Font of creativity

Created: Jul 20, 2018 | GA quality

I once read that creative people don't create for any other purpose than the fact that there are ideas bursting out of them, viciously, and if they don't put pen to paper or hand to instrument the ideas will cause them to explode.

Another variation of this is that this is what "truly" or "really" creative people do. Which makes it even more insulting if that's not the way this particular amateur feels about his creative pursuits.

But actually, I kind of feel that way about writing. I don't have anything in particular to write about (wait, wait don't go....) but I feel like I need to be smacking those keyboard keys and giving it a go anyways. I actually remember being in a bunch of online MUDs when I was a preteen and teen, and writing elaborate descriptions of my character and the world around him, just because I could. Those descriptions were most likely excessively filled with the most absurdly gratuitous adjectives and adverbs. I recall that as well. Still, it was a magical world that I could enter into and explore and create.

Currently, I'm the DM of a D&D 5th ed campaign with players I've been playing with for almost three years now. It's fun, and I do have to stay on my toes and think up all kinds of essential details for every situation. I have to not only create the entire world, nay universe, that the characters inhabit, but the exquisite details of every room they enter and creature or person they encounter. I'd love to do something similar online, with some kind of collaborative fiction framework or something. If anyone knows of such a thing, please contact me at travis@travisbriggs.com.

For a while, I was the instigator of an online game of Nomic that was going pretty well. You can find the archives here on Github. It kind of fell apart as players lost interest and had other commitments. Which makes me even more in awe of Agora, a nomic which has been in continual operation via mailing lists since 1993.

Maybe I do have an unbounded font of creativity inside me. Maybe it's just a matter of opening the tap.



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