Help Me Help You: Bootstrapping Writing together
Created by Commander Calliope Zahn on 20 Mar 2022 @ 11:03am
by nikki
Hi! I’m Nikki. I’m pretty passionate about sim writing with an eye towards both fun *and* self improvement. I’m really excited that you’re joining me today for this panel, as I also love to share what I’ve learned along the way and encourage as many other writers as I can so we can all share the love and support one another.
Let’s get started.
"You can lead a Karg beast into battle, but you can't make it drink the blood of your enemies." ~Klingon Proverb, we're pretty sure
Help Me, Help You: Bootstrapping Writing Together
Disclaimer: The following panel was not prepared with anyone in mind besides myself. It is the line of thinking I *regularly* take to address my own simming lulls. If it looks like I’m singling anyone out, it’s only because this experience is pretty common in our hobby…. You’re not alone.
The format of this panel comes in prepared points followed by Discussion Prompts. I’ll try to give a few minutes between each prompt for everyone to contribute or weigh in but the time always goes by quickly! Thanks in advance for your attention and contributions.
EVALUATE
Let’s put aside “I’m really busy” things like travel or family or events or extra work hours that you have no control over. Let’s assume we’re talking about periods of your life when there is time in the week- a couple of evenings, an afternoon, a few scattered hours throughout the weekend. In this scenario, you have a little time, and yet you don’t manage to tag or post to the sims you are a member of.
Discussion Clearly you joined and you haven’t left so ideally you *want* to be writing. No shade, this lull happens to all of us at one point or another. So when it does… What types of things keep you from Writing? Let’s share.
BANISH GUILT
Welcome reflection… but banish guilt!
Guilt over failing to contribute or failing to follow through on past promises can be informative in one sense: it hurts that you failed because you have good intentions which tells you that you value those intentions. But if you give too much weight to feeling bad about what you didn’t do or how you let someone down in your games, then you’ll build an invisible internal resistance because it actually feels bad to spend your personal time on something you feel you’re “failing” at. Instead, give yourself some acceptance, acknowledge where you dropped off, and just forgive it. Games are supposed to be fun, and you need to give yourself permission to have fun with it again.
ABANDON PERFECTIONISM
Sometimes we mistake crippling perfectionism for having quality standards. The way you tell the difference is that if you’re not creating anything because you feel that you can’t do it right, then you’re being too hard on yourself. It’s okay to be a hack and have fun with your hobby.
Discussion: What would you say to a friend harboring guilt about failing to contribute in the past?
What about Perfectionism? How do you confront or move past the freeze of unrealistic self expectations? Do you have advice for others?
CLEAR YOUR PLATE
Sometimes a lull in sim writing is a sign that you need to refresh things. Now that you’ve gotten the fog of guilt out of the way, look over your commitments and really consider what your availability actually is, what games you want to be on vs things that are less of a fit for you, and anything that got left half done that either needs finished and posted to clear it out of the way or written off as a loss and just deleted.
Sometimes the imagination is stymied by lots of things that were once working for you but just aren’t anymore (be they certain sims, plots, characters, half-composed posts etc). Now those abandoned things are taking up bandwidth. Be kind about stepping away from something if you need to, or be honest about changes in availability even if you are staying onboard. Lying to yourself about hoped-for participation will often stymie not just you, but the interwoven storytelling of others who are waiting on you. It will muck up the availability that you actually do have.
Discussion As a writer, how often do you unload ballast/ clean house in your simming endeavors? What sort of things can really overclock your simming RAM and need to get a regular purge?
GET INSPIRED
Face it- you know the difference between when you’re just channel surfing vs when you are feeding your creative soul. It might look the same on the surface, but there’s a big difference in terms of attentiveness and intention. Retune yourself so that you’re being more intentional and attentive with your media diet and lived experiences.
If you can’t quite dig into writing, you might need to tap into the creative juices from the work of others: film, music, visual art, podcasts, books etc. On the one hand you might argue that this will take up all of your personal time and prevent you from writing, but usually when approached with intention, the opposite is true- it gets sparks flying on your creative anvil and you’ll find yourself making the time to get that inspiration down on the page.
Just be a little wary of the point at which you are using other media as an excuse to avoid your own creative efforts. There’s a creative sweet-spot between the one downfall of vegging out mindlessly on the one hand vs the opposite trap of using inspiration or research as an avoidance tactic on the other extreme. You know yourself. You know your own balance.
Discussion How do you reach into the creative well of inspiration? What types of media or experiences feed your writing soul?
START FROM ZERO
One suggestion- When you’ve got no momentum and your muse is not coming around anymore, you *can* lower your standards to just returning tags in a timely fashion and asking others to lead and just promise to follow on, *for a time*. This might sound kind of like a cop out, but the fact is, writing leads to more writing. Once you are generating context, you’re priming the pump. Context is something for the imagination to work from.
Another suggestion- after clearing the riff raff of things that have been holding you back, take inventory and see what remaining established story bits you still actually feel inspired by and feel genuinely committed to— or look at recreating fresh new things from pieces of old abandoned ideas. Go ahead and pick up where you left off.
Discussion: What are your writing go-tos when you need to start from zero motivation? Do you have any suggested approaches to getting words on the screen after too long away e.g. writing prompts, backstory, npc writing?
JUST WRITE IT
Maybe you’ve done all the work: you’ve let go of guilt, cut out the fat of your sim commitments, organized your thoughts, maintained your responses, and gotten intentional about feeding your soul. You even cleaned your desk. But the muse fairy is not happening to drop the post feels on your doorstep. What the heck, man?
Here’s the “Tough Talk” you already know: Stop waiting for whatever you think you’re waiting for. Don’t wait for someone else to inspire you, or for a whole uneventful evening alone to write a post, or for your CO to say all the perfect things you want to hear, or for simmer drama to end, or for all of your insecurities to resolve, or for your JP partner to find his muse, or— for whatever imaginary perfect conditions you consciously or subconsciously are relying on. Sure, maybe you’re on hold for a tag, or for the plot to advance or whatever, but there are always other story threads and characters to fill things up with when you’re on hold somewhere else. Put a pin in that one and fill out the story somewhere else.
Your creative energies will wither on the vine waiting for the perfect weather conditions, so put a root down deep and flower anyway.
Discussion: Let’s talk ourselves into writing instead of excusing our way out of it.
Action Item: Commit to post and follow through!
IN THE OVERFLOW ROOM ONE, sometime today, write “BOOTSTRAP CHALLENGE” And give us a brief one line pitch about a post or thread series of posts you plan to write next and give us the link to the sim you plan to post it on this week. Just saying out loud that you are working on something can help you move ahead with it.
QUIT BEING SO “NICE”
Maybe this doesn’t apply to everyone, but many players, as their norm, will ride coattails of activity and allow themselves to fall into the background. Then when others aren’t leading anymore for whatever reason, suddenly no one is. And this looks like everyone just not wanting to bother anyone else, or not wanting to interfere or upset anyone by asking after them. It looks “polite”.
But being too polite is like everyone waiting for everyone else to go first and all standing out in the cold at the door. It’s just silly. You would never put up with sitting around at a table playing cards and no one ever taking their turn. You’d leave that table! Well, in simming it’s pretty much everyone’s turn. You can all go. You’re capable of asking any necessary clarification questions from the leadership concerning plot. After that, jump in!
Discussion: I think it’s common to nearly all group endeavors. Do you guys experience sims that suffer from politeness deferment too?
BE A COLLABORATOR
“Eutectics” is a better metaphor than bootstrapping (bootstrapping implies one entity having to impossibly lift themselves off the ground). The trouble with using eutectics as a common metaphor is that it’s kind of esoteric, so I settled for bootstrapping in the title of this panel. But let me explain the miracle of eutectics. I learned about it while running pottery kilns in art school (omg, a use for my art degree?).
In eutectic action, with the power of chemistry you can take two substances which typically individually have an unattainable higher melting point all on their lonesome to instead mix a combined substance with an achievable lower melting point, making them usable to, you know, glaze a plate or whatever. It’s so weird and counter intuitive, it feels like alchemy!
So for our metaphor, Eutectics is kinda like what happens when two or more writers with certain weaknesses share strengths and achieve otherwise unattainable levels of creative energies!
REACH OUT
Sometimes writers are just lonely. Even seemingly popular, happy looking writers. They joined a sim so they don’t have to write alone. But they still feel a bit like they’re waiting to be asked to the dance.
Your Mission:
Pick someone you don’t often talk to, and send them a note. Compliment them. Let them know something you like about their writing or their character and give them an olive branch- an invitation to write with you.
No one has to be the CO or the XO to do this. From cadets to admirals, everyone should regularly reach out to someone and make an offer, whether it’s accepted or not, no matter how many times there’s no pay-off for it. When we invite others and encourage them it builds our own inner confidence and we help ourselves too.
The best communication takes trust and trust starts with being vulnerable. So open up a little and just make opportunities to chat. Don’t wait for someone to reach out to you. You can reach out first. You can even ask again later if it didn’t work out the first time. Don’t be shy.
Discussion: Has someone reaching out to you ever made the difference for you? Do you make a conscious effort to do this outside of your usual circles?
Bonus reading and documents for later consumption:
Gardening Stories
Here is a one page handout explaining how I pull together a post or scene. It’s not exactly outlining (being a “planner''), but it’s a little something more than flying by the seat of your pants (being a “pantster”). Instead, it’s something akin to learning to trust and work with your own intuition. Never wait on the muse again- know that the muse is always right there waiting for you to be ready to take dictation.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XOvlTdd7j9NJfyysBsD5WDPriTPO00dYJRJ5nF7ZVaQ/edit?usp=sharing
Don’t Don’t Do What You Want
Some broadly applicable advice you can apply to anything you actually want to achieve
https://medium.com/personal-growth/why-we-dont-do-what-we-should-be-doing-cbb8ca2dd456Motivation Follows Action
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/may/19/putting-off-important-things-not-reasons-think
From the article: “The irony, I’ve found, is that the only way to obtain the things you imagine are the preconditions for acting – high energy, a sense of concentration – is to start acting. (“Motivation follows action”, as the saying goes.) So when you catch yourself telling yourself you’ll do something later, once you’re refreshed and ready, take it as a prod to do it now. You might think you need to wait for more gumption – but in fact that very thought is a hole in your fuel tank, through which the gumption’s leaking away.”
On finding inspiration
“Meet Fred” - Nikki’s blog post about creative inspiration https://nikkidreamer.com/2020/02/04/fred/
Record your ideas
Maybe a little thought hasn’t grown up yet, but write it down anyway and let it bump into the other ones. Don’t judge it too soon. Just collect it.
Auston Kleon’s “Nest Eggs” article https://austinkleon.com/2018/01/22/thoughts-as-nest-eggs/
Bonus link: Character maker!
https://picrew.me/image_maker/608028Categories: 