroying the original materials in a fit of pique. (I’m glad I was so attached to the KoG and Tico series or I might have lost their original documentation as well. The rocky road of my canon formation will be the subject of a future entry.) Even with the materials having been destroyed, the premise of the scenario and most of the characters remained in my head and I later resurrected the concept, though without the strategy game mechanics. (I have, however, drawn up a prototype game design document for a turn-based strategy game based on the TTWC series, though I don’t plan on developing it further at this time.) I believe its relation to The Brothers Pendragon developed later on in the process, as I seem to recall adjusting some dates in the timeline to fit everything together more snugly.

A lot has changed in the course of revisions (though TTWC is only in Version 3, as compared to KoG being in Version 7), but almost as soon as I revived the series, I developed the core conceit of telling the story through short segments devoted to major characters from each of the three factions. In Version 2, I was going to have everything together in a single massive tome, but by Version 3 I realized each faction had more than enough material for their own book. This decision forced me to make further changes to standardize things. You see, originally I had as many characters as I found interesting with as many chapters as I deemed necessary to tell that character’s story. When I made the decision to break TTWC up into three books, I realized how unbalanced everything was.

From the beginning, I had this chess conceit, but I wasn’t as thorough as I should’ve been back in V2. I had too many characters on the Alliance side and too few for the Zephyrians. This had to change (and led to some interesting story developments as I rebalanced the cast). Then there was the matter of the number of chapters devoted to each character. The Dominion fared the worst with comparatively few chapters devoted to their characters. To be honest, they didn’t really interest me that much (except for Sir Caligo). I then reminded myself, “You’re the author. If these characters aren’t interesting, make them interesting.” And so I’ve been working toward that end and the Dominion’s charas are making significant progress toward being compelling enough to carry their own book.

Another part of the standardization process was to give every character an equal share. As I mentioned before, a lot of the Dominion charas had very few chapters for their segments while some others had quite a lot. I decided to average it out with five chapters in the main storyline, plus a prologue to establish their background and an epilogue for their final fate (or a closing note if they’re lucky enough to survive). This streamlining also prompted me to cut back on redundancy. There were a number of events I told from two or three different perspectives. Besides letting you glimpse into that particular character’s head, it didn’t add much if the two charas in question were on the stage together most of the time. Now you really have to take in all the characters’ accounts to absorb the whole story.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m particularly fond of TBP (and the fact that the first thing I put out was the TBP prequel short “The Stranger” should tell you something) and this kinda makes me feel some resentment toward TTWC because I feel it has to be told before I can get to TBP. (Of course, if I’d just buckle down and commit to, say, 1000 or even 500 words a day, I’d be where I need to be sooner than I’d think.) It might actually be a good thing, though, because it seems like I’m pushing myself to make TTWC worth my while and if I’m working that hard to make it worth my while, I’m sure it’ll be worth your while too.

Well, I think that’ll do for now. Just thought I’d share some perspective on this somewhat maddening series of mine. I really get into this sort of commentary, so I need to make it more of a habit. On a good week it can complement story progress and on a bad week it can offset the lack thereof. Stay tuned.

As mentioned back in the post “The Night Owl Crashes and Burns”, I’ve adopted the habit of late-night exercise biking and it has a way of knocking me out rather quickly afterward, only now I’m averaging in the twenties and thirties and I’ve upped the resistance. I may or may not be actually losing any weight on this deal, but it’s not like I’ve substantively altered my eating habits either.

Anyway, point being, the time in the dead of the night when I tend to be most productive is being stolen away from me (and I suppose if I get this job I’m interviewing for, I’ll need to be going to bed earlier anyway). That, and frittering away my time on the LP Archive, have resulted in glacial progress on that daggone chapter of TTWC1.

I did resolve myself to make a more concerted push to the end, but it turned out that I ran into a scene with some tricky fight choreography, which always takes extra time to get down. I may yet be able to make a Saturday release, but if not, it’ll just have to wait until next week. Anyway, stay tuned.

My father once said of farming, “It’s not a bad life, but it’s a sh***y living.” Of teaching, I might say the inverse. While no one’s going to become fabulously wealthy as a teacher. The roughly $3K a month you can make teaching full-time is a pretty decent living. Maybe less so as the sole provider for a family of four, but definitely more than enough for a confirmed bachelor like yours truly. The life of a teacher, however…

I was rounding out my elementary years when my mother got her degree and began teaching. In fact, when we moved to a new school, she got her first job as an English teacher. My English teacher, in fact. She later transitioned into reading (our school system kept English and reading separate at the lower levels, though I know some schools bundle them together–I happened to briefly work at one such school). I saw what it did to her. She didn’t make it to retirement. She finally had her fill after some 13 or 14 years and became a nurse. She warned me not to become a teacher and I honestly didn’t have any plans of doing so, but my first trip to Japan changed all that. While I can hardly claim the title of Great Teacher Carmack, I seemed to have a knack for it and teaching is stable work, just the sort of thing to prop me up while I work on my writing.

Being an ALT in Japan, you’re shielded from a lot of what being a real teacher means and once you get a taste of it, you can lose your appetite really quickly. After returning to the States, I took up a job as a 6th grade reading and language arts teacher. The problem was that I was in perhaps the worst middle school of a pretty bad town. It was an unmitigated nightmare. I quit after just one week. I knew my body would give out in a month’s time and it wasn’t worth it. Ever since my time in the Army, I vowed not to stick with a miserable situation so long as I had the means to escape it. I won’t go into the details, at least not at this time, but it was pretty terrible.

Things picked up for me after that. I landed a slot teaching ESL at a nearby university and did fairly well there until my position was eliminated. We had last year’s fiasco in Tokyo and then I was lucky enough to get on as adjunct faculty at two local community colleges. Though not unbearable, it highlighted what’s terrible about teaching, so I opted out of continuing into this semester. Instead I’m transitioning into private tutoring and yesterday’s lesson really highlighted what’s great about teaching. Let’s review the two sides of the fence.

Administrative bullcrap is probably the worst thing about teaching. The tangled web of politics, liability and busywork is positively soul-crushing and contributes next to nothing to the educational process. As an ALT, you’re completely shielded from the admin side of teaching and that can warp your perspective on the profession. It’s a lot of hassle and if the administrative personnel don’t have your back, it’s a straight-up nightmare.

The second part of what’s terrible about teaching (and this tends to have an unholy symbiotic relationship with the first part) is the unfortunate product of compulsory education (either by law or parental fiat): students who don’t want to learn. Yes, people will go on for days about the job of the teacher to motivate his kiddos, but if someone doesn’t want to learn, there’s not a whole lot a teacher can do to change that. Students who don’t want to learn are the ones you can expect to be disruptive, shoot your overall classroom averages straight to Hell, and have the shrillest and most unreasonable parents. Frankly, if a student doesn’t want to learn, he shouldn’t be in the classroom. Put him to work in the salt mines of Kessel for all I care. Teaching in college largely eliminates the issues of classroom disruption (because you can just kick the little miscreants out) and parental involvement (thanks to FERPA), but you still have to deal with failures bringing you down.

There are, of course, other factors that make teaching terrible, especially at the lower levels, such as overcrowded classrooms and the idiotic trend of teaching these rock-stupid standardized tests rather than actually educating students (a rant for another day), but the above two are what really make the job distasteful for me.

With all this talk about what makes teaching so terrible, why am I still at it? Well, let me tell ya, when you actually have a student who wants to learn, who’s putting out the effort to absorb what you have to impart, it’s like magic. There are few things as rewarding as watching a student progress. Maybe it’s because I’m an insufferable know-it-all, but I love sharing my knowledge and experience with others. This is what makes private tutoring so great, especially for adult learners. They’re there because they want it and they’re going to put out the necessary effort to get where they need to be. Are there going to be some bumps along the way? Sure, but there’s no administrative nonsense bogging you down and you don’t have the distraction of students who don’t want to learn. It’s good stuff.

I’ve recently begun teaching Japanese to a couple that’s wanting to spend a little time in sunny Nippon and even a single lesson has buoyed my spirits in a way that classroom instruction never could. Oh, I won’t deny that the repressed showman in me enjoys performing for a crowd, but as a teacher, I want my lessons to actually stick and this private tutoring thing seems to be the way to go. Now if I can just build my client list a little more lest I repeat last year’s experience in Tokyo. ^_^;

Yesterday was rather busy for me, so I don’t have a lot to report (and my subsequent exhaustion being the reason I didn’t post this sooner). I’m still inching along in Cronos’ Chapter 2. I have serious doubts I’ll get it done this week. Perhaps if I just disconnected my machine from the Internet, I’d have no choice but to write until I finished. There are, of course, other things besides simple distractions vying for my time, so who knows? Anyway, I’ll keep you posted.

I was so exhausted last night, I had a hard time seeing much point in just posting “More incremental progress on Cronos’ Chapter 2”, but after today’s work, it really feels like I’m moving things forward. Will it be enough to have the chapter ready next week? I don’t know. This is shaping up to be a rather big one. Also, the more I think about it, the more I have to adjust the original drafting of the scenario.

Perhaps once current events in the story play out, I’ll devote a commentary post detailing how all this evolved. Speaking of commentary posts, I really feel like doing one, so that might be something for tomorrow. Until then.

I apologize for posting this so late, but I crashed right the freak out last night and haven’t been able to get back to the keyboard until now. Anyway, as far as yesterday goes, I did make a little more progress on Cronos’ Chapter 2. Using the floorplan of Domitian’s palace as the basis for Castle Notos, I can better choreograph the action and get things to run from there.

I also did a little writing on The Brothers Pendragon. Now this is a book I’m really eager to write, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, but seeing as how it’s a pseudo-sequel to the TTWC series, I should really get those three knocked out first. I need to pick up the pace. All these stories to write and so little time…

I’d had some issues with my FTP until recently and so I wasn’t able to test out this code that would get the tabs functioning the way I wanted them to. That issue has since been resolved and now those tabs up top conveniently display all the posts in the given category. (Yes, I know you can get the same effect by clicking the category link on the sidebar, but the tabs are just an additional convenience.)

It’s a little embarrassing, but not being a PHP whiz, I had to narrow down the catid for the targeted categories through trial and error. No, it’s not a particularly elegant solution, but I got the job done. Now let’s see if I can get any significant amount of writing done today. Stay tuned.

I’ve made a little progress in TTWC1, but nothing to write home about. I finished up Gamaliel’s prologue and added some dialog to Cronos’ Chapter 2. I have a ways to go before I can finish the latter. I need to spend some time really thinking about how I want the scenario to play out. I’ll keep you posted.