Category: Ramblings

The Joy of Tabletop Games

I’m suffering from a bit of a mental burnout for a few reasons, so this post is gonna be a bit shorter than usual.

But, we just wrapped up a game of Monster of the Week in a group I’ve been playing with for about 6 months and I just wanted to reiterate my absolute delight at playing Tabletop RPGs.

I’ve no doubt talked about this before, but I just love story-driven games. Whether it’s decided by dice or a video game, I love stories that are gamified in some way. I am one of those people who enjoys running a game as much as they enjoy playing in other people’s games! I think that RPGs give storytellers a lot of very powerful tools.

You want to get better at worldbuilding? Give your players a set space and they’ll push up against the glass asking “What’s that out there?” and then you have to come up with something. I’ve encountered this scenario a few times in various games and it’s led to some fantastic adventures all from one player seeing something and wanting to poke it. You can build an entire continent of adventure and then have to shift all your adventures to a different location because those pesky players keep finding something more interesting elsewhere. And they ask questions that you need to come up with answers to–usually on the spot. It makes you a more flexible storyteller and makes you more aware of the places your readers are going to look to poke holes in.

Want to get experience with tone and mood? You quickly realize how different the words you use when describing an evil dragon’s lair shifts to the comfortable inn where everyone hangs their hat. I’ve been at tables where everyone collectively holds their breath, just waiting for the next words out of the DMs mouth. That’s tension. Seeing a player care about characters in a moment of crisis can be so heartbreaking you’d swear they were worried about real people.

Speaking of characters, running a tabletop game will have you thinking of characters on the fly that you want to explore more because you keep peeling back layers. One guard could very quickly turn into a group favorite (sometimes even going along for the ride) by the few characterizations you give them. You learn how to quickly make people enjoy (or despise) the characters you want them to, not by telling them, but by showing them. It can be so rewarding to see characters learn to trust NPCs or see a PC’s relationship with another PC change as they adventure together. You learn what really makes people tick, especially when you ask your players what their characters feel in the moment.

Story is such a powerful tool for games. It gives your players a mission, a goal, a reason to get out of their sleepy hamlets and go fight a dragon. But for someone who is obsessed with story, it is a lesson in committing to the moment and resisting the urge to make it perfect. An NPC’s name will never change–especially if it makes everyone burst out laughing. You learn to let go and have fun. You learn that it doesn’t need to be perfect on the first draft. It just has to be there.

Editing is a different beast, of course, but we all have our dragons to slay.

The Hunt for an Agent Author

Well, here we are again. Once more, I’m at the starting line for a query letter. Definitely a lot of emotions coming up around this experience, but I know I need to do it. I wanted to talk a little bit about the agent hunting process of trying to find someone who you think will be a good fit for your work.

If the act of writing is pure creation, then the process of finding an agent is like an endless job hunt. The tried and true method is the query letter that you’ll send to agents before sending them a full manuscript. The point of a query letter is similar to a cover letter or resume. It tells the agent a bit about who you are, what your project is about, and why they should read your story. It helps to include books that are like yours, but I always have to rattle my brain to remember any books I’ve read.

It’s daunting in some ways, but like anything, it gets easier with practice and time. I’ve learned to develop a kind of ‘It Is What It Is” mentality when getting rejections from agents, but it’s never a fun thing. Due to the sheer volume, form letters are pretty common responses and they’re never very detailed. Still, I try to approach submitting like a gamble that improves your odds with more entries. The more queries you send out the more likely someone will take an interest in your project. It’s a numbers game and no one really likes those games. Still, there’s always that magical one.

Query writing could easily be an entire semester’s worth of college courses and there’s no formula to do it. Even if there was a formula, agents would no doubt hate the formula after reading seventeen a day. Trying to make yourself stand out isn’t easy, but it’s a worthwhile endeavor in the end. I try to think of it as writing it for a friend and that lessens the pressure a bit. Still, it’s intimidating to feel like you’re presenting yourself to a gatekeeper towards publication. All that can be done is write, rinse, and repeat.

What’s your experience with query letters? Is it something you ever learned how to do or wanted to do?

The Mini-Writing Retreat

For the last few months, I’ve been trying to think of ways to go on a writing retreat. It sounds quite appealing: arrive at a picturesque location, enjoy some shop talk with other storytellers, maybe hear an inspiring lecture, then buckle down with some well-deserved writing time! Whether it’s three days, a week, or more, the prospect of being in a self-imposed creative exile certainly sounds like the path of a true artist. Sadly, that’s not always available. Even three days is a long time when you don’t have the resources. Even if you can sacrifice a whole weekend for a writing retreat, you still might feel compelled to do errands, not to mention that you’d have to be able to easily seclude yourself from the day-to-day if you can’t afford to physically distance yourself from the distractions you love. These past few weekends, I started doing Mini-Writing Retreats. While the romantic notion of going away for weeks at a time locked in the struggles of creating is not feasible for me at the moment, I can usually find an open day in my weekly schedule. So, I’ve started committing myself to my writing time again. If you’re interested in creating a Mini-Writing Retreat for yourself, here’s how mine usually goes down.  

Before: The days before I like to take care of things like food shopping, cleaning, and other little chores that might distract me. If I have the time to make a few meals I’ll do that and make sure the dishwasher is empty. Nothing throws off your rhythm like the temptation of something you “have to get done.” Plan out your meals and a couple of snacks so you don’t drift over to the fridge every five minutes to browse (and if you’re like me, grab something sweet to look forward to at the end of the day). Prepare to go social media dark for the day of, to ensure that all your distractions are limited, if not completely gone! 

Day of:
5:30- Wake up. I know some of you are already rolling your eyes, but trust me. The silence of the very early morning is the best time to get in the mindset. Make yourself a pot of tea or coffee, make some breakfast (not just cereal), and enjoy a bit of relaxation before the retreat truly begins.  

6:00-8:00- Writing. Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of editing, but commit some time to your work in progress. Actual work, not just mood boards or Spotify playlists. Put on some meditative music or something else instrumental to help set the writing mood if that helps.  

8:00-9:30- Break and Walk. I like to get some steps in and let my brain work out any story problems I might encounter in those first hours’ worth of work. There’s a trail near my apartment that takes a little over an hour to make a loop of, so I’ll do that followed by a shower and getting dressed in real clothes (sweatpants are only acceptable for so long, even if you don’t plan to leave the house).  

9:30-1:00 Writing. Get back to it! This is why you’re here!  

1:00-2:00 Lunch. Break out one of those premade meals and sit with it away from your writing space. Let your mind relax a bit and give yourself a proper lunch break. Some light reading is suggested or even a quick writing lecture on YouTube to further inspire you. Set a timer, though. Can’t fall too far down the black hole. 

2:00-5:00 Writing, writing, writing! 

5:00-5:30 dinner. Pop out another pre-made meal and give yourself a quick dinner break to mull over your last few story problems.  

5:30-7:00 Last Writing Sprint. Wrap up whatever you’re working on.  

I usually like to wind down afterward with a nice, sweet treat and a movie. After all, you just worked a full day!  Congratulate yourself on an excellent writing retreat and start thinking about when you’re gonna do your next!  Have you ever given yourself a Mini-Writing Retreat? Have you ever been on a professionally hosted writing retreat?  

The TBR

If you’re any kind of bookworm, you probably have a TBR Pile: The To Be Read Pile. The endless waterfall of books that you are going to read soon. Maybe it’s a list on your phone. Maybe it’s a section of your bookshelf. Maybe it’s a literal pile on your nightstand, looming overhead until you finally read a few to reduce the risk of the tower toppling over and smothering you in the night. Maybe your TBR Pile is all of your bookshelves.

You can probably guess which one is mine.

I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump these last couple of weeks, but I’m hoping to get back into the swing of reading regularly again. So, in the spirit of that, I decided that this time I’m gonna be posting some of my current TBR Pile to maybe keep me accountable to finally reading some of them! So, here’s a sampling of my current TBR Pile that I’m hoping to work through in the future.

  1. The Way of Kings – Brandon Sanders
  2. The Sword of Shannara – Terry Brooks
  3. The Lies of Locke Lamora – Scott Lynch
  4. Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
  5. What the Dog Saw – Malcolm Gladwell
  6. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet – David Mitchell
  7. A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir of Lady Trent – Marie Brennan
  8. Darwin’s Radio – Greg Bear
  9. The Aeronaut’s Winglass – Jim Butcher
  10. Armada – Ernest Cline

Alright, hopefully that’ll be some motivation for me to actually read through some of these! I’ve put a moratorium on buy new books until I get through some of my current ones, but I also work at a library, so getting my hands on those materials would be less challenging than it used to be (I’ve got my eye on Kaiju Preservation Society by Scalzi, but I’m holding off for right now).

What books are on your TBR Pile? Do you have a real pile near your bed or is your pile somewhere else?

Razor Sharp Focus

It’s so easy to feel like writing is something that can just be jumped into. We like to think of it like sky diving, a story idea taking us up and then we free fall as the words pour out of us in a smooth, endless string that eventually forms a story. Trying to keep that focus can prove to be the most challenging part. In an age of endless texting, social media notifications or the dreaded ‘just one quick video for ‘research”, it is so easy to drift off from a blank writing document. I think–like many writers joke about–most of my chores around the apartment get done in the time that I had set aside for writing (“Just gonna do the dishes real quick”). Even grabbing a fresh cup of tea is a potential disaster for distractions on the way to and from the kitchen.

If I have a good stretch of time off during the day, I like to try and set some of it aside for writing. To stay in the habit I’ll write a little each morning before work (usually not much), but if I have a day off (from library work or volunteer work), I’ll carve out a good chunk of time for writing. To make the most of it, I do everything I can to settle into the space before getting to work.

I always start with a fresh cup of tea. It’s usually very meditative and slows my pace long enough to think about where the story is and where I think it should go during the next few steps. I’ve always found the process of tea very calming: having to wait for the water, the feeling of a tea mug, the warmth of the boiled water, and all the smells that come from that first, fresh pour. I’ll also grab a snack so I’ll have one less excuse to get up at some point during my writing session (recent snack of choice? Peanut Butter Pretzels).

Something that I do struggle with is my mind wandering. I’ll put on music if there’s a certain mood that I’m going for, but I also enjoy listening to a few podcasts while writing. Some of my favorite podcasts to write to come from the McElroy brothers since I can kind of tune in and out without missing too much of the story. I jokingly call it the Golden Retriever Effect (ya know, like when you turn on the TV for your dog so they don’t feel like they’re alone? Kinda like that).

Making the most out of the time available is very important. Focus can be really hard to master, but giving yourself a conducive writing space is the easiest way to find your rhythm and stick with it. Forming a mental bubble around your space is more than just a good writing practice, it’s a survival tactic to keep your focus on what’s important!

What rituals/things do you do to make your writing space the most efficient it can be?

The Lunch Break Novelist

When I was working for a court reporting company, I called myself a Lunch Break Novelist. Each day, on my breaks and lunch, I would eat quickly and the break out my laptop to get some writing done while on my lunch break. On a good day, I could polish off a solid 700 words that I was satisfied with before having to head back to my desk. I’d spend time first thing in the morning and pick up right where I left off on my lunch and again when I got home. Some days were better than others, but I was usually able to come up with something by the end of the day.

One thing I see a lot when I talk with non-writers is “I just don’t have the time” as a popular excuse. The reality is that there’s always time. Five minutes here, thirty minutes there, another twenty at the end of the day–it adds up quicker than a lot of people realize. Yes, every writer would love to have the experience of getting into the flow state and write thousands of words over the course of the day, but that almost never happens (even with all the time in the world).

As I transition into working more hours at the library, I’ve been working on finding the time through out the course of the day. I’ve been practicing the idea of “Showing Up” rather than making a scheduled commitment. Rather than over exerting myself to get to a word count every day, I’ve been trying to get more into the mind set of putting time to it. It’s been easier to put aside time before work and wake up to ensure I can put the time into it. My breaks at the library now are too short to properly spend time on it, but I’m hoping to get back into the habit of being a Lunch Break Novelist (or at least a Lunch Break Editor).

Time is funny like that. While it is infinite by definition, we’ve come to treat it as a rarity. If we don’t have hours to spend on something, we question if we’re really committed to it. The reality is that there are hours we can spend on something, but they’re very rarely all in one place. It’s all about piecing things together and making the time. Five minutes a day with a notebook and pencil can add up faster than you think.

Are you a Lunch Time Novelist? Where do you find or make the time to commit to your writing?

Reflecting on 2021

Once more, we’re rolling into the new year. To say that it’s been a rollercoaster feels like an understatement. So much has happened, both good and bad, but it’s been a year of growth.

Going into 2022, I’m trying to figure out exactly what my next big project is going to be. I know I want to keep writing, submitting, and working with other writers. It’s hard to set these goals early in the year because the last few years have made it clear that I can never be truly prepared for what the next year brings. The only things I can control are my habits, my time, and my writing. So, I think there are a few things that are going to happen this year:

First, I plan on submitting two times every month. After the September Submission Scramble, I realized that I can submit very easily before or after work, so I can’t really use that as an excuse anymore. In response to that, I’m going to be submitting two times every month (one short story submission and one novel submission).

Secondly, I’m going to try and have one large project that I’m gonna be working on in my off hours. I don’t have any big ideas yet, but I’m hoping that something will come when the holiday haze wears off (we really shouldn’t be required to do any work for December, honestly. How much work are you supposed to get done?) Recently, it feels like a lot of my stories have been stronger as snippets or scenes rather than whole stories, so I need to be better about refining the work into something cohesive.

Thirdly, I’ll be doing a lot of editing. I don’t wanna give anything away, but I have an idea I want to try and tackle and need some time to make it worthwhile. It’s been harder for me to focus on larger projects when it feels like I’m writing something new every day. I’m hoping a single project to unify everything will help me retain my focus and give me a through line rather than trying to pick up snippets over the course of a few days. I don’t know if this will translate to a schedule or deadlines, but I need to be smarter about the time I do spend away from the library desk. Hopefully, this will culminate in some more exciting stuff for the end of the year (or next year).

2020 was wild and 2021 felt like the aftershocks of an endless earthquake. I’d like to say that I hope 2022 will be better, but we can’t know for sure. Instead, I can only take hold of what I can control and focus on that to the best of my ability.

What are your goals for 2022, writing or otherwise?

Surprise Book Feelings!

Hello again, friends!

Today, I’m gonna talk a little about reading. Shouldn’t be surprising on a writing blog that I do enjoy the occasional book with a mug of tea, but I feel like I don’t really talk about it enough. I’d like to talk about a very specific experience I had recently, as well as give a little reading recommendation while I’m at it.

I recently encountered the book Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire. I’d heard of it from several people and decided to check it out for the first time! The basic premise is “What happens to all those kids who go through portal fantasies and have to come back to the ‘real’ world?” Think of Alice from Alice in Wonderland coming back from her adventures, then running into the Pevensie children from Narnia and forming a little support group. This book has lots of great things: a killer premise, likable characters, and an engaging plot! Aside from all this, there is a trans character and an actual asexual character! Not in the wishy-washy ‘Head Canon’ kind of way, but the character describes herself and her asexuality on the page for everyone to see. I don’t get to enjoy that very often, so it was a real delight to have that come up! But what really hit me was the ending. I won’t spoil things because I think everyone should read this book right away, but it ended very quickly and I sat up and said “No! I’m not ready to go!”

And what struck me as funny was that feeling was a huge point of the character’s struggle. They weren’t ready to leave their worlds behind, but they were booted back to reality. I’m not sure if this was by design, but in that moment of reading the last words, I finally understood what the characters were grappling with. I wanted nothing more than to go back into the world I’d just been dropped from and continue the adventures.

Luckily for me, I don’t have to wait for a magic door to take me back. McGuire has several more books in this series and I look forward to reading those as soon as I can.

Have you read this book? What did you think? Do you want to see more book reviews like this? Let me know!

Table Tops for Writers

Hello everyone! For those of you participating, I hope you’re doing well with your word counts! I’ve always said that Nanowrimo is the best experience to tell a story to yourself so you can prepare to write your next draft! Even if you don’t make it to the very end, you can at least say that you tried! And you’ll have more words written than 0 and that’s the real goal!

This month, I’ve started working with a new group of people to start an RPG group. It got me thinking about my experience with previous table top games in the past and thought I would share some of my thoughts about my relationship with role playing games as a writer!

A good portion of my experience comes from playing Dungeons and Dragons. Surprisingly, I didn’t get into D&D until I was in my late twenties. I got really interested in the game through Critical Role and decided to finally give the game a try. I’ve had a few people lead games for me and I’ve even run a few myself! The more I play these kinds of games, the more I realize how crucial they are for writers.

Firstly, games like D&D, Monster of the Week, Pathfinder and others are all about storytelling. Whether it’s a quick jaunt into the haunted library or an epic adventure across the lands, your adventuring parting is going to be telling a story together. From your introduction, there’s a call to action (usually a monster of some kind), which leads to finding more adventures, meeting mentors and questing together. Sometimes, subplots will arise and take you in directions you didn’t expect. As the GM, as much as a player, you have to learn to operate both as a planner and pantser when organizing your next move. The game constantly changes and you need to be prepared for unexpected changes.

You need to keep your characters goals in mind when playing and writing. Whatever whacky antics you get up to, wherever you send your character in the story, the most important thing is that you’re keeping your character’s goals in mind. Whenever I run a game, I always ask my players “What does your character want?” No one is going to give up a comfy life on the couch to go hunting dragons, but if a dragon burned down their house, they have much more reason. Like writing, TTRPGs are based on character decisions and interactions. While the plot may be about your characters fighting a dragon, the story is about your characters’ trials to facing that dragon.

Another thing I love about RPGs is how many different ways it can go. One decision, one mistake, one choice can change the outcome. As a player, it’s thrilling! As a GM, it’s mind boggling that a single role cant take away months of campaign prep in a single blow. Like writing, you may start off in one direction, but find a different thread to tug on that you find more interesting. The rest is finding how all of those ideas work together.

I almost always will find ways to test things. When I get an idea, I’ll trying writing it out as a scene or play with a character’s voice by speaking things I’d want them to say (my neighbors must think I’m a delight, I’m sure). My other favorite thing is to incorporate the ideas into games that I play. If I don’t introduce something as a new writing, people are more likely to tell me the honest opinion. If a character sucks or something doesn’t make sense, I trust my friends to tell me the truth about it. There’s a certain amount of trust that is between GM and players: the players trust the GM not to try and kill them outright and the GM expects the players to play true to their character (not as a gamer). It’s not unlike the relationship between writer and audience.

If you game, what do you like most about it? How do you use it to improve your writing?

After The Submission Scramble and Looking Forward

It has been a busy month! I recently moved and have been working a fair bit. Some of you may remember that I also undertook a project I was calling “The September Submission Scramble”. I’m proud to say that I finished and succeeded! Many magazine submissions, agent queries and contest entries later, I feel like I finished a lot over the course of the past month. I also feel like I was much more active.

The easiest way to win a card game is by holding most of the deck, right? Yes, technically, that’s not how you play cards, but you see my point? I feel like with submissions, you need to jump in if you want to play. I’ve always known that writing takes a surprising amount of luck, but the odds are better when you have a bigger sample size. The work I’ve been putting into this past month has been rewarding. It only takes ten minutes to get a query sent out, so I’ll probably be sending out a lot more of them. I highly recommend every writer try this. Pick a month and commit to submitting your poems, short fiction, novels, everything to anyone you think might publish it. The biggest problem is the fear of rejection, but I’m bracing myself for it.

That being said, I’m working on trying to figure out what the next month holds. Maybe some new short fiction to submit around or some more editing of older pieces. I’m half tempted to do Nanowrimo this year just to get the draft of something new out. Either way, I feel like I’m being a lot more active. Even if the choices I made this month were bad choices, at least I made them. I’m looking forward for what’s to come!

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