D&D is apparently my Muse

Well another week's gone by. I still haven't written anything for Chopfe's birthday - still not exactly sure WHAT I even want to write aside from a very broad topic. I haven't gone back to work on any of the Daily Challenges from July. I opened up and re-read the latest chapter I'm working on for What Is Truly Meant To Be, but I didn't add anything to it. One of my friends has been near-ruthlessly teasing me about my "lack of imagination" - which is EXACTLY what a fiction writer wants to hear. AAAAAAAAAnd ChibiSunnie's birthday is this week and I'm drawing a blank on what to gift her.

I've talked with Ali Luke via emails and she's given me encouraging words. We've talked about how I might be able to branch out in search for paying writing gigs. However, the more we talk about what I could write an informative blog on - or even a guest post about - the more I realize I am a Jack of All Trades; Master of None. There's really nothing I can give advice about. Further more, as much as I know it's not his intention, the more I talk to celestialTyrant the more I feel the mediocracy of my life come to the surface.

Fret not, though. This isn't an All Is Emo post like before. Despite all these hardships and shoves towards self-discovery, I have indeed written this week.

My wedding thank you notes.... finally. :-D

Well, more than that. Especially since I have about two weeks to go before my year anniversary and still about 40 Thank Yous to write...

DarkAngel1326 was super excited to have the basics of an original character plotted out. In July she used the writing prompt "Of Blood and Honor" to write a fantasy starring the Hey Arnold characters Gerald and Phoebe. She used this setting again for the prompt "It's Too Late". She soon fell in love with this little world she created - as did her readers, I'd wager. With a little debate, she decided to start fresh with her new world, yank it out of her fanfiction comfort zone, and make the story an original. But since she didn't have Gerald as a pre-established character, she set forth to fully create her lead "33".

In my offerings to help her out I started talking to her about the first D&D character I put a lot of thought in to creating.

Amara Yori

I talked about how I helped develop Amara by "interviewing her" and just let my mind have a dialogue with my character. I also sent DA a 2-page description of Amara that I wrote up in 2009. I mapped out all 30 scars she has on her body and how they were inflicted. I might change a few of them though. Considering her mother's healing abilities there's no reason for Amara to have scars from being grazed by an arrow...

DA was impressed with the amount of detail put in to Amara. To be fair, I've been working on Amara since 2004 and she's only been working on 33 since July/August. Even so, Amara is still evolving.

At the beginning of the year I introduced Amara to Delaroux. Not only does Delaroux have an entire population in her head, but each one of her characters are darker and deeper and more well-rounded than Amara. Sure, Delaroux has had a harder life than I, so perhaps that's why she's able to come up with such angst-driven characters. You feel and root for her characters, mainly because they had such a rough life and you enjoy watching them flip off the world. My only issue - and I have to stress that Delaroux was talking in-character at the time - was that it was pointed out that Amara's life - in comparison - wasn't so bad, and therefore she shouldn't be so angsty.

Amara's backstory changed a little then.

After talking to DA about Amara, I was inspired to go back through everything I have on her and to send Amara's story to DA to read. I discovered that I had a hardcopy of the backstory, but I didn't have the file on my computers anymore. This meant spending the last few work breaks retyping the backstory. This also meant evolving the story.

I'm almost finished with the most recent incarnation of it. Although I'm still not 100% happy with it, and I'm sure there will be about seven other revisions as Amara develops more, in the meantime I think I'll actually post her tale on DeviantArt and FictionPress. I'm still debating if I should also post on FanFiction under Dungeons And Dragons.

Yes, I'm creating my own world, but so does nearly every Dungeon Master when starting a campaign. I'm still using the basic Laws of the Universe, races, class system, deities, and equipment developed by Wizards Of The Coast. I'm essentially writing out a D&D campaign in story form. It should probably go on FanFiction and not FictionPress, shouldn't it?

Regardless. I'm hoping to have that up before my next blog post.

It's not Hey Arnold related - for those of you who only know me through that fandom - but it IS something, correct?