What many who know me personally are aware of, is I love Frank Herbert's Dune series, I watch the movie on my birthday, every year, I have read all the books, played all the games, I think Herbert was a genius.
What many may know is that Frank Herbert, Poul Anderson and Jack Vance were all very good friends, and the magic system of Dungeons and Dragons is based on the concepts of Jack Vance.. this trio of authors wrote some of the best science fiction and fantasy stories in the world.
There is something to be said for writing as a team project, particularly for good friends who really inspire each other, without writing teams, we would never have had the Dragonlance series, for instance.
Currently, I am exchanging ideas for a writing project, which is all I can really say about it for the moment.. but the body of work includes some stuff which, I hope, will be fundamental concepts which go on to inspire others to create some really amazing things.
On my own, I can write a passable story, or design a fairly good set of twists and turns on an adventure, but when I am riffing with another creative and motivated person, I seem to act as a catalyst.. same thing with my monster ecology videos on Youtube, I am largely just collecting information in manuals, wikis and blogs or forums, and presenting a unified concept of a creature, according to how the larger body of D&D players have envisioned it.. this info is often contradictory and alters a lot between editions or even game systems (such as a creature shared between D&D and Pathfinder) but I have a knack for finding, filtering and presenting the information, and I can do this fairly quickly.. the bulk of the time in vid creation is finding image files, then there is a read through of the current manual listing, a search through popular and well archived wiki pages and following links listed as sources, which is a process that is just a matter of speed reading and looking for non-repeated information, this all gels in my head, and I turn on the mic and it all comes out of my head, as you hear it on the vids.. then I grab all the image files and slot them in, before making a title page and uploading it all.
All up, a vid usually takes me three to four hours, and I aim to upload twice a week.
Aside from the monster vids and collaborative writing, I have a few personal writing projects on the back burner, not really getting a lot done on those, but not dead, just.. simmering. I also get sculpting projects, and those typically suck up eight or nine hours a pop. I really have not managed to sell many, which is OK, I like having them around, and I don't want to be stuck in a situation where I have to churn out the same thing over and over again for a pay check, as that grind is the reason I don't draw very much.. I can draw, but I don't really want to draw for anyone, other than me... I tried an art career in graphic design and it was clearly not my artistic strong suit.. I should have just stuck with sculpture the whole way through.
Anyway, while I spent the last few years heavily involved in online forums, chats and facebook groups, that sucked up a crap load of my time and ended up being pretty damn vicious, so, no more of that shit.. There are some great places to contribute and participate, but I am done with creating or running social media hubs or running video chat games or writing guest articles for other people's sites.
Been there, done that, got the sweat shirt.
Time for other plans.
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