Logjam

Or the frustrations of a writer

What a difference a couple of months can make. Here we are, more than halfway through February of a new year and I feel like the momentum I’d been building since last summer has dissipated — not completely, of course, but enough that I no longer feel as if I’m on track to get any of my projects done in a timely fashion and it’s frustrating.

Some of what I’m feeling stems from real-world matters that have unfortunately intruded into my life, distracting me from writing. However, much as I’d like to place the blame solely on that front, the truth is that my real problems are my own. Chief among these is that I typically get about two-thirds or three-quarters of the way to completion before I start thinking about what will happen after I complete the manuscript. That’s where things almost always start to fall apart.

I’m a writer. That’s pretty much all I can do. I’m not a bad writer, but one needs more than writing skills to be able to turn a manuscript into something that can be sold to others. I need, at minimum, someone else who can do layout and graphic design and I generally prefer to also have people who can draw and make maps. Since I can’t do any of those things, not even poorly, I find myself thinking about the logistics of how I might be able to do this and, before you know, my enthusiasm for a project I’d previously loved wanes.

I’m not a details guy. When I try, I’m no good at it. That’s why I was at my most productive as a writer back in the days when I was doing freelance work for other people rather than trying to publish my own RPG materials. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I could do that again. I have too many of my own ideas. Conforming them to someone else’s vision would be challenging. I don’t think I’d be at my best as a writer.

So, I find myself spinning my wheels. I bounce around between projects, hoping to build some momentum that I can use to push through to the end. Lately, it just hasn’t been working. Aside from Grognardia, my consistency is not what I want it to be and I’m not entirely certain what I need to do in order to change that. It’s not as if I haven’t been writing. I have — quite a lot, in fact — but none of it has yet amounted to anything I can share and that makes me feel as if I’ve been wasting my time.

At the moment, I have quite a few projects in various states of half-completion:

• Thousand Suns (Second Edition): This is a big project, far bigger than I originally anticipated. Even though I’m not changing the rules of the game greatly, I’m nevertheless rewriting its text with an eye toward greater clarity and ease of use. That’s a lot of work in itself. Throw in thoughts about artwork, layout, etc. and I find myself overwhelmed.

• Secrets of sha-Arthan: This project is very far along. I have a lot of the text done, as well as a ton of art. However, I have never figured out a good way to present it and, every time I think I do, I find myself changing my mind. Part of me thinks I ought to just rework the whole thing as a setting for Old-School Essentials, as I’d originally planned, but another part of me feels that’s a concession to expediency. Regardless, I’m stuck.

• Grognardia Anthologies: This is purely a matter of figuring out how to present the material for publication. It’s mostly a technical problem, but, since I lack the skills or the vision to handle it, the whole thing is stalled.

• The Cursed Chateau: This one is fairly far along and probably closest to completion, though I am fretting about its art, layout, cartography, etc. The 2016 version is gorgeous and I will never be able to top it using my meager resources, so how best to present it?

• Dwimmermount Designer’s Edition: This is something I really want to do. I now have a better sense of how I’ll do it so that it doesn’t kill me, but, again, I’m not sure I have the means to do so properly. Finding a way around that occupies a lot of my thoughts these days — to little avail, of course.

• Dream-Quest: This is the Lovecraftian fantasy RPG I’ve been working on since the Fall. Right now, it’s in a holding pattern and will likely remain so until I can figure out how to present it in a coherent way.

There are other projects on the back burner as well, but these six are the main ones. Looking over what I’ve written above, I see that the word “how” recurs often. As I said earlier in this post, figuring out a way to publish these things is a major difficulty for me, one that’s been derailing all of them to one degree or another, which, in turn, only adds to my sense I’m getting nowhere. I hate to say I’m frustrated yet again, but it’s true.

Part of my difficulty, I suspect, is that I very much want to be able to do everything myself. That’s completely unrealistic, of course, for all the reasons I’ve already enumerated. However, it’s more or less how I proceed. Doing things on my own is the best way I can ensure I don’t let anyone down by failing to meet a deadline or following through on a promise, so that’s what I do — even though it also contributes further to my frustration.

Around and around I go. Bah!