The End of an Era; or "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Process"

It's official: The final draft of GURPS WWII: All the King's Men - the albatross around my neck; the project from hell; the Book Man Was Not Meant To Write; the abomination - was sent to Steve Jackson Games at 3:40pm PST, Wednesday, October 15, 2003.

I'm sure it'll end up to be a good book - after two years of work, it had better be! - but it's just drug on for so long that I can't say I'm sorry to see it go.

The event also caps off six weeks of intense writing and deadlines that I thought was never going to end. I slogged through two playtests (run largely concurrently), finished the final draft of GURPS SWAT, wrote What Went Down, a 20,000-word d20 supplement for Hogshead, wrote a 10,000-word piece for SJ Games that I still can't talk about, threw together three short assignments for Alderac, and - of course - finished up the 90,000-word monster King's Men final draft - all with 6 hours and 20 minutes to spare.

I promised I'd sleep when this was done, and I plan on making the most of tomorrow - my first official day of unemployment! - but my good friend Gene Moyers sent me a "congrats, you survived" gift which he timed perfectly: a copy of Jurgen Wolff and Kerry Cox's book, Successful Scriptwriting. I may have to spend tomorrow reading, and get back to work on Friday.

Plans for the coming weeks? Sleep, co-write GURPS WWII: Banzai, write another d20 supplement for Hogshead (tentatively, Ghost Ship), sleep, work on yet another "can't talk about it" GURPS project, tackle NaNoWriMo in November, sleep, get details worked out with the folks at Guardians of Order to perhaps do some stuff for Silver Age Sentinels, follow up on some projects that seem to be on hold at the moment (Godlike: Operation Torch, and anything with AEG), and get some sleep. Probably eat a fish taco or two as well, but let's not get too carried away.

Thanks to everyone that put up with any bad moods I might have inflicted, or for understanding when I snubbed you in an Instant Message, or for just listening to my rants here in the pages of the Adventurer's Journal.

I'm all better now. :)