Bah! It had to happen sooner or later. I missed a target. In this case, the target was 007. I'm in good company though; Blofeld, Scaramanga, Goldfinger, Nik-Nak - all those illustrious evildoers couldn't hit 007 either. Har har!

Crap puns aside though, I'm a little annoyed that I missed this target. I completely forgot it was Easter Weekend, but once I realised it was, I thought I could crack out the rest of 'Meanwhile...' during our break in Raetihi. No dice. I think I managed to correct a single solitary sentence in the little down-time I had. Arseflaps. I'm still on the cusp of introducing the antagonist of the piece. It's maddening. He's literally on the doorstep, waiting to bate my main character with his sarcasm, and all I have to do is find an hour or two to slip him in.

Maybe the huge target was too insurmountable? Maybe it was too big a chunk to bite off? Part of the experiment of motivating myself via this blog is to ensure I kept some kind of momentum going with my writing. I think that perhaps this time I short-circuited the motivational process by attempting too much. Maybe a smaller word-count target is more acceptable? Well, this is a learning process, so let's try  that instead. It seemed to work with the earlier targets.

I'm embarrassed to say that's exactly what I took during my last update. I think I've got to make a rule - if I hit a target, I should then immediately set a new target. If I don't, I find myself not doing the work that I want to do and things slacken off. It's tough being a new dad, true enough, but I should really make time for my writing. Having said that, today I managed to edit the work I did mid-week and teased out another 200 or so words for 'Meanwhile...'. I can live with that. I'm on the cusp of introducing the antagonist, too, so that gives me an extra incentive for this week's target.

I can't just blame broken sleep for my slackness. I've returned to Fallout 3 to play the DLC. Oh dear. I played right through the main story in more or less one fell swoop, and although it motivated me just enough to complete it, I found the story a bit underwhelming. I had no real interest in continuing on my adventures in the Capital Wasteland until I stumbled across an abandoned building on a random wander through the debris. On entering, I kicked off a minor quest told through the classic video game trope of discarded diary pages. There was an obvious Lovecraftian influence to the deftly-relayed story, which built nicely towards an interesting confrontation deep in the bowels of the earth beneath the building. What I liked about this was that some people may never, ever see this building or complete this quest, because, like many of the game's side-quests, it has no bearing on the main storyline. However, despite using the exact same art assets as everywhere else in the game, the location managed to exude a great atmosphere with clever placement of objects, simple scripted events and imaginative use of standard terrain pieces. As a developer myself, I can see how someone would have carefully planned how he would have executed the vision of his little quest even as he was constrained within the limits of a game engine not particularly well suited to this type of mini-story. Also, I wonder if someone just piped-up about their desire for a Lovecraft-alike in a design meeting, then got offered the chance to have a crack at writing and directing their own slice of Wasteland pie. That kind of romantic notion appeals to the writer in me. I'd like a go at that!

So, if you ever find yourself wandering the post-nuclear ruins of Washington DC with nothing to do, pop down to the Dunwich Building and play your way through a fun little horror adventure. You never know what you might find!