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The Obsession is Dead, Long Live the Obsession!
Dear me, every time I think I've given up enough stuff to "return" to the mythical land of voluntary simplicity I hop on a new race horse and can't figure out how to jump off. I haven't collaborated on a story in a very long time. It is fun! It reminds me of the handful of times when I took the role of Dungeon Master with my younger siblings as we played Dungeons & Dragons. I was very creative, departed from the script as needed, and kept them enthralled. I mean, you don't want to (permanently) kill off a character merely because she fails to roll the dice in a particular way. You need to leave open a way to salvation, even if it is risky, even if it requires creativity on the part of the players that they don't believe they have. I love playing strategy games, and I also love getting the other players to agree to rule changes that make the game more exciting. Designing games would be a wonderful job, or at least playtesting them. Some games can keep me up all night long, I forget about eating, or sleeping, or contacting people who care about me. I like games like Civ III that let me change the internal settings, to make the game play more like I think it should. Now I see that writing fiction creates the same sort of obsession ... mania ... though I have been able to sleep all right the past two nights. Have I replaced my online Diary obsession with a fiction obsession? I did tell myself, after my father died, that I wanted to become a writer. For some reason I didn't see that I'd already been a writer, for 20 years already. I've been writing a lot! Admitting that I'm already a writer is changing the focus and direction of my writing. I'm not sure where this is taking me, but I'm already having a lot more fun with it.
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