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I worked overtime today, which has been pretty rare lately. Generally I'm lucky if I get six hours a day at work. Getting more time is good for the pocketbook, but not so good for hobbies.
Today after work all I managed to do is write down the color list for my Space Marines and start basecoating some of my Orcs. I can already see that the Orcs will take much longer than Skaven. It mostly comes down to the difference between painting fur and painting skin. For the Skaven, I could slap on a coat of brown paint, follow that with an ink wash, and I'd be done with the fur. With Orcs, I have to build up layers of various green colors, a time-consuming process. I am beginning to find the problem areas for painting the Orcs after they've already been assembled. Fortunately most of these problem areas are difficult to see unless you've got the mini at an extremely odd angle and held right up to your eye. If someone is holding one of my Orcs in that manner, I am likely to become agitated and snatch it from them before they can notice that I have not completely highlighted the small patch of skin between the Orc's arm and his side.
This Fiction Writing class that my wife and I are taking has got me a little more agitated than I would like to be. I am not a big fan of the teacher, and the students seem to be the usual mix of people that I don't care to hang around with. The scheduled reading assignments range from uninteresting to death via brain hemorrhage. But all of that is to be expected from a University English class. I am agitated by my inability to come up with an idea for my first short story. Most of the stories that I feel like telling are chopped up bits from my own life mingled with dialogue that is better-than-original because I've had time to come up with witty remarks for myself and the other people in the scene. I think my real deep-down issue is that I like to tell stories that are humorous and from the reading assignments and the attitude of the teacher, this class is more about writing "meaningful" stories about sex and substance abuse than about writing humor with no other intention than to make people smile. My initial story involved a communication breakdown between a squad of Galactic Explorers and some aliens that look very similar to bipedal llamas. Although the aliens look like South American beasts of burden, they do not speak Spanish or Portuguese, especially when these languages are butchered by a redneck NCO. But I can't come up with a good ending, so I'm trying to come up with another story idea. Posted by RAZ at 3:59 AM