This was an idea my husband proposed today, so we’re getting a one-day-late start to the challenge, but he suggested that everyone in our household (aka me, him, and the kids) should try to make or draw something every day this month.
(If we miss a day, we can do multiple things in a day to catch up.)
I decided that I might draw some stuff for a zine I’m working on (title: “Saturday Morning”), but I might also “make” something for my various role-playing game campaigns (a solo one, a husband-and-me one, a family one, and a kids one). These somethings can include making a PC, an NPC, a map, a location, a dungeon room, a whole dungeon (!), or a treasure/magic item. I’m stealing this a bit from Dungeon23, that fabulous challenge from last year that got me started making my very first megadungeon (which, sadly, I never finished… so maybe I can work on that for my “makings” this month!).
Anyway, I like a loose definition of “making.” We have a similarly loose definition in our Creativity Club at my school. Spurred by their time in my Creative Writing class last year, the students who started the club are welcoming anyone who does any kind of creative endeavor to join, and we aren’t judgy about the kinds of things that count as “making.” We decided that even kids who want to make jam are welcome in the club! (But they should definitely share their jam with us once it’s made. :D)
My “making” for today’s family challenge was to come up with some NPCs and their backstories/personalities for the Hero Kids game I’m playing with my children. They are currently investigating the Basement O’ Rats and trying to find Roger, a local village boy. I’ve got an idea that Roger was taken by the King of Rats at the behest of a dark force that is also taking others away from Brecken Vale for mysterious reasons. This will be the central mystery of the campaign.
Does this counting as “making something”? I think it does. I took an idea, put it to paper, and developed it. I also stat-blocked Roger in case he comes with the Kids on any further adventures.
I’d say that counts for the day.
Now I just have to make something to count for yesterday…
I keep a writer’s notebook, and since I also carry a backpack with me most places, I used to take the WNB with me everywhere.
But honestly, I hardly ever took the full-sized notebook out in public and wrote in it. Just too unwieldy.
I like the idea of having one notebook where I keep all my thoughts, but since I’ve been watching a bunch of notebook “advice” videos, I’ve warmed up to the idea that maybe I need different notebooks for different things and different situations.
I started writing my fiction in my “fiction notebook.” And then I bought a Leuchtturm 1917 notebook for my RPG notes. Then, finally, I bought a little pocket notebook to be my “on-the-go” notebook for random thoughts and ideas. Basically, a substitute for my main writer’s notebook.
There are many to choose from, but I went with the Cloudspotting one to start because cloud-watching is also a hobby I’ve wanted to start for a while, so I thought I could capture my random thoughts and sketch and identify clouds at the same time.
So far, about half-way through the notebook, I’m glad that I’ve started carrying it around almost everywhere I go. First, it allows me to be unshackled from having to take my backpack everywhere in order to have my full-sized notebook with me. I can leave my backpack at home when I go for a walk around the neighborhood or to the library or wherever, and yet I can still jot down some ideas in my cloudspotting notebook if necessary.
I find that I DO jot down things more often now that I’m carrying the pocket-sized notebook. It’s not nearly as weird to take out my little notebook and write a few lines of dialogue for a story or a blogging idea or whatever. And there’s the added bonus of getting to sketch some clouds if the mood takes me. (I don’t always use the cloud-sketching areas, though, so maybe next time I’ll get a more “normal” writing notebook.)
Often, I take the ideas in the pocket notebook and transfer them to my main notebook or use them in my fiction. I end up spending a lot of time during the day thinking about my fiction, about my writing ideas, and this, in turn, keeps my momentum going for my various writing projects. I’m less “stuck” since carrying around my pocket notebook.
In theory, I like the idea of one notebook for everything, but in practice, the multiple-notebooks strategy really does allow me to do more writing throughout the day. I grab my pocket notebook instead of my phone when I’m waiting in line or watching my kids at the park. I flip through it to reread earlier ideas and ruminate on them a bit more, sometimes expanding them, sometimes challenging or changing them. I look at the clouds and try to figure out which type they are, spending a few minutes sketching and paying attention to the weather and the wind.
And yeah, I like that my pocket notebook is a little different, that it’s got a bit more character than an ordinary Field Notes or whatever. I smile when I see the Cloudspotting cover. It’s kind of silly, but the silliness actually makes me want to use it more. I don’t know why, but the whimsy of a “cloud” notebook (or a “Captain’s Log” or “Neverland Passport”) gives me a jolt of pleasure that’s just strong enough to counteract the lure of my phone. I’m trying to break the habit of looking at my phone whenever I get bored, and if it means carrying around a quirky little notebook, then that’s what I’ll do.
And I’m getting more writing done too. Which is the whole point of a notebook anyway.
I teased this ages ago, but it’s finally here. The first installment of what I hope to be a regular series on the blog: “It Came from the Game Closet.”
We have this closet, you see. It is in our living room, and it is quite tall, and it is filled with games. Stuffed. Bursting. Unruly and untapped.
You see, we have filled this closet with games, but we’ve hardly ever played ANY of them, we’ve just let them languish in the game closet and think to ourselves, our heads nodding with pensive melancholy, “Someday… someday…”
And yet, “someday” never comes. We keep putting new games into the closet and never playing them.
Until now.
I’ve opened the weird sliding door of the weird corner closet with the triangle-shaped shelves and I’ve pulled out a game. It’s one of the few games in the closet we’ve actually played, but we haven’t played it in a long time, and it gives me warm fuzzies just looking at the box’s cover art, so it’s the first one I picked.
I wasn’t able to PLAY play it (it’s not really a game that works solo because you need the other players to play the hazard cards), but I did use the cards to make up my own stories and added in a few hazards just to keep it fun. I tried to imagine myself as a hobbit sipping a pint at the Green Dragon, regaling the crowd with my masterful yarn-spinning skills. I felt silly at times, yes, but I had a good time.
Hobbit Tales is a storytelling game, and as such, it lends itself to use as a storytelling tool. As I was playing it solo, I realized how I could use it for my writing and role-playing game prep (I should have realized its use for RPGing sooner, since the game literally bills itself as an aid/companion to the first edition of The One Ring RPG… I feel a bit dumb about not catching that until now).
Each card has a title, a picture, and a quote from Tolkien’s fiction, and thus there are lots of jumping off points for storytelling/prompts for writing and gaming. Yes, there are a gazillion writing prompt-generators out there, digital and analog (I have these really cool Writing Dice, in fact, that my husband got me for Valentine’s Day), but there’s lots of charm in using the simple story seeds from the Hobbit Tales cards.
The open-ended quality of the titles, illustrations, and quotes means they’re flexible enough for any kind of fantasy story, and because they are simple and often archetypal, they prompt lots of symbolic and even mythic ideas.
For instance, one of the random cards I drew “Weather-beaten Traveler.” This immediately prompts me to think of types of weather that could beat someone down: rain showers, snow storm, wind storm, floods, even sandstorms and drought. And the idea of a “traveler” is so basic and yet full of possibilities. The traveler could be a stranger in a strange land, a person seeking a way back home, an explorer, someone on a quest, or someone simply out for a stroll who got caught up in a weather phenomenon.
What would happen if I drew such a card as a prompt for a story, or to give me something to insert into a story where I’m stuck?
I’m currently working on Norse City Limits, an urban fantasy inspired by Icelandic sagas and old 1940s film noir, and my main guy, Grettir, is about to speak to a dead man (could be magic or Grettir could simply be hallucinating due to a drug-induced haze… I don’t know yet). If I wanted to, I could play a free-association game with my “weather-beaten traveler” card.
Perhaps the dead man is a vagrant, caught up in a web of lies and vice that he’s totally alien to, just the wrong man at the wrong time.
Or perhaps he was traveling to find Grettir, got caught and killed by Grettir’s enemies, and now he’s shown up anyway in the form of a corpse.
Or perhaps he wasn’t killed by humans at all. Maybe the weather killed him, an extreme form of weather (and maybe that weather was caused by a spell or a god), and his death is a portent of things to come.
The Hobbit Tales cards are really fun in this regard because they spur ideas, invite me to play with archetypal elements, and provide several points of entry, all without being too specific or “out there” in content. Nothing in these cards will veer my stories wildly off-track or be too wacky.
The uses of these cards for role-playing games is obvious. Instead of a random encounter table, simply draw a card from the deck, or several cards, or a adventure card and a hazard card and try to combine them into a unique encounter, combat, trap, or puzzle.
Sometimes writing prompts from outside sources are too particular or too prescriptive. There are times when that specificity or oddball quality will instigate an exciting and unique story idea, but more often than not, I end up with something that doesn’t fit my sensibilities as a writer.
With the Hobbit Tales cards, I have prompts and ideas that work much better with the kinds of stories I like telling and which can easily be integrated with my current works-in-progress (if need be).
Also, the artwork and aesthetic of the game is charming and a pleasure to interact with. I like taking out the cards and the green coasters and spending time with them.
As a game, Hobbit Tales is low-stakes, congenial, and more about creativity and having fun with mates rather than the competition of who has the most points at the end. Yes, it is “competitive” in that there can be a winner at the end (teller with the highest score at the end of all the rounds), but that’s really not the impetus for playing. It’s much more about enjoying Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, pretending to be a hobbit, and flexing your storytelling muscles.
For people who are intimidated by the improvisational storytelling, the game might not be as enjoyable, or it might take some time to realize that none of these stories will end up being “good.” The fun is in trying to tell the story and include the hazards if necessary, not to be some brilliant performer.
In some ways, it’s a good lesson for everyone, professional storyteller or amateur: Have fun and don’t worry about whether something is “good” or not. Let the creative voice do its thing. Let go of perfection and have a good time.
Avalon Summeris somewhat based on my real childhood, especially in the details of the setting, which is basically my grandparents’ home in Michigan.
And yes, the main character, Sarah, is similar to ten-year-old me.
And yes, there are other characters who have some basis in real people from my childhood.
But no, it’s not an “autobiographical” novel. I made up a lot of stuff. It’s fiction. It borrows from my real life, but it’s not real.
Every story I write borrows from my real life. That’s how writing works, at least for me. Fiction is a stew made from real life experiences, art/literature/music, and imagination. We mix all the things we’ve ever read, seen, and heard with all the things we’ve ever lived through, and we add our own imagination and dreams to the pot, and that’s what we draw from, that’s the elixir we drink when we conjure up these tales.
The mom in Avalon Summer is an actress who is getting divorced from Sarah and Jay’s dad. My mom and dad are so far from this picture as to be ludicrous. The parents in Avalon Summer are total fictions.
But I wanted some conflict between Sarah and her mom, and I wanted a reason for Sarah and Jay to be staying at their grandparents’ in a different state (mom’s shooting a film, so they’ve been shipped off to Michigan), and I wanted to explore the inter-generational conflict between the grandmother and the mom, since the grandmother is super-practical and the mom is a flighty dreamer, and Sarah takes after her mom in some ways, so I decided to create a character who is an independent actress with a penchant for self-absorption.
My real mother is NOTHING like this.
It’s fiction. Make-believe.
And yet–
I do draw from my real life. There are aspects of Jay (the brother in the novel) that are like my real brother. The grandparents are like my real grandparents (and also different). I’ve written stories in which there are husbands and sons and daughters and parents and friends, and these characters do, in fact, share similarities to my own family and friends. How could they not?
When inventing worlds and plots and characters, a writer must draw from somewhere. She must pull from her real, lived experiences in order to make the stories feel real.
And yet, when I’m inventing these characters, when I’m drawing from my own life to give these character depth and authenticity, I’m not thinking about how one day, the people in my life will read these stories and wonder, perhaps, if I am writing about them.
I’m not, of course. I’m writing fiction.
But then again, I am. I’m stealing from my own life. It’s all I know, this life of mine. How could I not use it as fodder for my stories?
I get nervous, when I think about my brother or my husband or my children reading my stories. Not because I’m spilling secrets or whatever, but because they might wonder, “Is that me? Am I like that? Is that what she really thinks?”
It’s not, and no, it isn’t. I’m not writing autobiography.
But I can’t deny that the people in my life are in my stories in small ways. In little details. In mannerisms and aspects of personality. As inspiration and jumping off points.
I don’t want my fiction to fray any relationships, but I also feel compelled to be honest. To write the world as I see it. I have to draw from somewhere, and so I draw from my experiences, from my life.
And the person who is most often in my stories, the person I draw the most from, is, of course, me.
If the mother in Avalon Summer is anyone, she is the part of me that worries that I’m not a very attentive mom. That I’m wrapped up in my own career and not focused enough on my children. That I’m dreamy and flighty and forgetful.
I steal from my own life, from the people in it, but most of all, I steal from myself. The experiences, the relationships, the memories, they are all filtered through me, the writer. If anything is revealed in my fiction, it’s my own heart. My own fears. My own flaws.
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