The Research Diet

OK, so a couple of things…

• One, my confidence level in my ability to construct/craft stories has found a new level, which I am super excited by. Earlier this year, once I got Scott Snyder’s “Fuck Plot” concept into my head, that it’s the character arc that matters, and you build everything around that, I was hopeful. And now that I’ve completed two stories, where I “knew enough” to complete the arc, and I’m editing/revising… knowing what I need to fix to fulfil the ARC/CDA… it has become one of the most liberating feelings ever. So with that said…
• Two, this opens up a lot of doors, but a lot of doors has always been more crippling than empowering when it comes to moving things forward. The tyranny of choice, the shackles of freedom, the immobilizing strain and angst that comes with decision. I’ve been looking at all the avoidant activities, or “hobbies-that-aren’t-really-hobbies” I’ve collected, with the illogical reasoning that it would inspire/serve/aid in creating stories… especially the TTRPGs that take up three four shelves in the home office, and I’m questioning their actual utility through the simple lens of the clarifying question of “will this help me create stories?”, and on the surface, the answer is “yes”, but…
• Three, reviewing this early 2023 entry on what I actually want, one thing becomes clear. I don’t care to create stories purely for the sake of replacing my income (the dream) if I’m simply going to end up writing stories that don’t have some sort of potential for permanence. Like, I don’t see why I would bother with that. I still want to write an analysis of my last twelve months back into comics, but I already know that I DO NOT WANTdo to write OTAA kind of plots, the jokey-light-hearted stuff, the read-and-forget kind of stuff that’s written just because it needs to be written (serialized content and/or light/fluffy/safe SFFH).

I’m still clearing my throat. Hold on. So, what triggered this journal entry (aside from the three points above, which was meant to give context to what I’m about to say instead of introducing the entry) was triggered by BackerKit asking me to pony up for Kult: Divinity Lost (2018) stuff from Helmgast. I had originally backed the campaign at 10 SEK (basically a loonie) because I didn’t want to allocate bandwidth into thinking about what I wanted from the campaign. I ended up going down the rabbit hole of figuring out ALL THE THINGS they had available and I think the final price point came out to over $600, at which point, I was like, I just can’t deal with this right now. But now the pledge manager is open and I’m confronted with the problem again… what do I want… but now, and always, through the lens of, “will this help me make stories?”, and as per above, the answer is, “yes, but…”. Are these the type of stories I actually want to write?

Which kicks into a few more points, I guess…

• Here’s the deal, the last six months has been great. Actually writing fiction. But I can only afford 30-60m a day. So progress is slow. prj: WAITE, a ~5,000 word story ended up taking two months because MECH, research, story dev, and drafting by looking things up every second sentence. Not the speed I want. But let’s say I do get to the speed I want of one short story per month. It’s still NOT A LOT OF TIME.
• And punctuating the above, as always, since 2022, the entire concept of Four Thousand Weeks has hung over me. I simply don’t have that much time. I started this fiction thing late. I am 44. I have maybe twenty, twenty-five years of productive time left? In short, I do nothing I have that many spaces/slots for stories in me. Put another way, I don’t want to accumulate a body of “throwaway stories” if I can’t help it. If I’m going to write stories, they have to be everything I can put into it – and not in a perfectionist way, but in a, do it in a serious way by telling stories that I truly believe are meaningful.

So back to the question catalized by Kult’s Backerkit. Here’s the other thing. I have several books in my shopping cart for my local bookstore. Inside are books on the I Ching, another one on Mahjong, and three on Elizbeth I (Alison Weir’s biography, her actual written documents, and Boyd’s book on her private life). I know definitively that the latter (the books at Western Sky Books) are a lot more likely to help me make stories I want to tell, whereas yet another TTRPG, despite what looks like great worldbuilding and in a niche genre (modern day paranormal horror), does not.

There’s another factor at play here. Again, reviewing what I wrote when I initially got back into the mindset that, yes, I’m going to make an honest go at becoming a professional storyteller… and given the time constraints I have above… the real question here is… What stories do I, can I, would I prioritize?.

While I would love to write ALL THE STORIES… in ALL THE GENRES… this is simply not possible with the constraints I have. Like, even if, magically, and in some insanely lucky world where my debut novel becomes a bestseller and I can quit all my clients, that still doesn’t remove the constraint of the amount of time I have. OK sure, I would increase productivity from ~45m/day average to say, 4 hours per day, which technically 5X’s the amount of time I have to write stories. But it is still a limited amount of time when you include research, story-dev, drafting, edits, revisions… and then just in general “drawer time”, where the story sits and you take a break from it, and then you go back to it to rewrite what needs to be rewritten.

So then the question is - going back to a TTRPG like Kult versus what’s in my shopping cart (genuine history, primary sources, occult stuff based on what people actually believe for realsies in the real world versus what a game designer was inspired by and may have altered to fit its aesthetic, mood, or whatever the fuck else)… the question, the answer, becomes glaringly obvious.

I, as a author, want my stories to be grounded, and riddled with Easter Eggs and references from actual “reality”. That is systems of magic, historical documents, religion, culture, geographical deep cuts, etc. etc. that someone could potentially look up and go… oh, that sneaky bastard, that’s a deep cut reference. I don’t, can’t imagine myself ever writing something that’s purely from my imagination in the sense that it isn’t in conversation with, or heavily referencing something else that already exists. That kind of puzzle making has inspired me in the last few stories I’ve written.

So what’s the research diet? I think the endgame is what I want to create has to have that density of references to stuff with a genuine weight and history to it. Documents. Languages. Primary sources. Rulesets that people genuinely believed in and practiced (religion, magick, occult). Hidden references. I want this in my storytelling. A LOT of the joy I get from crafting stories is loading it up with oblique and nuanced references, Easter Eggs, social commentary, etc.

Which leads me back to the original question that triggered this entire entry. Do I just ignore the Kult: Divinity Lost backerkit? Yes. Do I just purchase everything in my Western Sky Books shopping cart? Also yes. Do I sell that huge fucking 2021-2024 rabbit hole of TTRPGs? Probably also a yes. I think the stuff I may want to keep are the ones with at least three decades of history. For example, the original D&D modules or CoC scenarios from the 70s/80s… but even that, I’m not keen on to be honest. I’m keeping all my DG stuff purely because I know they included a lot of American espionage history. I’m going to keep all the DCC stuff because it’s gonzo wild stuff.

Ultimately – the question to all future purchases where I even think it may help me write stories isn’t a simple yes, but with the criterion of is it grounded in something that has a lot of substantive history and weight. I.E. does it help me write the kind of stories I want to write and not just “does it help?” which is the equivalent to the very bad advice of “it can’t hurt”. (Yes, yes, it can. You are still expending time, energy, money, effort, and bandwidth into doing something when you do something that “can’t hurt” and has unproven efficacy).