Advice/Help Inspiration/Growing a Universe, Activity & Insecurity

[Revna Eris]

About Inspiration

This is gonna sound weird, but I don't feel I'm alone?

I deal with a lot of struggle after a certain point when developing a certain part of my own universe. I can't come up with as many ideas, and its a bit bland. Any advice or help for this?

I can develop a lot, like species, variations, placements of population, lore behind wars and families and battles, but it feels like maybe I'm not doing enough on some level? I don't know.

Sorry if this is dumb heh...

Activity and Insecurity

Activity is a bit of a struggle for me in group projects. Not because I don't like them, but because I'm insecure. I feel I don't write enough, or don't know how to keep going, I get intimidated. Maybe I'm just dumb? I want to get out of that struggle but its a bit difficult. Especially when I tend to write from an emotional standpoint of what is felt, than the visual aspect in regards to describing movements and in some cases environment.

Maybe there's a potential method to work past this? I don't know...

 

[Idea]

I mean, even God wanted to rest for a day after making the world. Your or me, creating a whole universe in our writing? I think it's normal to only come up with so much.

What I would recommend though is not relying on inspiration. It's a spiral: Rely on it too much, and you'll grow accustomed to only working when you're feeling in the mood. That makes you work less, which in turn as you get used to it makes you need more to actually feel in the mood, which in turn makes you work even less and so on. You'll probably not do your best work when you're not inspired but part of what makes our best work our best work is that it's beyond what our "normal" is. So nobody would reasonably expect you to be that all the time.

 

[Revna Eris]

I mean, even God wanted to rest for a day after making the world. Your or me, creating a whole universe in our writing? I think it's normal to only come up with so much.

What I would recommend though is not relying on inspiration. It's a spiral: Rely on it too much, and you'll grow accustomed to only working when you're feeling in the mood. That makes you work less, which in turn as you get used to it makes you need more to actually feel in the mood, which in turn makes you work even less and so on. You'll probably not do your best work when you're not inspired but part of what makes our best work our best work is that it's beyond what our "normal" is. So nobody would reasonably expect you to be that all the time.

Y'know thats something that didn't really occur to me. Writing with inspiration is great, but you're right in that it become a hindrance like any dependency. I'll be sure to take that into consideration when I write!

 

[Idea]

Y'know thats something that didn't really occur to me. Writing with inspiration is great, but you're right in that it become a hindrance like any dependency. I'll be sure to take that into consideration when I write!

Yep. Of course there's such a thing as actual burnout as well, but it's a balance one has to figure out on their own unfortunately. Personally the way I try to overcome this problem is by systematizing things - having a more structural, distanced approach or splitting the problem into smaller parts, to almost "automate" the part of the process I might struggle with if I'm not feeling inspired or the words/ideas just aren't coming to me.

 

[nerdy tangents]

So to narrow in on the activity and insecurity side of thing. The best thing I ever did for myself (online and off) is just stop comparing myself to others.

We have a tendency to project our own insecurities outward. Not only do we assume everyone else excels in areas we are struggling but that the whole world is judging us as harshly as we judge ourselves.

But the plain fact is our partners are too busy with their own insecurities to bother judging us. Sure you might get the rare exception of someone who has to tear other people down to feel better about themselves. But that person is an asshole.

Most people don’t actually care how much world building you do on your own or whether or not your as active as they are.

What makes a roleplay successful is just honest communication. If you can only be active on the weekends then just tell the group that. If you need help with a world building project just ask for feedback.

Roleplay is all about collaboration. You aren’t supposed to go it alone. So instead of worrying about how you stack up against other people. Look around you for people you can work with to make both your writing better.

 

[Beckoncall]

My best advice is to find and utilize some RP/RPG tools (in particular random generators) to help do some of the work for you.

You'd be surprised what kind of generators are out there -- from names of people and places to whole plot generators.

Don't do more heavy lifting than you have to, and use the best tools for the job rather than doing it all from scratch.

If you ever want a buddy to talk about a project, look me up!