Laterally Productive?

"Laterally Productive? What the hell does that even mean?" -You

So... I signed up for NaNoWriMo way back in October with the intent of not writing a novel in one month's time, a circumstance that I'm sure to the casual observer seems completely counter-productive. My hope was that in joining the competition I would be somewhat galvanized into a state of creative productivity and actually commit words to page. Considering that I'm a full time Chef AND that I was already scribbling together the beginnings of a cookbook (turned blog) with the tentative title "Playing with Food", making some lame attempt at crapping out 1666 words a day towards a half-assed novel seemed the perfect bit of sheer lunacy to add to my repertoire. 

"...busy all the time, doing lots of things, but not really concentrating on what needed to be done first." -Sew'n Wild Oaks (This was the first hit from Google for the term "Laterally Productive" and her blog's title pun is so terri-bad awesome that I have to give credit where credit  is due, and yes, that is a quilting blog.) 

It's thanks to NaNo that I realized what a crippling case of Lateral Productivity Disorder (LPD) it is that I'm forced to battle every day. Looking back, I'm fairly certain my entire career as a Chef has been an attempt to mitigate/self-medicate against the symptoms of this malicious malady. Thankfully, making a living of understanding the urgency surrounding the preparation and plating of food and serving it at it's best to the best of my ability grants me a definitive focus, and in my professional life I've turned LPD into a crucial benefit disguised as competent multi-tasking... and they keep wanting to promote me.

But, I digress. If you're interested in my culinary pursuits head on over to "PwF" and learn how to cook something awesome. I'll be taking requests. 

That brings us back to Laterally Productive. Lateral Productions. "Side Projects" doesn't really grant the heft or gravitas I've come to associate with these things. I've spent a lifetime visiting other worlds, many created through the vast talent of others but some simply persistent peculiarities of my own imagining. I've always been an avid reader, a gamer (both on the tabletop & at the video screen), an explorer of new ideas, and a lover of research into the odd or unusual. All these elements mix together in my skull with whatever petulant living brain cells remain, leaving anxious rodents trapped inside scratching at the walls trying to flee. Laterally Productive is where I'll be giving those critters free reign out on the free range so to speak.

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”― Maya Angelou

I play in a Fourth Edition Dungeons & Dragons game every couple of weeks. Our Dungeonmaster keeps an updated adventure log online chronicling individual sessions the events of which go all the way back to long before I joined the group, so I took it upon myself  to start at the beginning and read everything that had happened, 'cause, ya' know, Bards do that. This was also around the time I was blazing through 70 or so back issues of  Kirkman's The Walking Dead comic, and it occurred to me how enjoyable the gut-wrenching roller coaster of serial narrative is. Serial fiction was once thought of as the primary point of exposure for talented wordsmiths. A device that had given us excellent works from the likes of Dickens, Dumas, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Herman Melville is now, thanks to the digital might of teh interwebs, making a significant resurgence. 
The works that you'll find here are just so. That is not to say I have any delusions of grandeur leading me to believe anything here would be on par with the likes of those historic authors. Simply put, finding the time to sit down and write an entire book while being torn between my full time job and my creative endeavors is counter intuitive especially when paired with the chain-gang of intellectual escapees hammering their way out of my skull.   
Seeds is where you'll find those precocious little scamps once they've made it past the guards and over the wall. It contains teasers for stories that have already begun (like Ridden & Forbidden Sails) as well as all of the brain droppings that have become cohesive enough to add to the list. This should be an interactive experience for you, dear reader. I'll do my best to keep an open dialogue while allowing y'all to occasionally  be my rudder. What do you want to read more of? Discuss it in the comments, and keep an eye out for polls (they could pop up anytime, the cheeky little bastards), but most of all enjoy the ride.