Shedding Hobbies, Having Fun Writing

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One of my favourite podcasts on writing is Writing Excuses. I’m miserably behind on it at the moment, but that doesn’t stop me from loving the quick, digestible lessons and thought-provoking perspectives on though themes, especially dealt with by genre writers.

One episode I listened to a long time ago was Writing Excuses 5.8: The Excuses You’re Out Of. And it really stuck with me that sometimes you have to give up some things in order to get your writing done. Brandon mentions that he gave up television. They all mention counting various not-writing activities as work and that being an excuse. There are tons of different degrees of excuses in this podcast but I am going to stick to one for this post.

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I gave up television in 2013. But I replaced with with online games and anime. Totally honest here.

In the last month, my favourite online game announced that it was shutting down. I had invested a lot of time into the game and, having it taken away by no active choice of my own, really stung. I had no control about keeping the game in play. I tried to transfer to the Japanese version of the game, which was still running, but I realized that it may end soon as well.

So, one of my coping mechanisms I came up with, was to twist up some of my favourite character stories and write them.

And then I stopped myself. My way of regaining the feelings I had when gaming…was to write. If that was the case, why was I gaming in the first place and not writing this whole time?!

I can go into a long list of excuses as to why I gamed. like I wanted the story fodder, I enjoyed the interface, the tactics met what I wanted to have in a gaming experience…but really, the game closing has been a gift. I have a lot of time back. And a motivation to get more words written. Because then I am in control of the story. I won’t have it ripped away from me.

So it’s time to get back to work.

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