Lobe Turgitity

I think of myself as a writer. Not in a pretension fashion, or in a "someday I'm gonna get paid billions for every word I put to paper" way. I think of it more in a "I have stories to tell" way, and I do. Some are epic, others are...poopic (I can create new words because I am a wordsmith). I write constantly, DnD scenarios and background materials, this blog, random Facebook silliness, multiple stories and revisions of stories, GURPS character ideas, and on into infinity. I'm a writer, I write shit because its in my head and it entertains me. It would be ideal if I could get paid reasonably well for that, but I'm going to write regardless of whether or not there is a dollar amount attached to every syllable.

Shawn has commented before that I hop around on stories a lot, more recently that I just up and stopped writing about Traith Harris and he really liked that guy. Well neato, I like him too, and I'll return to him. I think its hard for non-writers to understand what it is to be a writer, to have all these stories and people and places bumming around in your head with everything else going on in your life. They're not phantoms of a schizoid fantasy that talk to me and make me twitch and gnaw on my fingernails, but they do speak to me in a fashion. They're in there, I think about what they're doing, what they will do, and what it would be awesome for them to do or say. I guess the best way I can describe it is to say that I have all these stories going on in my brain at all times and I'm probably writing about half of them at any given time. The Kusseth campaign is a story, GURPS character idea backgrounds are stories, altering the Keroen Skathos mythos is a story, the Inconsistencies stuff is a story. They're all stories and I love figuring them out and fleshing them out and pouring out thousands of words onto a blank Word document. Even while I'm writing all this or thinking about all of this, I'm out and about and seeing and reading things and talking with friends and stuff is sneaking into my skull and finding safety and sustenance within the passages in my brain, slowly gaining strength till its lodged there like a malignant tumor of creativty. I can feel it building, I know there is a story there and its one I'll like just as much as Traith's or Keroen's or Bald William's. At a certain point there's a figurative dialogue where my story says to me, "Look, I'm getting out. We can do this the easy way and you can shut the other shit down, or we can do it the hard way and I can fuck up everything you put to paper for the next six months. Its your call, but one way or another I'm getting the fuck out of here."

So yeah. I liked Traith. I liked him more than Shawn could possibly imagine. Just like I enjoyed Keroen more than everyone, just like I enjoyed Kern Yew'nose and Prase Me'kal more than everyone. I like them, in a way they're each a piece of me so my affection for them and their stories will always surpass that of everyone else's for them, that's why I write about them. I don't stop writing about Traith because I think he and his mechanical insides are stupid or boring, I didn't shutdown the story about the hellequin because I got sick of it. I stop writing about things because there is other stuff that wants to come out and if I don't let it out, its going to bleed into my other stuff.

Some prime examples: Smiling Jack. He's an NPC in The Known World, master of Kusseth's bardic colleges to be exact. He has a story, and its one I've pondered and fleshed out as much as Cenn the Reaver's. While writing Traith I got one of those creativity tumors, except I tried to kill it because I wanted to work on Traith's tale and now there is a completely irrelevant scene where Traith, a green lawman, goes toe-to-toe with Jack, the master of spies and assassins. Traith has sand as they say, but fuck, you just don't do that. The scene is totally useless as well, any freaking informant would have suited the role, but I had Jack on my mind so Jack appeared despite the whole scene being lame and unecessary. When Jeremy was first really getting into DnD and the whole party leader role he had D'Alton kind of take a liking to Spineplate so I began to take an interest in the mechanical man that was so unlike the others of his kind (still surprised no one has asked him about that). Again I got the creativity tumor, and again I attempted to ignore it, which resulted in roughly three chapters of stupid Spineplate related shit bleeding into Traith's story.

The reason I bring this all up is because I feel another mass developing in my brain. Its not a character or anything like that. I've got the Bible of the Sharkosian-Dolphinian war brewing in my brain.

Music: Bravest Face - Rush