A New Kind of Writer's Block

[beejazz]

It's happened. I've come to something of a standstill on my scifi project. I've got all the basics mapped out and the specifics just aren't coming to me. It makes me sad.

And what's worse is that I'm getting a flood of ideas for a high fantasy project. Everything from the mechanics (one roll attacks, flexible magic, etc.) to the way the world should work (the kinds of spells and traditions in magic, the steampunk elements, the races) and all kinds of thing... not yet coherent or fleshed out, but all coming at me at once.

I'm at a loss as to what I should do. Should I put aside the science fiction and pick up the fantasy and just hope the science fiction starts flowing again? Or will I forget the science fiction in my excitement with this new and shiny thing and suffer the same block when it comes time to nail down the details of the fantasy project?

Who's had any experiences like this? What did you do? How did it turn out for you?

[Seraph]

Well, if you've got ideas for your fantasy stuff, don't neglect that, or you may lose the good stuff you have.  I would say, though, don't abandon your sci-fi project.  Make sure you get what you have for the fantasy first, though, then return to the sci-fi and toil away like hell.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

I'd say write what's on your mind. I find getting it on paper (in the computer) gets it out of my head leaving me free to work on whatever else I might want.

[beejazz]

Good advice. I'm posting a chunk of it now.

[Lmns Crn]

I've found that the best cure for writers' block on a particular subject is to write incessantly, even if what you're writing is awful. When you want to get back to your sci-fi project, don't wait for inspiration to strike you. Sit down and write sci-fi information, even if you know with certainty that you're going to have to erase every scrap of this text later on.

Sooner or later, in the process of getting ideas on paper whether they are good or not, you will strike some sort of gold. Then that's the thing you can run with.

[beejazz]

Believe me... every idea I have for the scifi game is going down on paper.

I'm just down 'cause I'm feeling a bit spent lately. It'll pass.

[KeshFerrar]

I've found that the best cure for writers' block on a particular subject is to write incessantly, even if what you're writing is awful. When you want to get back to your sci-fi project, don't wait for inspiration to strike you. Sit down and write sci-fi information, even if you know with certainty that you're going to have to erase every scrap of this text later on.

Sooner or later, in the process of getting ideas on paper whether they are good or not, you will strike some sort of gold. Then that's the thing you can run with.

Great advice in general for anyone that wants to finish a project. But I it's absolutely necessary to understand this if you hope to make a living from any creative hobby - writing, art, sculpture, whatever.

[beejazz]

Oh... the visual arts. Persistence is necessary. But one can always get the gears moving again by drawing from observation for a couple of hours a night.

[Tangential]

Drawing. That reminds me. Will there be any more ECNAD OTATOPs?

[beejazz]

Well... it could go a number of ways.
1)I get a scanner this Christmas and start this back up consistently.
2)I leave a bunch of comics I've got sitting around with a friend who does have a scanner this Christmas and post for a couple of months (what happened earlier... until we ran out).
3)I take that link out of my sig.

I might do something crazy and make a non ECNAD comic. Something with a beginning and end and all that so the temporariness wouldn't suck.

...but as I've said many times... I suck at prose and dialog and such. *shrugs* But I suck at many things and still give 'em a shot, so it's still a maybe.

[Xeviat]

I feel your pain. I've been making very slow work on my setting ever since I switched away from crunch and began to fluff it up. I have one country's past detailed fully and am putting the final touches on it's current culture, but I'm having a hard time working the other races into the scene. I'm trying to focus on a small area rather than the entire world as I had in the past, but I don't feel like it's complete, nor do I know how to complete it.

My advice to me, and thus vicariously to you, is to get off my butt and just start writing. Other posters have said this to you, so I second their notions.

Good luck.

[beejazz]

Dagnabbit... that wasn't writer's block. It was the calm before the storm!

I figured a way to port the system idea from the fantasy/steampunk game into the scifi game and not have totally wonky things happen in terms of autofire rules and other such minor things. You are going to love (maybe) what I have done to initiative and (definitely) what I have done for movement in combat... though I have yet to recover the neat trick inherent in the old system for vehicle movement.

I'm afraid to say a whole bunch of stuff is going to be scrapped on Megillot before I can begin work again (the good news is I know what's getting scrapped, so I have my work cut out for me). Mostly, it's the moons (stuff happens on a planet now), the non-human intelligent life (alas, I had some fun ideas for the goblins... on the whole though other races were a poor fit and more trouble than they were worth), and the whole AE thing. What's left is the seed ship setting, the transhuman stuff (mutants, psychics, cyborgs), the mecha (for now... it's my next candidate up for consideration), and some of the cosmic horror elements. The game has been kind of refocused and tightened up (it is sooo not Ethocentric... so not) to center on transhumanism, cosmic horror, and the apocalypse.

In terms of the system I used in the fantasy game, many of the elements of it were holdovers from the old Megillot system. This was especially true in character creation. That's getting nixed (only in the fantasy game... while the two games will share the core mechanic of roll-unders and stunt dice, the character generation process and other small mechanical things will be handled differently).

For the fantasy setting, it's still forming from the mists. I'm stuck on appropriate races, setting the tech level (both the general tech level and the capacity of certain characters to do things stupidly beyond it), and getting a real clear idea of magic's place in all of this.

Finally, I've got a bunch of crazy idea for this winter's comic that I'm going to run by you guys in a new thread and later. ECNAD might also come back (I've already got plenty of pencil work waiting to be enlarged and inked) if only for a few months.