When I stop and think
about it, I’ve loved reading ever since the first Harry Potter book came
out. It took a couple of years, but I finally
picked it up. A hundred pages later, I
was hooked. I discovered that reading
can be…well, fun! And I’ve loved writing
since I was thirteen, when I discovered Brian Jacques’ masterful series, Redwall. Granted, I had some elaborate, premature plans
of sending Mr. Jacques the script for a new character and that he’d be so blown
away by the masterful writing that he would immediately have me co-author the
next book in the series…so I was thirteen.
Didn’t you ever want to be an astronaut?
Actually…that was plan B for the writing thing. Anyway, such are childhood dreams.
While I never got to write with Brian Jacques and I probably
never will get my Hogwarts letter in the fireplace, I did discover a myriad of
worlds bouncing around in my overactive imagination. Long books, short books, plays, songs, poems,
stories, characters and scripts—I lost myself in writing. Now that I’m twenty-one and over halfway to
my Bachelor’s degree in English Literature, I find that I have about fifteen beginnings
toward novels lurking in the darker recesses of Word and three completed books
that stare glumly at me every time I think about editing. With this many ideas bobbing around in my brain,
I am never sure which one to work on or read or re-write. It’s maddening. Bad idea to start more than one book at a
time…bad, bad Kristen.
So when I discovered ‘text-based adventure games’ online,
it was like a light bulb went on. They
are a way to explore my ideas in a quicker, more interactive fashion that does
not actually require a literary agent, an editor, a publisher and one very
flustered, slightly overzealous writer with a hectic imagination. After downloading the software behind this
system, I also discovered that computers are much more complicated than I
originally gave them credit for and that I know painfully little about the
language (a.k.a. coding) they use. It
caused more than a few headaches, but I have finally created my first text adventure
game through Quest. If you are
interested it out, you can play it for free at http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/hgr8xdshe0_crqkkfbiwbw/lost-in-the-shadows-of-time.
Anyway, now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, it’s
back to Ely so that I can help move hay and donate blood to the
mosquitoes. I’m hoping that the water
will be warm enough for snorkeling soon.
If not, the blueberries are coming in full swing and Ely’s famous
Blueberry Arts Festival is starting up this Friday…so stay tuned! Minnesota is just getting warmed up! (Literally…I just got the tank tops back out
from our Colorado trip.)
Peace!
~K
