It goes without saying that 2020 was a completely awful year.

In addition to all the suffering we as humans shared, I was struggling under the weight of a massive writer's block.  For the last half of the year I found myself utterly unable to string thoughts and words together in anything resembling a storytelling approach.  The vicious nature of the cycle was glaringly obvious, but that insight made the equation no more avoidable.

[i]Sail can't write = Sail is depressed = Sail doubts his ability to write = Sail can't write[/i]

It was Wolf who rescued me from the trap.  Early in December, when we both talked about the two weeks' Christmas slowdown, he suggested that we dust off a couple of our characters for a short lived holiday RPG.  It sounded like a fun exercise.

It was excruciating.

A character whose skin I'd worn like a glove now felt odd, stiff, and ultimately forced.  The thoughts he shared no longer held that easy fluidity of our previous time together.  Six months spent in my left brain had severed all the connections, leaving me with the same obvious answer to this challenge as to that awful cycle.  

(If) Sail loves to write 
(and) Sail misses writing 
(then) Sail must suck it up and write every day.

I set a goal of one page per day.  By this time (March), Wolf and I had moved to a third 1x1 plot, and the muscle was beginning to limber up once more.  Thanks to his constant input and support, I finally began to feel comfortable again, not only in the skin of an old character, but with the return of plot and scene inspirations that I'm now impatient to write, both in and out of our forum.

Here's the moral of the story.  The other day, one of our writers said, "I need to do something with my character."   Consider this:  We are at the beginning of (hopefully) a long road together.  We all know and love the base material that inspires this game.  If you're finding yourself stymied with a new character who doesn't yet feel natural, I encourage you to take that character down to the baseline.  Chances are they have a job aboard China Doll.  Begin there.  Tell us about their job and how they approach it.  What aspects written into their CS will come out to play while they work?  What will they think about?  What will they remember? Thanks to Gunther, we can also ask about what they might dream at night?

As the GM's/mods (I prefer 'hosts'), Wolf and I are always available to either bounce ideas or JP/collab.  Our first goal here is that all of you have fun writing in FF2V, and we're working hard to place everyone in a position to shine.  The journey is just beginning.  Flex that muscle...and keep flying.

Sail