Strange Struggles With Writer's Block (Patreon)

Hello, heroes.

I have finally encountered writer’s block.

Mine is a strange beast.

It is not that I cannot write, it is that I have agreed to write an adventure for Old School’s Essentials of 6,000 to 10,000 words, which also fits the terse style of OSE.

Digression.

It snowed last night. A crisp, powdery snow that’s blanketed the world in four fingers’ worth of white innocence. The day dawned clear, the sunlight a peach hue, the scene miraculous. With Dog, we walked in the morning. Bundled in jackets against the cold, soon both overheating as she wanted to run, run, and play.

Now I’m seated at the Sasong cafe near my apartment. The old Korean hanok has been converted into a tiny corner of warmth with massive windows that look out onto a sky of pure azure and snow gently bidding goodbye as the sun strokes it farewell.

Digression’s end.

Why a digression?

Well, quite simply, I obviously have no trouble writing. Indeed, I am not anything if not verbose.

Throughout January, I tried to trick myself into writing the OSE adventure, by filling out the ekleksikon. It worked, but I soon had 5,000 words of introduction and more words on the town's social conflicts than on the actual delve.

Which was all lovely, but it wasn’t getting me closer to done.

Eventually, I realized I was going to miss my deadline. My second deadline. And my shame and guilt and worry started to mount, and my willingness to write with it.

The problem wasn’t that I couldn’t write, it was that I was struggling to make my brain write to a pattern that was not my own. To a different style.*

Honestly, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Whenever I try to draw in a style that is not my own, or one I like and feel close to, the drawing takes forever and the result dissatisfies. A lesson: when possible, create in your own style.

I think I’ve finally cracked Holy Mountain Shaker, though. After trying out a whole series of tools: Publisher, Scrivener, Google Docs, and more, I returned to Pages. With the latest update, the thing finally handles tables halfway decently again (the relief is real). Another thing it manages quite adequately is paper size. By setting the pages to A5 (the OSE standard size), I’ve forced myself to write to the page. Every single region, every table, every bit of content has to fit on a page. Everything extra goes in the appendices. Everything useless gets cut.

I guess I’m a visual creature and need to see that overflow to realize that I need to delete, not add another 50 words.

It’s still going to be too long. But I’m resigned to that at this point. One relief is that with this structure, if worst comes to worst, HMS is just going to get a companion .pdf of bestiary, treasures, and other items to go with it. I suppose that’s a kind of solution.

On the plus side, now that I’ve embraced the appendix-as-bestiary, both Witchburner and the UVG have started leaking into Holy Mountain.

Oh, well.

Thank you for your patience with your well-damned writer-person, heroes.

Salutations from snowy Seoul,

—Luka

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*Well, and compounded with a year of grinding, unchanging pandemic. Get up. Get food. Work at home. Get food. Work at home. Get food. Rest at home. Sleep at home. It’s soon going to be March, 2020 isn’t it? Amazing. That whole month of January just whooshed by, didn’t it? But enough of that. You all know that 2020 was both incredibly long and ridiculously short, all at once.

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P.S. - Let's not be too down, though. I have high hopes I'll manage the heart of HMS within the next few days (though I always say that). I've also rediscovered the joy of writing Seacat (thanks Ekleksikon for providing me a place to jot down all the extraneous content). So there will be more new content there soon!

Forgot to share this illustration of aerovechs in the distance in the last post.

Not sure if I've shared this picture of the shtrakha, the glass people from Red Sky's lore, previously.

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P.P.S. - Embarrassingly, my first post turned the pictures sideways. Thank you phone cam. Anyway, that should be fixed now! And, here's a bonus apropos of nothing:

This is not a game I'm making, but ... I do wish I was making it ... but ... frankly ... no time now. If anyone wants to seize it and run with it, a many thank you.

The fonts are Bauhaus and Eurostile, I think (I'm a bit forgetful).