8.28.2006

Duck, Duck, Deadline!
I finished my portion of Temple of the Frog with nary a week to spare before it was run at GenCon. Following meetings at Indy, I signed up for an 89k monster due at the end of October, 2006.

I asked for an extension, but there was no wiggle room. Halloween or bust.

Possible? Yes. But probably not my best material.

But there were complications. New monsters needed to be vetted, new rules required testing, ideas needed time to gestate.

The cool part was that I fell in love with the project, and made it home for my best work to date. Creepy, unexpected, cool – with +89k worth of space, I could pull some funky moves.

But still, that deadline thing.

Deadline versus Love. If you know Harley, you know which I sided with. Up until today I was making my word count schedule, but it was all going into the wrong places. I was +20k into the work, but love or no love, things were going to have to change.

Then I got the email with those golden words: "We’ve decided to push back the release date to XXXX. Your deadline is now January 2."

Praise be. Out of nowhere, for no good reason, salvation.

A while ago, Jeff and I were talking about writing, and, I, being the usual ass, was complaining. When we spoke I was booked solid with writing projects. But the more work I had, the tighter the deadlines, and the worse the quality of my writing. I remember telling Jeff that Iron Crypt was the last time I had really been able to give an adventure the attention it deserved. That was over a year and a half ago.

(Which isn’t to say everything I’ve written since has been trash. Most folks seem to like the work, but it's never all it could have been.)

Flash back to the present. I have 89k all to myself, the time to do it right, and my legs are sore from skating. I’m the luckiest guy in town.

Hope you all are doing well. It’s a bright, beautiful world out there. What’s the line in the song? “I thank the Lord / for the people I have found.”

And that means you. Thank you.


//H

P.S. Hey, Inversion – coming down the mountain soon. Hope to see you around.

7 comments:

Marsheila (Marcy) Rockwell said...

Yaay for extensions (and not the hairy kind, either)! :)

Anonymous said...

You've resurfaced! Yay!

Sounds good, Harley. I have no doubt you'll knock this one out of the park.

Cheers

P.S. Pouring like an avalanche, coming down the mountain.

Mike said...

That's been a quandary for me several times - getting a project I really, really want to work on, but the time to work on said project is either close to impossible ... or tight enough to where I can't make it as good as I wanted (or hoped). Glad you got some extra breathing room.

P.S. Word verification was "ehlftqst". Is that High Elven for Elf Toast?

Jw said...

Does this mean you have no time for my project?

Harley said...

Wentz,

Nope. I'm still in, if you'll have me. I never heard back, so I assumed I didn't make the cut ...

Erm. What's our deadline, again?
//H

Jw said...

I never heard from you! Harley not making the cut is like... um... something else not doing something else!

The deadline is October 15. My email: joshua@sidedown.com

Please, allow me to add a deadline to your schedule ;)

AnthonyRoberson said...

Wow. I can't believe there is another human being on the planet that likes RPGs AND skates.

Now, please give a 39-year old geek some pointers on how to do a decent ollie...