The past two months have largely been good to me, albeit busy as I worked hard to get back on my feet following events from the funeral, but I'm finally back on my feet... even if it meant skipping a journal in the meantime.
Lately I've started looking for new work, or at least a change in shift. I've been working constant night shifts for a little over a year now. I had the opportunity to socialize and RP some, and it made me realize just how much I've missed being able to talk to people, and what a drain it is to spend half of my days off up at hours when everyone I know is asleep (US) or working (EU). Unfortunately... that's easier said than done. I can always dream though!
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Now for the meat of the journal post: my writing absence. I am painfully aware that I've not uploaded something in some time, and that I RP infrequently at best. What used to be an enjoyable activity for me in the past has lately become a source of constant stress, and I've been trying to figure out why that's the case. I love world building in my head, coming up with fun things for characters to do, thinking up RP scenarios I want to try out with my friends... but when I sit down to actually put pen to paper I just cannot come up with decent words. My vocabulary is limited, I have trouble putting in details, and I just feel so frustrated at my own ability that I can't bring myself to finish anything.
The worst part is, I used to be better. Back when I first created Urthdigger for the Silver Garrison RP group, I had no trouble being quite prolific. After that went down, I had a trend of RPing across various forums, always prolific and able to get a decent following. Around this time I also created my Hand Puppet story for RetroMUD which, while flawed, I still consider to be the best thing I've ever written to date. Better still, I was making sizeable updates every week.
Something's changed between how I was back then, and how I am now, and it's been hard to put my finger on it. I've suffered from and recovered from depression, had a lot of moves, plenty of things are different now, but I think one thing stands out more than everything else: The kind of writing I do most.
Back in those days, my writing was usually asynchronous (forum posts, newsgroups) adventure RP, whereas now it's typically synchronous (MUDs, chatrooms) sexual RP. I think it's high time I try and get back to my roots, and do the things that made me enjoy writing in the first place so I can recapture the joy I had for it.
I could go on for ages about why I feel it's caused my writing to degrade, but in short when I RP nowadays I have a strict time limit, restrictive vocabulary and short IC time per post to avoid denying my partner from responding, little if any interaction with the environment, no changing scenes, and the pressure is far greater. These all reflect areas where my skill has deteriorated. When I write, it's typically about the same kind of subject matter that my RPs are about so I can't help but fall into the same groove.
I need to break out of this. Do some RPs where I can actually take my time and flesh out the world around me, take a part in a story rather than an isolated scene... and I'll be honest, actually play as Urthdigger for a change instead of Sandy. I like the little guy, but Urthdigger was supposed to be my main and he's kinda been gathering dust.
Now, the hard part will likely be actually finding a place to do this. I get the feeling forums in general just aren't as common as they used to be, and people RPing on them considerably less so. Choosing a method that requires patience and waiting is probably quaint and old fashioned... but I think it's what I need.
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7 years ago
08 Apr 2017 18:03 CEST
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