The Beautiful Game

Back from hiatus with my #3 game on my arbitrary list.

#3 - Go

There are a lot of different reasons I might love a game. Maybe it's strategically engaging, or leads to fun interpersonal dynamics, or provides good stories, or it's simply hilarious. The games that I've written about here all exhibit those traits to one degree or another. Go exhibits them too. But that's not why I love it.

I love Go because it's beautiful. Not beautiful in the way that many games have painted boards or sculpted miniatures. Beautiful in the way a poem or a piece of music is beautiful. Go, for some reason, resonates with me.

Extra Life Post-Mortem

Extra Life went very well last night! Unfortunately, we didn't quite have the resolve to complete the full 24-hours, but from 8 am Saturday to 4:30 am Sunday, we had at least one person playing a game at all times. It was draining, but entertaining, for us and hopefully for the few people who watched the stream. My friends also beat their goals for donations, so that's very exciting.

I'm definitely planning on doing it again next year, with a few changes to make things run more smoothly. We'll definitely have a more solid schedule for what games we'll be playing, both to give potential viewers a better idea of what they'll be watching and to reduce the amount of energy we waste just trying to decide what to play. More single-player games are also a good idea. We had a lot of multiplayer stuff this year, which is great, but single-player games are usually less stressful, easier to play for longer period and give people the opportunity for breaks. If we make those changes, I'll be looking forward to participating even more fully next year!

Extra Life

Tomorrow, I'm participating in the Extra Life gaming marathon to help raise money for the Children's Miracle Hospital Network. The idea is that between 8am tomorrow and 8am on Sunday, I'll be playing games with friends, streaming live and folks can donate money to see us lose our minds. All proceeds will go to help kids.

I don't have a personal donation page, but my friend Kellen is organizing things, so you can donate to his page here and watch the stream here. 

I'm both excited and terrified, which probably means it will be good.

Boo-urns

A few years ago, after brainstorming with a friend about a board game set in Prohibition-era Chicago, I watched the first two episodes of Ken Burns' Prohibition for research. For some reason, I never watched the third. But yesterday I realized that all of Burns' PBS documentaries are on Netflix, so I finally finished what I started.

I had never seen a Burns documentary before Prohibition, but I quite liked this one. The only complaint I have is the overwhelmingly romantic tone and the emphasis on American exceptionalism.  Both were expected, but I could have done with fewer tinkling piano tunes and assertions that Prohibition was foolish because no American will stand being told what they can't do. Aside from that, it was a fascinating story, filled with tons of interesting characters. I still think there's a fantastic board game waiting to be made about the topic. Whether it would broadly deal with the fight for the 18th Amendment or the fight for its repeal or focus on bootlegging or gang wars, I'm not sure. Someday, I'll sit down and come up with something.

Continuing my recent insatiable appetite for baseball, I started watching Burns' Baseball today. Clearly, the man likes his titles straightforward. This one is older that Prohibition - 1994 versus 2011 - and is even more romantic and indulgently American. Speakers insist that baseball is the most perfect, most beautiful game ever devised. I can't exactly argue against that position, but praise inflation - when "best" comes to mean "good", while "good" is barely passable -  annoys me. Worse though, is the constant insistence that baseball is quintessentially American and the perfect metaphor for everything about America. As a Canadian baseball fan, who knows that the game as been played here as long as it has been in the States, this irks me. I've only seen one episode so far, but there's not yet been a mention of baseball being played outside the US. Hopefully later episodes at least address Cuba, Mexico, the Domican Republic and Japan.

That said, Burns' should get credit for purposefully and pointedly refuting the Abner Doubleday myth. And I was surprised that even in the first episode, which deals with the 19th century, black baseball players are featured heavily. It would have been easy to talk about Jackie Robinson and leave it at that. Instead, a good chunk of time is spent on the black players who made it to the 19th century big leagues only to be forced out by owners who caved to pressure from racist white players.

Those stories, and all the others about the evolution of rules, the creation of leagues and struggles around professionalization, make the program worth watching. I'm interested to get to the later episodes, since this was made in 1994 - right in the middle of the steroid era, before many knew it was the steroid era. I imagine the discussion of those years will be much different - and less cynical - than it would be if the documentary were made today.

Recommendations for November 2

More recommendations!

First,  a great article from Evan Narcisse at Kotaku about the need for better portrayals of blackness in video games. Don't have a lot to say about this one, other than that I really appreciate how he specifies certain black characters in games as examples of how to do things well, but reminds the reader that it's not enough to just clap your hands and finish at that. Also, apparently this is an except from The State of Play, an anthology of video game cultural analysis which just came out. I think I'll have to pick that up.

On that note, Laura Hudson at Offworld (which I really need to read more regularly) has a nice feature on Kiro'o Games, the first game development studio in Cameroon, and their upcoming game, Aurion. I actually remember hearing about this last year and am glad I was reminded of it. Video games often lack a sense of identity that draws on where they were made - or at least, that identity tends to be implicit. So I'm glad that we're starting to see games come out of areas outside of the traditional development centres of North America, Japan and Europe. (Chilean developer ACE Team is another example.) That these folks seem to be pulling a Tolkien on African history and mythology makes me even more excited.

Because of the Blue Jays recent, but too short, playoff run, I've fallen back in love with baseball. Which means I've been reading a lot about baseball history. Corinne Landrey at The Hardball Times wrote about how this years World Series between the Mets and the Royals is the first ever not to feature one of the original eight MLB teams. That's pretty shocking, considering that this was the 53rd World Series since the MLB started expanding. Equally shocking, to me at least, was that the New York Yankees used to be called the Baltimore Orioles. Weird. I also liked this article by Rany Jazayerli at the recently shutdown Grantland about the biggest plays in MLB history. Baseball is great because of how it's punctuated by moments like these. Dozens and dozens of things happen that seem to be of no consequence and then all of the sudden games, series and seasons pivot on one hit, one catch, or one throw. And to round out the baseball reading with contemporary events, here's Jeff Sullivan at FanGraphs congratulating the Kansas City Royals on winning the World Series yesterday - and for being such a damn fun team.

Finally, some Canadian politics, in the form of comments on Justin Trudeau's policy plans for electoral reform from Evan Solomon at Maclean's and the Syrian refugee crisis from the CBC. These were both important issues for me during the election, so I was glad to see some continuing coverage of them. Both articles are a bit pessimistic, though. On the electoral reform front, while the Liberals might put forward a ranked ballot as the easiest change that also benefits them, I'd prefer anything to First-Past-the-Post (although my preference is Single Transferable Vote.) On the refugee crisis, I find it strange that the article talks about the difficulty in processing the applications for so many people before the end of the year, but doesn't really address what those applications are like and whether things could be done to reduce the paperwork.

One final recommendation, although not for an article: Bouletcorp is a fantastic webcomic that everyone should read. It's mostly in French, but there are English versions of many strips, so you have no excuse!

It's Halloween!

Well, yesterday was. But yesterday I was recovering from one party and preparing for another. That's pretty rare for me - Halloween's not my favourite holiday. Last time I dressed up was three years ago. I don't have any special antipathy for it, I'm just bad at thinking of costumes and worse at making them. But this year, with the aforementioned two parties and lots of friends who love the holiday, I felt I had to do with something.

Last week I came up with the idea to go as a BuzzFeed listicle. I wanted something mildly clever, obvious and easy, making BuzzFeed a perfect fit. To line up even better with the current zeitgeist, I chose Disney princesses as the topic for the listicle. The problem was that even though the idea started as a cop-out, I ended up liking it a lot and put way too much work into it. What was a supposed to be a thrown-together gag ended up taking a whole afternoon and many craft supplies.

Luckily, it turned out really well. Unfortunately, I don't have a good picture of the whole thing together, but here are the parts.

First, the shirt:

Subtlety is not BuzzFeed's style, so the costume had to be obvious. Nothing more obvious than writing it on a T-shirt. This was easily the toughest and most time consuming part of the costume. That's mostly because I'm stupidly picky about tiny things, so I spent ages trying to get the font exactly right and used markers instead of paint because they allowed more precision. Funny enough, markers also allow three times as much wrist-pain and ten times as much time. Next time I'll use paint.

I did get some compliments on the lettering though, so maybe it was worth it.

Here's the main feature of the costume, as previewed in the T-shirt. Left to right, it's Cinderella, Elsa, Pocahontas, Nala and Aurora. The nails were done by my friend Meghan and I wish I had close-ups of each of them, because she did a fantastic job. There are all sorts of little touches to make the characters recognizable. I make the outfits out of felt and glued them to a cheap pair of gloves. But because I was dumb and bought the felt and markers before picking the princesses, I didn't have quite the right colours. That's why some are a bit off.

And for completion, here's the right hand. Left to right, there's Jasmine, Ariel, Snow White, Belle and Mulan.

I was surprised by how much of a hit the costume was. The shirt was too baggy to be easily read, so I had to explain it a lot, but once I did, people seemed to enjoy it. And I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it too. So maybe I'll do another costume next year. I'll have to plan things better though.

Pandemic Legacy 1-01: Oh no

Last week, some friends and I played our first game of Pandemic Legacy. If you're not familiar with the game, Shut Up & Sit Down has a good review. In short, it takes Pandemic, Matt Leacock's genre-defining disease-fighting co-operative game, and combines it with Risk Legacy, Rob Daviau's re-imagining of Risk that added an ongoing campaign, permanent changes to the board and rules between games and Christmas morning excitement to the old classic. What you get is Pandemic campaign, where each game carries over into the next, modifying some things, adding others and making the players' situation better or worse as the case may be. 

I've decided to write up each of our sessions (months, in the game's fiction) as connected short stories. These will have spoilers, so if you're planning on playing the game, I'd recommend not reading after the jump. 

This episode contains spoilers for January.

Playing Pretend

I don't have any particular article ready to post tonight, so I thought I'd just write about what's on my mind. And what's on my mind is roleplaying games.

I've always thought of myself less as a devotee of a particular type of game than as a lover of all types of games. It doesn't matter if it's played with sticks or controllers or just words and actions - I'm fascinated by structured play. But obviously some areas get less attention than others. Of all the genres I've neglected, I'm most disappointed that I've never gotten heavily in roleplaying games.

Not for lack of trying, though. In high school, some friends and I bought the core Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 books and played a few adventures. It was fun, but none of us had the desire or wherewithal to be the Dungeon Master and so we never got into more extended sessions. After graduation, 4th edition came out and we tried again. That time, we ran into the same problems, compounded by newly differing schedules and living situations. Over the years, I've sporadically been involved in a couple other games, but again, nothing stuck.

The urge to play RPGs has never left me, though. The concept is inherently appealing: mixing my love of improv acting, game systems, bullshitting with friends and genre fiction. I wish I could get a group of friends together and pretend to be adventurers or cyberpunk detectives or superheroes with them. But there are so many obstacles: it's a time commitment, everybody needs to buy into the premise, somebody needs to create and direct the scenarios for the group. It's hard to get all the dice in a row and make a campaign, or even a single session, happen.

Part of the problem, though, may be that I've focused on the wrong games. D&D, or similar systems like Pathfinder, always seemed like the giants of the genre, but as I've learned more about the scene, I've realized that maybe more focused systems would be a better fit for me. D&D always felt bloated - it wanted to be everything for everyone. But a game built around a specific type of story can ignore a lot of irrelevant rules and situations, creating a smoother play experience. So maybe I should try out something like Apocalypse World or TechNoir - games that allow for more collaboration between players and the Game Master, with a focus on storytelling over precise rules. Single-session games like A Tragedy in Five Acts or Dog Eat Dog might be a more effective place to start, since they require less of a commitment.

I'll confess that this interest isn't solely from a desire to play RPGs. I have a lot of ideas for roleplaying systems I'd like to design myself. But not having played many, it's difficult to know what works and presumptuous to think that I've got solutions to all the problems of the genre. So I'd really like to expand my palate.

But mostly, I want to play pretend.

Article Recommendations

As part of my ongoing goal to post here regularly, I thought I'd do a weekly round-up of interesting articles I've read. I try to read a lot of news, opinion and just generally informative stuff online. Usually, I share it on my Facebook page, but I think it might be more effective to have everything in one place. That also allows me to write up my thoughts on each item a bit more clearly.

Since this is the first one of these posts, these won't actually be things I specifically read this week. In the future, I'll try to keep it to recent stuff, or at least pieces that I've personally read recently.

First up is actually a group of articles about masculinity:

The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men's Lives is a Killer by Mark Greene
Bosom Buddies: A Photo History of Male Affection by Brett and Kate McKay
Escape the "Act Like a Man" Box by Charlie Glickman

The first two are about how homophobia has made men afraid to touch each other casually and gently. Greene argues that because of this fear, young boys get much less physical attention from their parents and peers than girls do. They then enter adulthood understanding touch as either sexual or aggressive - sometimes, disastrously, both. The pictures in the McKay article do a really good job of showcasing how men used to be much more willing to hold hands, sit on each other's laps and hug. While I think Greene may be overselling the psychological value of touch, I think there's a lot to the argument. I'm lucky that my dad was never afraid to show affection with me or my brother - he hugged us and told us how much he loved us every day. I went to summer camp as a kid, where hugging is the default form of greeting. So I've always been pretty comfortable with physical contact with other men. Even so, those photographs are striking in how different the interaction is to what I would consider normal or comfortable.

The third article of the group is a pretty straightforward take on how corrosive the norms of masculinity are. Hopefully this isn't news to anybody, but it's worth emphasizing often. Even as a pretty gender-norm conforming type of dude, I bristle when some marketer tries to remind me that liking musicals or cooking or bracelets means I'm not a "man."

Next up, The Drone Papers by The Intercept.

This is a chilling set of articles detailing secret information about the United States' drone strike program, as revealed by a whistleblower. There's a lot of information in there - acronyms, statistics, diagrams, dates. But it's worth reading. The upshot is this: the US has become increasingly willing and able to initiate drone strikes against possible threats by order of the President. The strikes are often against targets within the borders of countries not at war with the US; they can target citizens of the US or allied countries, killing them without recourse to due process; they are imprecise, killing hundreds of non-combatants who are by default labelled as "Enemies Killed in Action" when their identities are unknown; and these strikes are an inefficient form of intelligence gathering, as they kill people who might otherwise have divulged valuable information. It's all horrifying. The knowledge that nobody cares enough to stop it horrifies all the more.

Let's keep it dreary:

The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates

The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Coates is the best non-fiction writer I've read in ages and these two cover stories for The Atlantic (from last summer and this summer respectively) illustrate why. With beautiful writing, he brings mounds of evidence to show that the crime of  subjugating African Americans was historically and is presently fundamental, not incidental, to the wealth of the United States. I've actually just finished Coates' recently published book, Between the World and Me, and plan on writing a longer post about it, so I won't go into more detail here. Rest assured, you should know who Ta-Nehisi Coates is, what he writes about and why it's important.

On a somewhat lighter note, Canada recently had an election and after nine long years, we've had a change of government. I'm more thankful that Stephen Harper's gone than pie-eye-excited about Justin Trudeau, but he's at least saying most of the things I want to hear. The CBC has a rundown of the new Liberal government's top early priorities and The Trudeau Metre is a good resource to make sure that the new Prime Minister fulfills his promises. Something to keep an eye on.

Seventh Inning Stretch

Tonight's ALDS Game 5 between the Blue Jays and Rangers will, forever, be reduced to one inning. It's already happening, on websites, social media, in the minds of reporters. By tomorrow, the process will be complete. It wasn't a game the Blue Jays will have won; it was the seventh inning.

Many great accomplishments will be glossed over in the process. Great pitching performances by Marcus Stroman, Aaron Sanchez and Roberto Osuna. Amazing defence from Kevin Pillar, Ryan Goins and Josh Donaldson. A sixth inning, game-tying home run from Edwin Encarnacion that looked for about twenty minutes like it would be the story of the night. Too bad for Eddie, I suppose. There was a bigger myth to be made.

You've heard the story already I'm sure. Russell Martin receives a strike from Sanchez and as he moves to toss it back, he accidentally bounces it off Shin-Soo Choo's bat. It looks like the home plate umpire calls time, but Rougned Odor scores from third anyway. Then follow eighteen-minutes of screaming, debating, bench-clearing and (shamefully) garbage throwing from Toronto's fans. Police come onto the field. Calls are made to New York. The safe call for Odor is upheld and Toronto continues the game under protest. Sanchez promptly strikes out Choo.

Then comes the bottom half and the myth is written in stone. Two groundballs and a well-charged bunt on the part of the Blue Jays. What should have been three outs for the Rangers. But Elvis Andrus misplays all three. Three outs are instead three baserunners. One comes in on a pop-up from Josh Donaldson that finds a hole in shallow right. The slide from Dalton Pompey is questionably dirty, so there's another review. Tension grows. The call is upheld for the Blue Jays – tie game again.

Then comes Jose Bautista. Nobody else you'd rather have at the plate right now and he proves why. The ball rockets off his bat and lands deep in the left field bleachers. When it flies over the fence, he flips his bat, shouts and offers the world a stare that shames anybody for ever thinking he might not be able to do this. Undoubtedly, that will go down as one of the biggest home runs in Blue Jays history.

More outs, more hits, another bench-clearing came after that. But it all felt like a formality. The Blue Jays had stared losing in the eye and they shot the notion into the bleachers. From now until forever, that game will be about a ball bouncing off a bat, three balls bouncing out of a glove and a bat smashing away all the tension in the building.

What's the Deal with Medicine Cabinets?

I was filling a prescription today and naturally began thinking about medicine cabinets. At least, this seems natural to me. They're not a piece of furniture I've ever paid much notice. I always avoid taking pills when I can. Not out of some distrust of pharmaceuticals, but out of a dislike of routine daily tasks. Any medicine, prescription or not, is another thing I have to remember in the morning – the time of day when I'd most like to forget everything. And since, unlike couches, chairs and desks, medicine cabinets never accompany me on moves, I've never had to think about they're construction or position in a house.

But today at the pharmacy, the thought struck me: why is the medicine cabinet in the bathroom? Obviously, much of what it holds is bathroom-related: shaving cream, toothpaste, q-tips. I see why those belong there. But it's not called a “shaving cream cabinet” and there's no obvious reason to me why medicine should be stored in the same place that I shower.

I'm sure other people have asked this question before. Why shouldn't medicine be stored in the kitchen or bedroom. It would be no more accessible to underage hands in either of those places. And many medications are taken in the morning, before bed or after meals. A trip to the bathroom just to take a pill seems silly.

The only thing I can think of for why we, in North America at least, store our prescriptions behind the mirror above the sink is privacy. The bathroom is where we go to do things everybody's aware of but nobody talks about in polite company. There's a certain logic that would put medication in that category. Nobody wants other people peeping at their pill bottles, wondering what they're afflicted with. I know I don't. So we we store them behind a closed door behind another closed door and open them with the fan and faucet running. All our secret, daily, bodily tasks stay confined to the same room.

But I'd love to know if other places do it differently. Are medications in Japan or Germany or South Africa stored in different rooms, in different ways or with different associated taboos? A book on the history of medicine cabinets would be fascinating.

Google is no help. All I can find there are furniture retailers and blog posts about the relative benefits of recessed shelves. Wikipedia is similarly useless, offering only the assertion that “Although a bathroom tends to be generally the smallest room is the home, it is the busiest place second only to the kitchen.” Citation needed. 

P.S. I was told that the font on the blog is too small, so I've increased it. Hopefully it makes things easier to read.

Soy You Think You Can Plant?

Way back when I started this blog, I was making a list of my favourite games. Weirdly, that list is still the same two years later, so I'm going to finish that series. Starting today, with :

#4 - Bohnanza

I love games about negotiation. Haggling over properties in Monopoly and pleading for peace treaties in Risk are what brought me into the hobby as a child. So it's no surprise that Bohnanza, the best negotiation game out there, places so high on this list.

Negotiation is a remarkably difficult game mechanic to get right. Co-operative and team-based games bypass it completely, since the rules force players to work together rather than fluidly bringing them into and out of alliances through play. That leaves competitive games, but since most have a single winner, opponents have little incentive to help each other. A good trade implies value for both sides, which makes trading a bad idea in situations where competitors want to win at all costs. Conversely, if a deal is truly equitable between participants, then nothing has changed and it may as well not have happened. Game designers seeking to encourage negotiation have to offer opportunities for deals where players benefit unequally but each individual thinks they themselves came out on top. It's not easy.

Bohnanza may as well be a blueprint for how to do it right. The game consists of a deck of cards, each representing a bean. There are about a dozen different kinds, from the commonplace Wax Bean to the unfortunate Stink Bean. Players are farmers, trying to plant, grow and sell their beans as efficiently as possible to make the more money than their rivals. The ridiculous premise hides the depth of the system underneath. Every element of Uwe Rosenberg's design pushes players toward arguing over exchange rates, undercutting prices and dangling future profits in front of each other. You've never heard of such cutthroat bean farmers.

Sometimes I Wish I Lived in New York

Not because of the shopping or the Yankees or the subway system. No, if I lived in New York I would go to see musicals all the time. Toronto has plenty of musical theatre, but rarely are the really big shows in first runs, so it can be a long time from Broadway to Mirvish.

So I satisfy myself with soundtracks for the shows that I hear about through the news. Back in June, when Fun Home swept the Tonys, I bought that album and listened to it non-stop for a week. Over the past couple days, I've been doing the same with Hamilton, a hip-hop musical about the life of the American revolutionary and politician Alexander Hamilton. It's incredible.

For a taste, check out this video. I think I may write up my thoughts more thoroughly when I've settled down a bit - I'm still in the love-at-first-listen phase right now. There's just so much energy and originality through the whole thing. Most musicals have points where they drag, especially "sing-through" musicals like Les Mis, where most of the dialogue is sung. It's just hard to explain plot, develop characters and have interesting music all at the same time. Hamilton never runs into this problem. Pretty much every song is killer, from the slam-poem overture "Alexander Hamilton" to King George acting like a jilted lover in the pop ballad"You'll Be Back" to the rap battles between Hamilton and Jefferson in "Cabinet Battle #1".

I think the reason everything works so well is that there's so much rap and hip-hop in the music. I feel like I complete idiot that I never considered how perfect rap is for a musical. Whereas other musicals struggle to have their characters sing mundane dialogue,  Hamilton just takes dialogue and fits it into a rhythm and rhyme. Everything's understandable and everything keeps moving forward. There's still plenty of melody in some of the numbers, but allowing the connecting bits between songs to be mostly rapped means they never feel out of place. It's really brilliant.

Clinch

Just a short one tonight. I've been watching the Blue Jays since I was eight years old. I've witnessed nearly twenty seasons of disappointment. Tonight, they clinched their division. There's still the playoffs left to worry about. But that's exactly the point - there's still the playoffs to worry about. I've never been able to write that before. I can't explain how happy I am.

Late

Okay, so technically it's already Wednesday, but I'm going to count this as Tuesday's post because it's only half an hour late.But because I want to go to sleep, it will be short.

I just want to recommend Song Exploder to everybody. It's a podcast that has been recommended to me several times over the last month and which I finally checked out yesterday. I listen to a lot of podcasts - too many - but when a new one gets its hooks into me, I binge on it hard. Song Exploder, with episodes running only ten to twenty minutes, makes bingeing easy.

The premise is simple: every episode, a musician or group of musicians takes a song of theirs, breaks it into its component parts and explains the thought process behind each one. It's fascinating. I'm not a musician by any means, but I like music and I especially like listening to different parts of songs that I know well to try to hear new things each time I listen. Song Exploder appeals to that part of my brain. Better yet, it works even when I don't know the song or the artist, which is almost every episode, because my musical horizons are horribly limited. In that way, the podcast seems like a great way to hear new stuff.

Over and above the appreciation for music, though, I just really love listening to talented people talk about their creative process. I can't exactly explain why. It just reminds me that any artist is first of all a person and like any person, anything they create is a mixture of careful planning, wild experimentation and blind luck. I find that comforting.

Back in the Saddle

Wow, it's been nearly two years since I last updated here. Seems like a good time to start it up again.

As some of you know, I'm taking some time off from school this fall for personal reasons. While this was definitely the right decision, it has left my days rather wide-open and that's scary. I deal with life a lot better when my time is structured than when it's formless. So I'm going to use this blog as an anchor for my days.

Here's the plan: from now until at least the end of December, I'll be posting here every day. Although this started as a purely game-related blog, such a demanding schedule will mean that I'll be writing about whatever thoughts pass through my head. A lot of those thoughts will be about game, just because I am who I am, but I'm certain to write about the other myriad topics that catch my interest.

I'll definitely be writing with an audience in mind – not much point of a blog otherwise – but because this is more of a personal mental health project than a means of self-promotion, I don't much care if people actually do read any of it. Of course, I'll be happy if anyone does and I'm receptive to feedback and critique. Just understand that anything I write here is meant as practice and therapy. I'll try not to sound authoritative and hope that nobody assumes that I mean to be.

Speaking of structure and routine, it's appropriate that my first returning post should be a link to a story I wrote for Elephant Words. Elephant Words is a website that provides an image prompt for writers each week and then shows of the writing the image inspired. Anybody can submit, so when I saw a call for more participants last week, I decided to take a shot. The only stipulation is an 800 word limit. (In my day, a picture was worth 1000 words, but I guess that's inflation for you.) That's just a maximum, but because I write best under strict limitations, I've decided that every piece I write will be exactly 800 words long.

My first submission, titled “A Piece of the Sky,” fits that self-imposed rule. It's a short story, and most of my entries probably will be, but I'd like to try other forms too.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Reading over it again now that it's been posted, I can see a few things I'd change. I probably could have varied the sentence structure more to get a better rhythm and I wish I hadn't repeated words so much – the sixth paragraph is only three sentences, but I use the word “through” in each of them. My vocabulary could be broader. But that's what practice is for.

I'll be posting links to my pieces once they're put up on the Elephant Words website. I also recommend that anybody else interested in the site submit their own writing, or at least check out what others have written. My favourite piece from last week is Isle of Spice by Amanda Bird.