Writing is writing...except when it's not.

Last night was Session 1 of Glory of the World, a 2nd Edition (aka AD&D) campaign I'm in with a few friends. It was chaotic, with lots of disconnect between events as people tried to develop their characters and connect with each other. It was also a lot of fun. Part of it was the playing, part of it was the camaraderie going on between friends. Of the seven from last night, four of us were in a campaign together back in high school. The commentary felt like old times.

The campaign started coming together almost a month ago. When it first came up, I thought up a rough idea for a character, then decided I was going to wait until the in-person character-making session to flesh it out. Ryan kept pestering me, and I started thinking about it more, and ended up with a pretty good picture. I had the physical picture and the attitude...but not really anything else. Nothing behind her.

Michael (the Dungeon Master, aka DM, aka God in the campaign) sent out lots of background information for the world we would be playing in, along with how 2nd Edition works in comparison to 3rd Edition (what our old campaign had been in). One thing that he wrote stuck out and stayed in my head: in 2E, under the right circumstances, just about ANYBODY could end up in an adventure.

This brought to mind an image, a housewife in this civil war-torn world, on the edge of panic from not knowing what's going to happen or when, overhearing plans of an adventure and throwing herself into it, desperate to do anything that would make her feel like she's fighting back against uncertainty and hopelessness.

The character I'm playing now is a slight spin-off of that first image: Ona Amaethwr, a farmer's wife who has spent her whole life tilling fields and milking cows, now stealing to stay alive after her entire family is stolen from her as they try to escape the fighting taking over their home.

I've spent the past two or three weeks whittling Ona down. I know when she, her husband, and her children were born, when two of her children died, which gods of Michael's pantheon she worships, the jewelry she wears and what it means, her personality and attitude and beliefs. It's been..exhilarating, really.

Roleplaying as her will be a different kind of rush, I think. Crafting her down to the final detail was wonderful, but will be very different from talking in her voice, moving in her body. I'm looking forward to it, to using all those details and finding out which ones matter and which don't, not to mention making some up on the spot.

The whole thing has also been frustrating. Making this character has been SO MUCH FUN. Meanwhile, I have a story (Liam & Jer) sitting on my laptop that needs attention, but hasn't seen so much as a read-through in over a month. I even had a small epiphany lately that will help shape the ending, which has been very sticky to deal with...nothing written from it so far.

The details of the person are fun and games, enough to suck me and take all my attention. Writing the story, the dialogue, the individual scenes...that feels more like work. I'll spend hours on Ona, then turn to Liam & Jer and just stare at the blank page. I can't figure out where the disconnect is, and it's driving me mad.

I almost think I need to look at Liam & Jer as a D&D campaign...except that I really don't think that would work. Maybe I'm just afraid that I'll need to start over. Maybe I just need to let the story go, scrap it as one of those Never Got Off The Drawing Table ideas that I'm sure every writer has.

It's just hard to let it go.