I’ve continued to struggle with my writing as of late, most recently with being annoyed at some of the tonal dissonance in part 4 of the Across the Halls of Falden. I know my depression is doing its best to rear its head right now and so my self-criticism is in full force. Along with that has been just difficulties in getting into the headset of writing which doesn’t help the quality of my work. The upside is that I’m still writing (in fact I’m not too far behind on hitting that 25,000 word goal for the month). It may not be words I’m the most happy about but stories are getting written, characters and worlds are getting developed, and this whole project has really been about building that consistency of writing. Even recently the Halls of Falden have helped me realized certain things about Quartes and how I want to present a larger story with him.

That said, if I’m being honest, I’m feeling a bit stagnant in my writing. There are two things I’ve decided to do in order to help with that. Across the Halls of Falden should end in another part or two, and I think when it does I’m going to go back to something we’ve seen plenty of. Which is just Quartes and Keto talking. That isn’t really breaking the stagnation but they are stories I enjoy writing and are easy to write. That will give me time for the other thing. Which is I’m starting a Dungeon and Dragons campaign. A group of friends I’ve known for most of my life started playing DnD online back during COVID. I ran the first of those campaigns and my friends have taken turns since and I’ve decided to have another go at it. I’m using the Forgotten Realms setting (though influenced by some other stories and campaigns I’ve done in the past) and I think the change of setting and style of storytelling may help me out of my rut.

Not sure how much of that campaign will show up here, though I am fond of writing lore articles for my friends, so we’ll see. Regardless, I’ll still be here and we’ll see how it all goes.

Go forth and do good things,

Sean