Silva-itis and Random Topics

Silva-itis is a condition afflicting thousands, perhaps millions, of gamers worldwide. The condition's title is derived from the gamertag BL4CK SiLva, who is widely regarded by those in the field to be Patient Zero for the growing epidemic.

Those afflicted with Silva-itis experience a compulsion to purchase large quantities of gaming content - and then never actually play it. In Patient Zero's case, the symptoms are two-fold, from a deep roster of unplayed XBLA titles, to a shelf full of full retail games that have seen little to absolutely no play.

I realized today that I suffer from the DLC strain of Silva-itis, as my purchase of "The Writer" for Alan Wake made me think of all the other DLC I own and have hardly touched:

Red Dead - Legends & Killers
Magic: The Gathering - Expansions 1 and 2
Blue Dragon - Shuffle Dungeon
Lost Odyssey - Seeker of the Deep
Dragon Age - Awakening
Bioshock 2 - Rapture Metro, Protector Trials, Minerva's Den
Mass Effect 2- Kasumi
Prince of Persia - Epilogue

At least I've become a little smarter lately and not purchased any DLC unless I'm actually ready to play it.

I'm going to try to set aside enough time tomorrow to start working on reviews for Comic Jumper and Alan Wake's "The Writer," though I'm not sure how far I'll get. My main project is continuing the cleaning and organizing work I've been doing on my apartment. I'd allowed it to languish into a disorganized clutter of crap so bad even I was embarrassed by it, so I'be been organizing and cleaning everything. Considering how unbelievably time consuming this process has been, I think I'd much rather take the time to maintain the cleanliness than have to repeat this nightmare ever again.

Next month is National Novel Writing Month, where aspiting authors try to write an entire novel in one month. The emphasis is more on QUANTITY than actual quality. With the short time frame and the lofty word count goals, all that really matters in the physical act of cranking words out. What you write doesn't even really need to be coherent to be a valid submission to the event. I'm going to be writing a novel based off one of the short stories I wrote in college, and letting the story develop on its own without any prior plotting or plans on my part. Once the dust settles at the end of November, I'll take a step back and look at what I did, and we'll see if what can be salvaged from it would be enough to be the core of a novel I'd want to polish up and try to get published.

Because I'll need to average 2,000 words per day (approx. 4 single-spaced pages) to meet my personal goal of 60,000 or more words, I don't think you'll be seeing a lot of blog posts in November. This is your advance warning so nobody things I just vanished. Considering that November is also Retail Hell Month, I could very well be completely insane or on some serious anti-depressants by the end of the month LOL. =)

After I'm done with the month of writing, I will be mailing out the unedited version of what I wrote, so I'll be asking for emails at that time if you want to read my story (in its super-quickly concieved form).

It was nice to get outside and go for a run today in the nice fall weather (or, in my case, 30% jog, 70% walk). I'm so fucking out of shape it's pathetic, but I've got to start from somewhere if I'm ever going to get better and approach a respectable physical condition. At least I've started getting out.