There is a specific type of activity in role playing games (which are, by design, social gatherings) that is importantly and essentially NOT a social activity, and it goes back perhaps to the very start of roleplaying gaming as a hobby.
Speaking broadly, this category of activity encompasses a lot of solo activities that sort of surround the Actual Playing Of The Game, like space trash around the Earth — as a player, it includes things like writing diaries or journals from your characters point of view, drawing sketches of them or the people they know, painting up a miniature for them, devising complex back stories, or simply sitting around and ‘generating’ new character after new character … all of whom will probably never get played, et cetera — as the person running the game, it involves stuff like the above, as well as developing complex societies, environments, ecologies, history, and various bits of fiction… hell, whole worlds that provided the backdrop for the story of the game… most of which no one but the person running the game would EVER KNOW.
As I said, it’s a standard element of classic roleplaying games. Sometime in early 2006, a gamer on the Story-games forum coined a name for this kind of activity, referring to it as “lonely fun”.
Before that point in time (and, in fact, long before there were role-playing games), it had a different name: “writing”.
I’ve never been very good at Lonely Fun. Along the same vein, I’m having a hell of a time with my current W.I.P. because, unlike most of the stuff I’ve done before, I’m writing it alone. (My wife, who has been subjected to various excerpts from the ongoing story, might argue this point, but compared to my previous efforts, writing Humorless has been like working for a solid month inside a sensory deprivation tank.) No partner, no secret-blog that a couple dozen people can read as I go… nothing. My only reader is myself, and the only interaction I get with the story is my own.
I don’t care for it much. Frankly, I’ve created a lot more fiction as part of a group of creative people (read: gaming) than I have solo (read: writing), and that’s the activity that pushes all the good endorphin buttons in my brain. Maybe that’s because I’ve conditioned myself to work that way over the last twenty years, but there it is.
Going to take a long time to break that habit.
6 Replies to “Maybe I need to find a writing group.”
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I look forward to your revising your opinion about writing books after you become the fan-favorite published author I believe you will be!
Would an online writing group “push your endorphin buttons?” For you to have the social aspect, does it have to be in person or are you just looking for outside feedback? If it’s the latter, some friends and I have created an online writing group to facilitate getting (and giving feedback) for writing. You can find it at http://www.reviewfuse.com. Of course, there are other writing groups out there but I’m biased toward ours. :)
Sorry if I’m crashing your blog. We’re actively looking for people to join our writing group and so the title of your post caught my eye. Anyhow, best of luck. Let us know if we can help.
Oy, and find out whether Denver has a good writing network. The Pikes Peak Writers in Colorado Springs has been an effing godsend – as well as the source for finding my actual writer group.
The title of this post confuses me vis-a-vis the content of the post.
Are you saying that you prefer writing collaboratively, or that you prefer gaming? Or that you prefer collaborative game writing? ;)
I’m saying I like the collaboration energy that feeds back to me during a game, or during the writing projects I’ve done where there’s some kind of feeling of ongoing feedback, and that writing completely solo is a little draining.
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