Done, Not Finished

Breathe.

I am completed the principle writing of my book Fallow, formerly called the Fifth Man.

This doesn't mean I'm done.  But it does give me a tremendous certainty that it will be done, and soon, so much so that I'm putting together cover proposals.  I expect changes in the layout and text, but the image works just fine for me and I believe I'll go with that.  Only ... the image is 5000x1650 pixels, so the precise part of the image that will be used is still up in the air.

I have slightly more than 120,000 words to edit and pull together, to correct for continuity errors and to artistically enhance sections that don't meet the best possible criteria.  I have been doing this part of the task piecemeal for a year ... but now the book has to be melded into a unit.  For the first time, I feel I'm in a headspace to do that.

There have been great changes in my thinking in these last three weeks, since I last posted here ~ and these will affect my readers.  I'm going to considerably reduce the amount of posting that I will be doing on this blog, Tao of D&D, going forward from this time.  I have written more than 2,600 posts over 11 years, covering virtually every subject within role-playing games and D&D in particular.  I have not quite posted once per day, but I know from my stats that most readers do come here everyday, particularly weekday mornings ... so I know this will mean there isn't a thousand words waiting for you when you load up your work computer and want to put off starting your day.

It is only that I feel that much of the effort I have applied here has been in vain.  We talk about throwing things out into the void but ~ and this is the crux of it ~ I am throwing ideas and vision into this void that isn't to be found anywhere else on the internet.  I am not another DM preening on my amazing running ability.  I'm not another shill writing derivative reviews of company products.  I'm bored and done with flame wars and with pushing off those who are determined to treat the best game in the world as an ongoing exercise in Saturday night redundancy.  I'm not interested in being open to the same old dictates and the same old memes about what the game is "about" or why enough rules that empower players to predict results from strategies is "bad."  I cannot make any more headway with these people that I have already made.  If the arguments I've proposed thus far aren't enough to register a message, then ... so be it.

I will be continuing to write on this blog, and much the same material as I always have.  I'll just write less on the ol' Tao.  About the same as a typical D&D blogger.

But I am a writer.  I can't stop writing; it is my extraordinary pleasure.  So there's no reason why, just because I don't write here, that I should stop writing at the pace I enjoy.  And if the reader is interested in seeing that other writing, I won't deny the reader the pleasure of it.  Writing should be done for others and not only for oneself.

If the readers are interested in knowing where else I'll be writing, they should check out my patreon page.  The answers can be found there.

Later, gators.