Its like 3:00 AM and I'm laying on my couch with my kitten crawling all over my back (thank goodness for the Blogger app) and it occurs to me that I haven't written anything at all in over a year. I dunno, I periodically say things like "I write stories." or "Writing is one of my hobbies." and stuff but I haven't written anything new, or even made edits to something previously created in well over a year and all of a sudden here at 3:00 AM, this fact distresses me enough that I need to post on it. Well, I suppose that is not entirely accurate. I did sit down several months ago and watch Apocalypse Now and took copious notes in an attempt to kind of gear up for writing the Hekinoe story about D'alton in Fresgulen that was going to kind of mimic Apocalypse Now. A haggard and burned out D'alton was going to go deep into Fresgulen to hunt down an AWOL Derf gone mad(der) with power and sorcery. I spent a half hour jotting down notes and quotes from the movie but that Dogdamn film is too damn good, sucked me in and I just lay there on my couch and experienced it. Reminds me that I need to watch Hearts of Darkness.
Hold a moment while I bring up Netflix and take care of that.
On a side note, when I reformatted my laptop I did not understand properly how PageFour saves and stores your writing, so my notes on Apocalypse Now, and my story about The Rebellion Arc are both lost to the ether. Though I can probably recover The Rebellion Arc from the blog here, I believe I posted the first chapter and prologue at some point. .
To continue: I really like writing.
Hold another moment while I procure whiskey and check my auctions on Diablo III and switch to the ole desktop, which I am now rocking a dual monitor set up on. Kitten got bored with kneading my back.
There is just something about watching my words scrawl across the screen at 80+ words a minute, letters popping out faster than the cursor can blink and my brain just flowing through my fingertips across a keyboard. That sensation of just completely zoning out to external stimuli and just being in it with the character experiencing their environment and reacting to it as they would. Just typing and not consciously thinking about anything or analyzing spelling or grammar and just creating a scene or dialogue or whatever. Fuck, I dunno, it is a great feeling I guess.
Don't get me wrong, it took me about fifteen seconds to figure out that I wouldn't ever professionally write anything and be paid for it, nor do I really have any desire to. I have a friend who has in fact been paid to write things, and I would not desire to ever experience his frustration over something I have enjoyed so much, nor would I want to feel the stress associated with meeting deadlines and word counts and that sort of thing in a set timeline. I just want to write and go, teehee, that was fun. Whatever shall I write next?
I like creating things, crafting them, and building them from the ground up. The majority of my current hobbies, and the hobbies in the past, have revolved around creating something. I used to draw a long long time ago, mostly goofy fantasy stuff with skulls and dragons and whatnot. I used to paint miniatures obsessively for a relatively short time. I've always played DnD as the GM, which is about as creative as it gets, building whole worlds for the guys to run around in (and more often than not burn to the ground, hehe). Reading isn't really creative, but I read so much fantasy and sci-fi, that is kind of exploratory in nature. Visualizing someone's story and the world they've built with their words and whatnot. I wouldn't call it creative, but I would call it closely linked to this nonsense that I am talking about. Minecraft is a wee bit creative too, as you've seen.
Part of the problem is that my creativity cycle kind of alternates between DnD and actual creative writing. When I am not playing DnD or something similar, I tend to write a lot. When I am playing DnD and enjoying it, I tend to write very little. The amount of creative writing I do is inversely proportional to how much I am enjoying my current gaming. The clear correlation there is that I like to write things and when I am writing something a lot, I don't write other stuff so much. Right now, I am really enjoying my gaming. I feel I have a really good group where everyone kind of wants to do similar things and gets along with everyone else, so I am very satisfied with my gaming at the moment.
Just the same, there is a part of me that is frequently, "Man, I should really write something that is not campaign information about Hekinoe." but I just can't find it in me to sit down and write something when all I do is sit down and write stuff. I don't even know what I would write about at this point either. I'd have to stay in Hekinoe. The problem with my writing is that it naturally flows into DnD, so when I write a lot about the Nel/Fey from my single completed story, I create rules for them. That's why there are like six or seven versions of their rules spanning three different editions of the game. Plus some GURPS stuff I kicked around with them. If I start writing about a new world or characters, my thoughts will inevitably turn to "How would this look in DnD?" and I'd start to get that itch I get when I feel like creating a new world.
On a side note, the fact that I have remained tied to Hekinoe for multiple years, and finished a campaign set in it, is nothing short of miraculous for me. We've been playing for seventeen years and The Rebellion Arc is the first campaign we've completed, while the aborted Psychogenic Fugue Arc is one of dozens we've stopped mid stream. So, I guess I'd have to try and write something set in Hekinoe, but I don't know where to put it or who to make it about. I dunno, I'll figure something out.
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