Wordcount Wednesday

Look! On the web! On this blog! It's a Wordcount Wednesday! Been a while since I've done one of these, huh?

I could claim that it's not my fault. I've been distracted by something vaguely writing related (more on that in a bit). In reality, though, I've been putting off writing for supposedly good reasons and some really stupid ones.

Stupid ones first: computer games. I don't know why, but I've been sucked into computer games lately, more so than usual. I don't know why that is. But I've been playing Tropico 3 a lot lately and just a day or two ago, I fired up The Sims 3 again and created a real dirtbag of a Sim. I've been having fun making him as much of a jerk as possible. But those aren't good reasons to not write, and I know it.

I've also been on something of an MST3K binge lately. I don't know why, but I can't get enough of movies with theater seats in front of them. Huh. Can't explain it.

The good reasons are the usual: the job/ministry, family, friends, so on and so forth.

But never fear, intrepid blog-reader! I'm starting to get myself into the proper writing frame of mind. I'm sussing out ideas for a novel that I'm dubbing Failstate. That's the working title, obviously. It could change as I work. And Failstate is the reason why I engaged in a bit of superhero-themed writing (and why I have the clown wearing his underwear on the outside). Failstate is going to be a novel about superheroes.

I have no idea if I can pull this off. I'm already having trouble steering clear of "done before" concepts (I started outlining one idea to Jill tonight. She gave me a surprised look and said, "Incredibles?" And I realized that yes, I had basically ripped off the first ten minutes).

I'm not quite ready to start writing yet. I'm still doing some low-level research (i.e. reading some books about superheroes. Such as The Physics of Superheroes and Superheroes and Philosophy) and tonight, I sent out some e-mails to law professors to try to nail down some of the legalities surrounding vigilante activity.

Either tonight or maybe tomorrow, I'm hoping to fire up Randy Ingermanson's Snowflake Pro software and start putting together an outline. I don't know if I'm quite ready for that yet, but we'll see what I can come up with as I work.

So yeah. Some writing stuff going on here.

But like I said, my attention has been somewhat distracted lately. As my regular readers (all none of you) are probably aware, I'm taking part in Marcher Lord Select. Well, it's round three and I'm still in the Premise Contest with Numb. So I have two questions for you:

Have you voted yet? And if not, why not?