So it's the first weekend in November....which means we survived another Halloween and we have Turkey Day and the inevitable onslaught that is the Christmas season....
Just saying now, get your gaming group's gifts (you do get your fellow gamers shit, right?) figured out now because the next thing you know it'll be January, you haven't had a game in three weeks, and "where did the time fly?"
This PSA is just a bonus thing, hope it helps.
I think most of us could agree that we're going to be ramping up with the family, friends, and coworkers increasing demands for social interactions. For some of us there isn't enough time, energy/motivation to go around as it is, but some folks are also just gluttons for punishment and frankly I'm a little jelly.
Odds are if you're here reading this you're some flavor of nerd/dork/geek/dweeb/whatever and November is a big time for another flavor of nerd/dork/geek...you get it.....writers, or maybe just wannabe writers. November is when NaNoWriMo takes place. If you aren't familiar, follow the link or I can TL;DR it for you:
Wannabe writers of all varieties challenge themselves to pen 50,000 words during the month of November and there is a formal association of like-minded individuals that provide motivation and tools to assist.
My ex-wife was afflicted in this manner and I could write off her having free time come November. That 1,666+ daily word count was a PITA. Of course, NaNoWriMo doesn't care if your writing is any good, just that it's lengthy. I used to joke that I wanted to spend November coding a random adventure log table and have it spit out a year's worth of 1st party recollection of...well an adventuring party. Make sub tables that get called allowing party members to die, get resurrected or replaced, battles, licking wounds, etc. Get the tables working and then on November 30th have it spit out 50,000 words worth of log.
All kidding aside, I like how this is a shared goal that really only matters to participants. Those writers are supportive of each other and the only person you let down if you fall short is you. It's really an exercise in getting work done when you might not be motivated. Plugging away at a bigger goal that could become something later, but for now you just need to get that grunt work in, develop good habits that might pay off later.
I'm jelly 'cause I wish we had something like this in the OSR. A bunch of GMs or even players have a specific writing goal of contributing to creating OSR content. We don't have to have a specific format (so not the One Page Dungeon contest), nobody externally is looking for you to write stuff they can profit off of, but here's some tools to help out and if you end up sharing this with others, cool. If you want to keep it to yourself, hopefully you can learn and grow as a player.....
Unfortunately we don't, or at least we don't as far as I know. Sure, we could take part in the actual NaNoWriMo, but at this point you are 8,333 words behind. For the record, that's like 1/15th of the length of this post up until this point.
So 2nd PSA is be nice to your writing friends this month....?
