The Year of Writing

The Year of Reading

Many years ago I made a New Year's Resolution to read more books. In fact, I set the lofty goal of 50 books over the course of the year. I'd stopped reading almost entirely despite my enjoyment of the hobby in part because I never gave myself the time to actually read. I told everyone I knew that I was doing this, sourcing book recommendations from friends and colleagues to add to my Goodreads list. I decided that I would alternate between fiction and non-fiction titles to keep things interesting and maybe learn some stuff along the way.

This "Year of Reading" was quite successful. While I didn't hit my goal of 50 books — mainly due to deciding to read Stephen King's 1,152 page long 'The Stand' for about 6 weeks — I still ended up reading ~40 books that year. Some good, some bad, one that made me ugly-cry on a train.

The Writing Challenge

Even more many year ago, I wanted to help a writer friend of mine write more. So, each week I would come up with a prompt to challenge him and he would have to write a short story based on that prompt. Many of them were extremely silly but they achieved their goal, I think.

My Creative Rut

I love running and playing TTRPGs. There's a feeling that only really comes from the shared storytelling experience and I adore the worldbuilding and don't-know-what-comes-next aspects of it. The last campaign I ran was a science-fantasy post-apocalyptic dystopia where the players were delving into the discarded so-advanced-it's-magic technological ruins of ancient civilisations and it was SO FUN!

...It also fizzled out after 10 sessions because I lost motivation, work and life got very busy, and I didn't give myself the time to plan sessions or play. And...

Diagnosis

Last year, around the time that we stopped playing that campaign, I was diagnosed with ADHD and Got Medicated. During my titration period I suffered insane bouts of overworkiness — some days spending 12+ hours on my PC coding — and huge tiredness too. Thankfully I'm stable now but I had a wild ride of it.

I'm not entirely sure if that contributed to my DM burnout or it was just Life Stuff™® that got in the way but not a day goes by where I don't think about how I could go about continuing that game (or starting a new one). Video relevant.

Conclusion

So what the hell am I rambling on about above? Basically, it's a new New Year's Resolution to make this year the "Year of Writing". I want to write more generally. Could be things like this post, stream-of-consciousness, short stories, very short stories, adventure tidbits, etc. I'm hoping this will help break me out of my rut and comfort zone and actually get the ball rolling on something tangible in my mind when it comes to running D&D (or Daggerheart as that system seems nice).