let's just take a moment to breathe

[quillpunk]

Okay, so there are currently something like 3 writing games going on over on Mastodon. I'm a pretty frequent user of Mastodon, and really like it. It's simple to me, and with boosts turned off on my home timeline, everything moves kind of slow. Obviously faster then here, but slow for something like Mastodon. It doesn't cross into overwhelming, is what I'm saying. sweat

That said. The writing games.

So the writing games are the basic "here's a bunch of questions related to writing, answer with one a day and hashtag it" kinds. Some of these have been going on for months, with new questions for months. Personally, I'm not a fan just like, on the basic questions premise.

Like, the questions are all just very unhelpful. I don't think deep about my writing, or my characters, or my worlds. (I mean of course I think about it, but not in that way.) I don't have a lot of the answers these questions want, and I'm frankly uninterested in finding them. And it's just not fun to be faced with yet another question leading to yet another realization that hey "I don't know this".

It's alienating, and weird, and honestly kind of elitist in some strange way.

I don't know why I have this impression. I'm also not in a particularly charitable mood, and kind of don't want to interrogate that.

Obviously these questions work for a lot people, or the the writing games wouldn't have grown to such popularity among many of the writers on Mastodon. So like. I'm happy for you, but also please stop shoving it in my face.

Thankfully, Mastodon has really good filters! And now it's not in my face anymore! :D

But I think it basically boils down to 2 things, aside from the general "this is really just not my thing" thing.

1) There's no opportunity to catch up. These are endless; there's new questions and new answers literally every single day. Even though I'm not participating, that doesn't mean I'm not interested in what other people have to say. I am curious about other people's writing process, and it is fun to see them getting talked about.

But with no breaks, it is impossible for me catch up. It is impossible for me to read them. It is impossible for me to sit with any one response and think it over. It is, in a way, a very superficial interaction.

There's no space to breathe, and oh my god is it overwhelming.

It's to the point where, after months of getting inuended with these games, I am exhausted just thinking about it. I'd really rather it all just stopped, but of course that's not something I can ask.

I dawdled to getting the filters set up because the writing games have really turned into the main way people talk about writing on Mastodon. With them gone, it's really clearer than ever. And because I have those filters set to show that that's what they're hiding, I can see exactly how many of the posts on my timeline are just... that.

It's kind of a shame, how structured and pace-less those conversations have turned into. Very... passionless, I suppose.

I barely know what I mean by that.

2) I don't remember what the second thing was. Perhaps something about how the questions are all dependent on you being a certain kind of writer, doing things in a certain way, writing in a certain way, and somehow it all kind of feels like I'm repeatedly being told "your way of writing is wrong".

And now I forgot it again. I was on the track! Damn. XD

Second try to remember. Maybe it has something to do with... nope, I'm out of juice. If somebody else could think of the second thing for me, that'd be awesome XD, LOL.

Nevertheless, I have now filtered all the games and am having a much more pleasant, less stressful experience on Mastodon again. Cheers!

Comments

[senmut]

Writing games rarely help me. For someone who tries to write character driven pieces, those character-building questions just flatten my enthusiasm.

[quillpunk]

oh yeah, you hit so many nails on the heads. i'm definitely a character-driven story writer; i get to know my characters while writing them and what they don't reveal to me i simply don't know, and frankly i'm not especially interested in interrogating them for every minutae of their existence. like, i learn what makes them tick *while i write*, and that's what's interesting to me.

[x003]

I'm glad you muted it! Thankfully Mastodon does have some pretty great muting/filtering features (unlike SOME websites, coughXcough) so at least it's gone now.

But for whatever it's worth, I totally agree! I'm super interested in other people's processes--how they write and how they get from A to B, but a 'game' like that just seems stressful and overwhelming. I also struggle to find writing communities that don't blatantly engage in one-upmanship, and this sounds like it could have potentially leaned into that rather than being a supportive space.

Also, if I remember your second point, I'll be sure to let you know! ;D

[quillpunk]

yep, it just got so overwhelming. like it was fun when it started, when it was just the one game etc, but it quickly grew beyond what i could handle. it was just very *new thing, new thing, new thing* all the time, and it is exhausting even just to watch. i legit don't understand how people are still doing it/doing so many of them at the same time.

and i am sad that this means i miss the process posts. because yeah, that is interesting!

i still haven't found my second point. i suspect it got lost somewhere on the road. thank you for your assistance in tracking them down XD

[mistressofmuses]

I definitely tend to get overwhelmed by things like that. It's part of why I think I struggle to stay active in various communities (and why I find discord a struggle.)

I also know what you mean about the assumption that you're a specific kind of writer in order to get much enjoyment out of that sort of thing. I tried to do a "deep worldbuilding" exercise about one of my stories I was most interested in trying to finish. The exercise was one that really dug down into the absolute minutiae of the world, down to the specific history of the monetary system, where on a map the specific metals were mined, or knowing exactly what sort of calendar they used and what festivals or holidays fell on what dates and within what systems, and how many religions existed in the world even if they were in parts of the world never mentioned in the story...

It burned me out so badly I haven't touched that WIP in... seven years, now?

[quillpunk]

Wow, that worldbuilding exercise sounds exhausting. Very cool for people that can do stuff like that, but yikes, I could never. My condolences for your wip :(

[mistressofmuses]

Right? Like... I am delighted for people who enjoy that level of intricacy and can create that level of detail, and I *do* understand points about how having a sense of the world beyond the pages of your story is going to make the details that you do include richer, etc.

But MAN was that a ticket to burnout, lol.

That's what these sort of endless writing games remind me of. Like... idk what my character's most formative memory from third grade was. There may be SOME formative memories relevant to their backstory, but I don't need to invent one from third grade specifically just to answer a question like that.
Paradoxically, I think that if you get into those sorts of questions and just want to come up with SOMETHING in order to have an answer, it actually makes the character or the story feel weaker... because those details weren't integrated because they were relevant, they were just invented on the spot to fill in a blank.

[lil_1337]

Too much of anything is overwhelming. More so if it does not speak to your lived experience. I'm glad you are having a better time now.

[quillpunk]

definitely. and yes, i'm having a much better time now! :D