An unwritten rule of writing… well, it works for me, at least, is that in the moment you see deadlines looming massively on the horizon, and you have lots of stuff to write and deliver…

a . a number of other projects suddenly catch your interest
b . you get a ton of great ideas worth developing
c . you get buried in great books to read

As I said, I don’t know if it’s only me, but the problem seems to be widespread.

And anyway, this is absolutely my case now.
In a moment of madness, I decided to download a copy of the Mini Six game system.
While I still love Savage Worlds (also because they supposedly pay me to develop worlds for them), Mini Six (that you can find at RPGNow as a pay-what-you-want download) is to me the best fast system for developing games based on stories or on spurt of the moment ideas.
I normally carry a copy of the handbook on my portable devices – and it’s a smash.
Having recently changed my smartphone, it seemed like a good idea to load a new version of the handbook.

And yes, the plan is to develop a lean and mean game environment based on my writings.
Or something.
Thankfully, the Mini Six handbook is short and sweet, and I won’t spend too much re-reading it.

At the same time, and talking about time spent reading, a great book about evolution landed on my Kindle, courtesy of NetGalley – Origins, by Frank H. T. Rhodes.
That is absolutely wonderful, and is highly recommended. And that means at least one hour a day set aside for reading… which is not really a bad thing, because writing eight hours a day can be terribly rough on the systems.
And I’m not talking about my pc.
And yet there you are, reading a good book, and you can’t really enjoy it because at the back of your brain there’s somebody howling about work to finish, bills to pay…
It’s bad.
For the first time in my life I’m suffering from headache.

And to get rid of headaches and anxiety, of course there’s a little of meditation – which works a wonder, but once again is time not spent working to pay the bills.
What a bummer!

And finally, a fun thing happened – I was contacted by a publisher for a prospect publication.
The guys were interested in my Asteria series of sword & sorcery stories (Italian only, sorry) or maybe an original, novel-length work.
I was uncertain at the start, but as the next Corsair novella went on hiatus, I found myself with a modicum of free time, and so I said, why not?
And then the publisher vanished.
And it’s really all right, you know, because I have a lot of stuff to write.
But now I have this idea for a brand new sword & sorcery story that keeps running around in my brain, scaring away more serious and urgent thoughts…

Ah, back to work – the plan is 5000 words in the next two hours.