Over the years I fell out of love with writing, instead focusing my pursuits on other things like video editing, video games, and all other visual arts. It was fine for a time, but lately I’ve found myself wishing to flex that writing muscle again and try my hand at something fictional. I’ve had a few dozen starts and stops, with them all ultimately fizzling out as anxieties and life gets in the way. Cue my home Dungeons and Dragons game.
I started running a West Marches home game a year or so back, with the express idea of having players come and go as they pleased and making their mark on the world for the time that they’re there. To keep track of things for myself, I started writing up prose summaries of everything the players did in each session, formatting them like basic chapters of a book. This was for the player’s benefit more than anything, but it got me to thinking about what those stories would look like fleshed out, with deeper characterizations and even more prose. It could be something to write on a lark that couldn’t be much more than a page on a blog. I wouldn’t be able to monetize it in any way, but it would possibly get me in the habit of writing again and maybe encourage me to dust off some of those stalled ideas I would actually like to sell.
The result is this ongoing “novel.”
