Creative Journey: Luxe System Act II, Unfocused but Outlining

Creative Journal #2

I think the bad night of sleep on Sunday has really set me back. I’m double tired today compared to yesterday BUT I made progress on Luxe so rather than going on about my bad sleep, lets talk about the story.

I’ve made it through the outline for act one and have started act II.

I didn’t want to get stuck in one region of the trade moon so I’m moving the story to a different area. I am also going to introduce the concept that corporations are going to be exploring the solar system. Actually……as I write this…..I have yet to define who the people are on the trade moon, at least as far as who they are working for. I guess the rough idea is they are paying the different gov’ts of the Planet Luxe to give them space and working with the aliens are who are moving goods and tourists in and out of the trade hub.

I don’t actually know what the volume of stuff and people that moves through the hub, but I don’t think that matters just yet.

I guess I am not too concerned about questions of that detail as I will answer them once I get to the writing portion.

That’s it for tonight, I’m having a hard time focusing on anything for more than 5 min. I feel like I know where I want this first Luxe story to go and I just don’t have the energy tonight to get the outline farther than I already have. Time to make some super short bullet point reminders and put this one down for the night.

Note of personal improvement: I did get to my French lessons today for the first time in 5 days. No coding which is bad but I have to be realistic about the energy levels I have when I get home.

Til next time!

Creative Journey: Outlining & Sleep & The Luxe System

Creative Journal #1

Kept going on the outline of the first Luxe System novel. I’m not sure how much is out there about what The Luxe System is. I will get into that more in another post, but for now….it is the story about a human planet who has started to get into reliable space travel and they are noticed by an Alien race who wants to help them move forward in their pursuit of exploration as a species.

They also want to help build up the Luxe System as a trade port in this region of the galaxy. A lot of the stories I want to look at first are the stories of the planet Luxe coming to grips with expanded space travel and sorting out how each nation will fit into this changing world.

There are nations who are interested in technology and others who want to get back to want nature means. There are no more wars as there was a major war in the past which was so bad, all the nations……at the time……agreed to disarm themselves and not travel the road of war ever again. Everyone had lost so much, the motivation to change as a species was strong.

Anyways….as I said…..more detail on that later.

I’ve been outlining a story about a girl named Sarah who wants to work on the trade moon. Jobs on the trade moon are more about managing a crew of bots who do the work for you. Some people are good at automating all their bots, others want to work side by side with their bots. When a dock owner hires you on, you need to show them what your bot crew is like and what they are able to do.

I’m up to 12 chapters of the outline and I think I am through the first act. I figure I will go with the act system for my first novel as trying to do anything fancy is probably doomed to failure. Not to mention I have ZERO novel….er…..writing experience at all so lets play by the rules for a while.

I am proud of myself that I sat down and worked on this tonight. I got a really bad night’s sleep last night and I took a nap when I got home from work. I know that when I get to the point where I am writing I need to be able to focus for longer periods of time and forcing myself to work on the outline tonight and write this post is a good start. I have to decide if I will work on programming or French this evening as it is almost 9 and I really am tired.

That’s all for this evening…..

Re-purpose the Blog……Creative Exploration

Hi There……it’s been a while…..

We spent a few years making games and it was quite the ride. We did a lot of learning and got to the point where we ran a Kickstarter campaign, funded and sent the game out to our backers.

Unfortunately, we did not have the time or energy it requires to turn what is an awesome hobby into regular gig. Whatever “regular” was intended to mean, as the demands of real life started to mount, we have to take a step away from the podcast, designing and pretty much the industry as a whole.

Where I am at now, I am a hobby free agent who is ready to get back into making games, but not as aggressively as I was before. I am also writing a novel….er…..novels? I am also working on a personal process improvement. The goal is to make myself better at the things which will advance my career and will also provide me with the creative outlet I know I need.

What this all means is I will be re-purposing the blog to be a story about creative growth and personal improvement. For now, I don’t think I will be changing the name as everything I do I think can be turned into a game. I’m learning to program so I can grow at work and maybe make games. I write so I can tell better stories to go with the games I want to make. I will get back into game design because at the end of the day, I think I am a game designer first and everything else creative second.

The reality is that I need to have these other projects going so when I hit road blocks in on place I can jump to a different project and make progress there. I hope to have interesting stories to share and lessons learned over the course of the next creative chapter. I don’t yet know all the different things I will be producing but I am ready to start producing content again and I hope you will come along for the ride.

Chris