Why does an artist not post pictures of his artwork before they have signed it? Why does a sculptor not reveal their work before the…
Fantasy Author | Developer | Worldbuilder
Christopher J Kelly Posts
For those who don’t follow me on Twitter, I recently tweeted that I had booked off a week from work so that I could 100% focus on my writing. I will doing very little else for that week other than writing. My goal? To at least double my word count for my latest writing project. How much is that you ask? I currently have around 50,000 words. This means by the end of that week, I should (if all goes as planned) around or over 100,000 words.
I have dubbed this week “Writing Week”.
For those who don’t know, back in January 2013 I hosted a Halo marathon (quickly abbreviated to Halothon) in which I played my way through all of the Halo games chronologically, (starting with Halo Reach and working my way through Halo CE, 2, ODST, 3 and finally 4) back-to-back on the Heroic difficulty (I tried playing them on Legendary, and basically I’m not that good!) for 24 hours which I streamed on Twitch.Tv. But I didn’t do this just for giggles, I did it to raise money for Child’s Play Charity.
Child’s Play Charity raise money to buy toys, games and books for children who are in hospital. I was fortunate enough to never have been hospitalised as a child (well, not for more than a day anyway… Long story), but I know that my father was and so was my eldest brother. Even if you haven’t been hospitalised as a child, or even as an adult, you must have been inside a hospital at some time or another. You know what it’s like, it’s not a great deal of fun. It’s boring, it can smell of medicine and, especially for a small child, it can be very scary. So what does Child’s Play do? They buy them toys, books and games to keep a child entertained during their stay at the hospital. The best part of this is it’s not just to keep the child entertained or quiet, it has been proven that a happy child heals faster after a procedure than an unhappy child. It’s a win-win! And if you count the fun you have raising the money helping them out, it’s a win-win-win!
I know this might be a little late, but 15 years ago I was 10 and blogging/reviews were far from my mind. I was more concerned with ignoring my homework and actually playing this game! What game? Why, Final Fantasy IX, of course!
I am writing this because frankly I still think (as fore mentioned, 15 years later) that Final Fantasy IX is the best Final Fantasy game to date.
I can already hear angry people typing in the comments saying “What?! How can you say that?! Final Fantasy (insert number here, most likely VII) was the definitive Final Fantasy game!!!” and I say to you that yes, Final Fantasy (insert number here, most likely still VII) was fantastic, and I really enjoy that too. Final Fantasy VII, certainly, has been the most successful of the Final Fantasy having spin-off games, anime shows and, hell, even movies made from it! And what a movie it is, Advent Children is amazing! But I still prefer Final Fantasy IX. Why, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you.
Someone I know wrote an article for a website about why and how she writes, and after reading it, I thought about why and how I write. Here are my findings.
A colleague of mine once asked me, over a drink at a company do, “So, why do you write, then?” and I simply replied “Because the voices tell me to,”. Needless to say, his face was a picture!
But now I realise that if we replace “voices” with “story” and “tell” with “need” and you actually have a partial answer. The story needs me to. It needs to be told. If I bottled up all the potential stories in my head, then I reckon I would be cracked even more than I already am!