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There is a unique charm to playoff hockey, one that no other sports’ tournament can match. The NFL playoffs are too short for true hatred to build between opponents. MLB playoff games have an added element of tension, but don’t bring a corresponding increase in intensity. And the NBA playoffs… well, let’s just leave it at that. The NCAA Tournament inspires more of a frenzy among the populace as a whole, but again, the series are far too short for real organic animosity to build up. And most of all, in each of the above sports, the burden of rising intensity is on the fans. Fans get really excited about the playoffs, but the fundamental nature of the games don’t really change.

Playoff hockey is different. In every respect, playoff hockey is a different beast from its regular season counterpart. It is faster, more violent, and yet more disciplined. Players deliberately alter their style to adjust to a new set of rules and circumstances. Seemingly endless overtimes add a regular marathon element lacking in other sports, and every aspect of the game becomes more tense and measured. And because every series is best of seven, you get the added pleasure of seeing extended narratives emerge. You also get that element of hatred that develops between teams, which just doesn’t happen in other sports in quite the same way. And all of it is in the name of the Stanley Cup, the only trophy in sports worth winning. Sure, it’s great to say that you’re the World Series Champion or the Super Bowl Champion, but no one cares about the Commissioner’s Trophy or the Lombardi Trophy. Everyone cares about the Stanley Cup.

Clearly I am tired and don’t want to blog at length or coherently today, so I’ll leave you with that. Besides, I’m short on time anyway. The Pens are coming on soon.

I’ve just begun the revision process for my first novel. It’s a little daunting, I’ll admit. 238 pages lay before me, and I’ve no idea what will stay and what will go as I tear through the manuscript. Using an extremely scientific and not-at-all random series of post-it notes and scribbled guidelines, I’ve got a few thoughts on what needs to be changed, what characters need to be beefed up, what plot elements need to be dropped, and where prose needs to be simplified. I’m making slow progress, but I hope to be done with this draft by the end of May.

This is, I believe, the hardest phase of the writing process. I’ve gotten the story out on paper. Now I have to face the cold, hard reality that large swaths of the first draft are simply terrible. I mean terrible. Rationally, I can accept that, because let’s face it: first drafts suck. No first draft in the history of man has ever been any good. But emotionally it’s very difficult to go back and see that what you were so satisfied with the first time around was just godawful. That means discouragement, which you have to overcome to get to the next step in the process. I’m a little past that psychological summit, but I’m still deal with the fact that the first time through, I didn’t really know what I was doing. Now I’ve got to take a whole bunch of discordant plot threads and jumpy character arcs and smooth them out, tie them up, and make it look like I knew what I was doing.

The biggest challenge personally is reordering out character hierarchy. Some characters are clearly just there to support the main ones, and I need to make them stand alone and give them their own stories, their own motivations, and their own arcs. Now that’s not going to be easy, but as a fan of ensemble dramas, I have trouble just leaving characters in a supporting role. I’ll get it worked out eventually, but it’ll take a lot of time and a lot of thought.

After I get through this draft, I’ll be able to focus on making the novel sing, but right now, I’ve just got to buckled down and plow through it and hope that I like what I have when I’m done.

There is something wrong with NBC. This statement should not surprise or offend, as anyone who has watched the network over the last several years on a night that isn’t Thursday is already keenly aware of the network’s myriad problems. Take Heroes, for example. I maintain that Heroes was an entertaining television program for its first season, and a tolerable one for its second. Although the story never approached Lost-like levels of complexity, intrigue, and literary sophistication, it nevertheless presented characters vaguely resembling real people interacting in a world not unlike our own, dealing with the problems that superpowers could and would inevitably bring to them.

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