Saturday, part 2

It was after 10:30PM when jordan_greywolf's game wrapped up. Although it was awesome to have done the big end fight and completed the mission, I was sorry it took so long 'cause koogrr and I wanted to see a couple of friends play in their band, Rub Her Sole that evening. Fortunately, the band was playing four sets, from 8PM to midnight. So we said our goodnights to the other gamers and booked.

The bar they were playing at was "Nice & Easy": when we came into sight of it I said to John, "Look! It's our bar!" We got there a few minutes before the last set, just in time to say hi to JZ (who is the band's lead singer) and shadow_kat and his girlfriend (Treis? Terese? I didn't catch her name clearly), both of whom were also here to see the band.

I had a great time. The music was good, lots of fun, and loud without being deafeningly loud. We sat with Kevin and Treis, or at least, sat with them for the first few songs. For the rest of them I danced. :) John danced with me for most of it, although he was put off by the lack of other men dancing. When we started, the floor was empty, and there was a pool table occupying the center of the best vacant spot in the bar which also discouraged dancing. Still, there was enough space that several other women got up to dance, too. We even did a train at one point. And several people (including Treis) dragged their boyfriends up to dance during the slow numbers. The band only played a couple of their original songs, which made sense even if it wasn't my personal preference. But they did play "Slurpee" and "My Dinosaur Fell Over", so I was happy. We whooped and yelled at the end of each song. It was a blast.

Their encore closed around 12:30, and we hung out for a bit afterwards to chat outside the bar. The jukebox, in contrast to the band, was deafeningly loud. Outside, on the opposite side of the bar, with the door closed, the volume was about right. Yowch.

Finally, we headed off -- but not to home. Instead, we went to moonwolf's party again. We didn't stay long this time. The night before, a man named Xast had asked me to braid his hair, which I'd done in elfbraids. I noticed the center braid had come out (the little side braids were still good) so I did a new one, this time a typical three-strand braid that'd last longer than a herringbone does. After a little while of hanging out, we decided to head home. John lured Moonwolf out to the truck to give her a souveneir shirt he'd gotten for her some weeks ago, and told her about the game. She told us about how the party had been going, which had been quite an experience for her so far. "I didn't know I could have a party this large." She said if she did it again, one day would be enough. :)

Then we finally went home and collpased.

Sunday

I slept in again on Sunday, not rising until 11:30 or so. Oooo, such decadence. We hung around the house for a few hours, posting to the butterfly list and lazing around. jordan_greywolf and gwendelkitty had suggested yesterday that we go out to a Korean place they'd tried recently. So in early afternoon we gave them a call and met up for lunch. I got to try pho for the first time -- pretty tasty. :) I still have some left over, in fact; I'll probably finish it today.

Afterwards, we went back to their house, where Greywolf showed us the WoW model viewer, and we used another viewing program to look at Karazhan, the zone Greywolf had set the latest adventure in. It was neat to see the original he'd based his layout on, although also strange. In many ways, the RPG had made it seem more impressive, and certainly larger, as I'd imagined us only scratching the surface of a huge tower in our quest to reach the summit.

Then we watched The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, a neat fansubbed film. Even though the plot hinged around a single fantasy element, it struck me as a quiet, slice-of-life film more like "Whisper of the Heart" than a fantasy or science fiction story.

We went home at a reasonable hour (for a change!) and went to bed without collapsing.

On Monday, John had to work. I slept in again, but not so late this time, and spent most of the day butterflying, writing about Friday and Saturday, and catching up on my friends list. Which I am now actually current on. Neat.

When John got off work, we went over to Chris's house to play "Fearsome Floors", which John and I had never tried before. It was a fun game (Chris has a large selection of fun games) and played well with three people (often a challenge in games, which are mostly aimed at four or more). Chris likened it to "Roborally, only without the contortion 'which way will my robot be turning?' dance." It reminded me a little of backgammon. Perhaps we'll get to play it again before I go home.

We ended the evening watching a couple of episodes of "Undergrads", noteworthy mainly for Cal, a ditzy, handsome character so nice that he was impossible to dislike. John thought of him as a male version of Autumn, the ditzy dryad he'd played some months ago in the WoW game and would like to play again*.

Got home late again, but this time I couldn't manage to sleep in. So this morning I've been dinking around, vagualy contemplating doing something productive. The last couple of entries may be as close as I get, however. But hey, I'm on vacation.

* Aha! That was the other WoW RPG session I was in, Jordan, John -- the one with Autumn. So I've been in five so far -- one as Alice and the Worgen, one as the shapeshifting dragon, and three as Nice. Next weekend will make six. Whee! I've been in more of the WoW RG sessions than some of the Florida natives. :)

Unfinished Things

I was talking to bard_bloom about unfinished projects yesterday. Bard has a number of projects in the works, a couple of which were abandoned, and was saying how it wouldn't let itself start any new projects until it had some milestones on existing ones.

I said that I knew what Bard meant; I'd resolved not to start any new RPG campaigns until I finished some of the current ones. "New stories I don't mind starting."

"Why's that different?" Bard asked.

And then I got distracted by something and never responded.

But it's been on my mind: why is it different?

I think part of it is momentum on a campaign is different from momentum on a book or a story. It's easy for me to lose momentum when writing on my own, but it's also easier to pick it back up again. To use an extreme example: I picked Prophecy back up again after a hiatus of over ten years.

Campaigns are more vulnerable. I have finished campaigns after breaks that lasted several months, but efforts to restart a campaign that's been idle for years have been rare and less successful. Actually, it wasn't until I started running games on Sinai that I got into the habit of finishing campaigns at all. Prior to that, the closest I came was bringing the occassional story arc in a game to a conclusion. Mirari was the first game I ever started with the intention of closing the story at some point. Of solving the great mystery and wrapping up the characters and putting the whole thing away. Of course, I anticipated doing so in a six-eight sessions and it actually took over 120, but hey, minor details.

Anyway, I do feel like starting a new game for me sucks much of the energy out of the existing one, and I like that satisfaction of finishing things.

With writing -- well, I still like the satisfaction of finishing things there, too.

But I still haven't figured out what works for me when writing. I finished Prophecy using the incredibly tedious Master Plan; it worked, yes. But the process was painful and largely joyless, and I wasn't happy with the final product. I finished Silver Scales with no special resolutions about working on it. I was euphoric through the entire final weeks of writing it, working harder than I'd ever done before and deliriously happy about it. And in general, happy with the book I produced (even if it is unpublishably long).

That's part of why I don't want to worry about not starting new projects while still working on the old. Because I didn't worry about it while I was writing Silver Scales and I love how that worked out.

I think another reason, though, is that my unfinished stories bring me some pleasure, too. When I look back at fragments of stories, I do often wish I'd finished them. But I'm also glad that I started them. And I always think, "I can still finish it, someday, maybe." With an unfinished campaign, the moment is passed. It's hard to get back players who've moved on, or to pick up the threads of a plot half-forgotten.

And I don't want to be known as the GM who always quits; the one who has a great start and no follow-through. Maybe it's just different when I've got other participants waiting on me.

Weirdly, it never occured to me until just now to think of art in these terms. I've never thought 'I should work on that painting instead of doing a new sketch'. Probably this is because I've never done the really big involved painting that take hundreds or thousands of hours to finish. If it took me as long to do a picture as to write a book ...

Well, I'd've given up art entirely by now in that case. :)

I'm sure everyone has this problem in one area or another. How do you deal with your unfinished things, and with the urge to do something new instead of working on an existing project?