DON'T SHAVE THE MONKEY!!!

I'm at work, battling a sudden need to sleep, as well as a desire to write coupled with a weird sort of block.

Well, it's not a block, really. It's more like... a whiny-baby wish that I had a writing partner who could follow me around and do half the writing, or at least talk to me and encourage me and give me ideas or help me make my ideas better when I do have time to write.

I can so relate to Douglas Adams:

When he wrote the first 2 THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY radio series he had a producer or two and some other creatives around him to bounce ideas off of and generally keep him company as he wrote the scripts...

Then when he wrote the first two novels, he was simply adapting the radio scripts to a different medium...

A combination of the radio series and the first 2 novels then made him internationally famous, and probably more than a little well-off...

Then came time to write the third (but not last) book of the 5-book "trilogy"... This one, I suspect, came with more difficulty, because all he had was what had gone before... But this time he was all alone when he wrote...

While writing the next 2 HHGG novels -- as well as 2 Dirk Gently novels and the non-fiction LAST CHANCE TO SEE -- he gained a reputation for hating to write. He was (in)famous for procrastinating, even to the point that someone from the publishing house would be sent to his home to sit there and wait for him to finish writing each chapter.

What changed between that which made him a famous writer and the rest of his career?

PEOPLE!

While he was writing what made him famous, he was surrounded with creative folks to help keep him inspired and encouraged and (presumably) having fun while he wrote.

AFTER he became a famous, successful writer, he was left alone to do it by himself.

I, similarly, began my creative endeavors as an actor in community theatre. Always people around, and the acting (and costume and makeup and set-building) got done between long stretches of laughter and fun and craziness.

But writing -- unless you have a partner or a writers' room -- takes place in solitary confinement; you're often told to shut people out and explain to them that you need to not be disturbed while you're writing.

I think writing would be better if it were a group sport, somehow, lol.

Blah.

Anyway...

DUDE!!!

Yesterday before work, I managed to conquer Level 4: Tomb of Qualopec!

Then today before work, I managed to tackle Level 5: St. Francis' Folly!!! :D

I'm just cruising right along!

I am SO NOT looking forward to the bosses at the latter levels, but I've got about 7 levels to go before I even need to start worrying about that.

HOWEVER...

The next level is Coliseum, and I don't mind telling you I'm terrified of the gorillas and the crocodiles!!!

I mean, I've played the first 2 TRs a couple dozen times, and it's scary whenever you run into a gorilla or a T-Rex or something... And that's with graphics which are a bit embarrassing nowadays, lol!

When I ran into the raptors and the T-Rex in TR Anniversary I very nearly soiled myself! :O The state-of-the-art graphics make the adversaries just a million times more intimidating and scary!

And I caught a screencap of the gorillas in TR Anniversary...!!! :O

On the one hand, there is a crazy part of me that can't wait to experience it, to see just how difficult they are to defeat...

On the other hand, there's the saner part of me that prefers to scale ledges and hop around obstacles, free from the threat of dismemberment, lol.

I mean, like, the BEARS! The old-school bears were fairly innocuous: Big brown representations of an animal that SHOULD be scary, but just really isn't.

The bears in TR Anniversary? They LOOK like BEARS!!! You know, those thousand-pound monsters that can kill you with a single swipe of their claws!

Tomb Raider rules! :D

OOH!

And Brian & I have finished Season 2 of LOST, and should be getting the first 3 discs of Season 3 in the mail tomorrow!!! :D That's really exciting!

I considered helping the time pass here by watching a couple of episodes tonight, but I felt a bit guilty watching them without my bro.

It's more fun watching the show with him anyway!

Okay, I'm gonna go pretend to be busy.

PEACE!!! :D