Hi everyone!
Today, I wanted to take a moment out of your day to talk about something that I believe is very important.
Sometimes, you need to extend beyond what you would normally do. There are a number of ways you can do this, and I try to do as many of them as I can as often as I can:
Step outside your normal medium – Audio Dramas
Yes, really! Audio Dramas are not something I find inherently comfortable yet… doubly so if I’m acting in them. A Titan’s Rise was very educational in that sense, and Infiltration: The Bug War #2 (still on Kickstarter for a few more days, so please support it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/erascapes/infiltration-bug-war-2-audio?ref=5pafkr) has been very difficult in the way I had to tell a story that primarily relied on a massive amount of visuals in the comic format.
I think we’ve done really well on each EraScapes project, but I would not call it a comfortable thing at this stage, so I’ll be continuing for some time. We have a lot more amazing audio for you to enjoy!
Try a new genre – Era: Dragonsong, DISARMed
While I won’t try to claim that the fantasy genre is a complete unknown to me, actually delivering things in that genre is relatively new to me. I’ve never done a full High Fantasy Core Rulebook in the way that Era: Dragonsong is going to be. Instead, I’ve always dodged around it and done something to subvert the genre (Era: Lyres, Era: Silence). Era: Dragonsong is going to be a real challenge and, while I can’t wait, I am also a little nervous as we get started on the worldbuilding.
There’s more, though. DISARMed, our next comic, is a genre that I’m not very familiar with beyond the aesthetic. It’s not a secret that I am not a big animé consumer – I have nothing against it, it’s just not the way my life has gone, and now I’m a little short on time to catch up with everything I don’t have experience of. One of the ways you can get around a lack of knowledge like this is to have a team to work with, as I did on DISARMed. Even if you don’t know much about what you’re doing, you’ll learn very quickly from others!
You can sign up to follow DISARMed, ready for launch, if you like: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sovcomics/disarmed/
Increase / standardise your volume of work – EraMo
We recently finished the Shades of Vengeance version of NaNoWriMo, which we call EraMo. A large number of the community got involved, which was truly inspiring to me. I, personally, wrote almost 100,000 words during the month of November, primarily focused on the Era: Survival Expansions and writing one session per day for one of our games, along with a few other bits and pieces. The members of the community roughly doubled that, coming to a total of around 180,000 words and 45 total sessions written!
It can be very challenging to increase the amount you are writing, but also extremely rewarding to put the time aside and see what results from it.
There are no right or wrong answers in the quest to push yourself creatively. Find something that’s different for you and try – you never know, you might even like it more than what you’re trying to do now!
– Ed
