musings on roleplaying as it relates to writing

I've barely touched my novel in days.

Instead, I've sort of gone back to my writing roots (as it were). Online roleplaying. My favorite roleplay buddy got back from his break; I play 4 characters in two games that he runs. We've been posting back and forth every evening for three days in a row now.

It's been interesting. Three of the four characters that I play with him are also in my novel, so I at least have the excuse of doing character development. Really, though, it's more that I have to try and remember who my characters even are. The chapter I'm working on is from the point of view of one of these characters - and I've noticed that she's actually almost a different person between the novel and the game. In part, it's probably because the settings are very different. But also a lot of it seems to be in my approach to the two activities.

A lot of my problem with the novel, I think, is with starting scenes from scratch. With a game, there's always something there that I'm responding to - either whatever just happened to my character(s), or at the very least the setting information that describes the location. These things occur in discrete posts as well, rather than all being one long thing like a novel scene would be.

Of course, as I wrote that, I was recalling the game that I used to run - where I was doing all the setup for the scenes for my players. So it's not like I've never started scenes before. Even there though, I'm responding to stuff that the players are doing rather than coming up with all of it from scratch.

With roleplaying also, my muses all seem to be external. They're the people that I'm playing with. Chiefly, the guy I mentioned above, plus my best friend, plus a handful of other people. (There are also a few people that seem to leech all inspiration out of me ... anti-muses, as it were). I've noticed that when particular people are absent from my games, I find it much more difficult to come up with anything to post. I think the interaction itself is what's important for sparking the inspiration I need to create.

With the novel I don't have any of that. I'm entirely on my own, for the entire 80-100k words (or however long it's going to end up). Back during NaNo when there were forums filled with people who were doing the same thing I was and going through all the same trials and tribulations, it didn't *feel* like I was doing it alone. The illusion of interaction was there, and I think that's what really got me through the 50k words of first draft.

Also there's the fact that during NaNo, writing it down was what mattered. "Just get it all down, it doesn't matter what it looks like, worry about editting later!" was the battle cry of the day. Well. It's later now. And I have to edit it. :(

That's kind of the fundamental flaw with NaNo I think. Sooner or later you're still going to have to edit the thing. Sooner or later you're still going to have to turn it into something 'good'. And so then you run into the same mind-block problems that you had to begin with. :p

Maybe I'm burnt out. After only a year of trying really hard to write well, I've exhausted my supply of internal inspiration. Sometimes I can still call up the energy to create, but it takes effort now - when before it didn't.

Oh well. I can always just roleplay. It's still writing, and in most cases with much lower standards. Still enjoyable to do, still entertains others.