i didn’t watch the solar eclipse but worked on my novel instead, waiting for the dragon eye to open so i could ask it why modern life is so hard and why we accept humans killing other humans and who deserves punishment, and when the eye didn’t answer, i picked up candy wrappers under my desk and spoke in Scottish and Russian accents, throwing them away, smashing garlic with the flat blade of my knife, and figuring all life is hard, whether it’s justice or vengeance or a horse standing alone in a convenience store aisle, it’s all the same: a missed opportunity.
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Ever since discovering Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, I’ve been a fan. I’ve been playing with family and friends for a few years now, but there’s always been that itch to run a public game, to sit down at my FLGS and play with strangers and initiate more people into the wonderfully weird world of DCC.
In July, I finally did it. I joined the DCC Road Crew and ran a game open to the public at RIW Hobbies and Games in Livonia, Michigan.
And, of course, I ran one of the all-time classics, one of the greatest character creation funnels known to humankind, the inimitable: Sailors on the Starless Sea.
I was nervous as hell, but thanks to a super-friendly and experienced player who sat at my table, and the participation of my husband and brother (who gave tons of moral support), I made it through with only a few boneheaded mistakes, and everyone seemed to have a great time. I must have done something right, because the players all came back for round two in August.
I had never run Sailors before, although I was familiar with its legendary status in the DCC community. I have to say, the hype is warranted. It’s a great module, a wild experience that really captures the feel and tone of DCC. It is both metal and epic. There are grotesque beastmen (verging on the absurd), there is a burnt-out husk of a Chaos chapel, a pool of glowing skulls, an underground sea, a magical ship that sails of its own volition, an ancient ziggurat at the center of a foul sacrifice, and several other wicked and horrific encounters that would test the courage of even a hardy band of adventurers — and all of this is meant for a pack of zero-level newbs who fight with pitchforks and carry stinky cheese in their pockets.
There are so many great moments in this adventure that it’s hard to pick the best ones. My group had fun exploring the burnt-out chapel, they had some epic battles against the beastmen, and they even had one PC get put under a spell and try to sacrifice another PC by using a magic ring he’d found earlier. Of course, the spell not only failed but misfired, and the PC who used it suffered corruption. His face broke out in boils, and he had a permanent loss of Personality! Good times!
The final encounter atop the ziggurat was also epic and had a twist that surprised the group and made for an almost-TPK. There are so many things to interact with and explore in this module, I could see myself running it multiple times and having totally different results each time. I’m kind of itching to run it again, in fact.
(Maybe I’ll invite some unsuspecting family members to play DCC over the Christmas holidays…)
If I had one major criticism of my own Judging skills during the game, it’s that I panicked when the party got to the big climactic battle and I ended up rushing things and making unwise judgments when I had to improvise rulings. After the party defeated the Big Bad, I should’ve had PCs with the lowest Luck get hit with falling debris and such, so that only a few PCs would have to make Reflex saving throws. Instead, I had all the PCs making saving throws, and that meant even more casualties at the end. Those deaths felt anticlimactic and unfun. DCC’s Luck mechanic is a great way to deal out random effects without it feeling punitive against the players, and it was something I had forgotten to utilize.
(This is another reason I want to run the module again. I know I can do a better job the second time around.)
I was incredibly nervous about running a public game, but it turns out, the experience was more rewarding than I could have imagined. Not to be too much of a nerd, but I feel like I’ve “leveled up” as a Judge. I did something I wasn’t sure I could do; I rose to the challenge. And going forward, I’ll continue to grow and hopefully get better at running games.
And most importantly, I now have another option for playing RPGs. I love the hobby and finally feel like I’m getting to play games as often as I’ve always wanted. To my surprise, there’s a whole burgeoning community of players in my local area who are interested in DCC RPG. That has been an incredible, delightful surprise. All it took was putting myself out there and taking a little risk. Glory and gold were won that day, and not just by the PCs. I came out a little richer too.
I went back to teaching last month. Not an easy decision, but a necessary one.
Perhaps.
I made the decision out of fear, and I’m not ashamed by it. Money is necessary to live in our world, I have children, and the uncertainty of freelance work was giving me crippling anxiety. When I switched to being a freelancer last year, I thought I could handle the ups and downs, the lean months and the flush months.
Reader, I could not.
I was anxious almost from the word go, but then I got a few clients and things seemed good. Then I got no clients, and things seemed bad. Then a client again, but not much money. Then no clients. I watched as my savings drained from my account like a torrent of thunderstorm rain.
I was very, very bad at this uncertainty stuff, at this hustling business. I am not a hustler, it turns out. I’m a writer, but I’m not necessarily an entrepreneur. Being a freelance editor was not a good fit for me. Frankly, being a freelance anything seems to be a bad fit. I like the security of a paycheck, a regular, twice-a-month, I-know-what-I’m-getting paycheck, and if that makes me a soft, squishy coward, then so be it. I like knowing I can pay my bills and buy groceries and save up for my children’s future.
There’s a big push in our culture to equate making money with worth. The goal is to make a living from my writing, right? That’s how you know you’ve achieved success, right? That’s the dream everyone is always talking about. Do what you love for a living and you’ll never work a day in your life, or some such bullshit.
But doing what you love for a living, in my experience, at least if that thing is creative work, is a double-edged sword. It means putting a burden on your art: it must feed you; it must support your kids. That’s a heavy burden, and I found myself questioning my earlier desires. Maybe if I was suddenly making five or six figures with my writing, I’d be singing a different tune. I may yet sing a different tune, I don’t know.
But I do know that even the thought of relying on my writing for my family’s survival is an unpleasant thought. I once considered it a glorious thought, but then I saw what the uncertainty of being my own boss wrought, and I noped right out of that situation. It’s too much pressure. It takes the fun of writing and makes it into a J-O-B, and I don’t want my writing to be a J-O-B. I want to be disciplined and write everyday and treat it seriously, but I don’t want it to be a job. A job is what you do for money so you can survive.
I survive in order to write; I don’t want to write in order to survive.
Having a day job that isn’t my writing (or editing) means I can stop worrying about paying the mortgage and let my art be my art. I can write with total freedom, no pressure. I can simply enjoy myself, because writing is supposed to be fun, and it IS fun when I’m doing it for pure joy and not for money.
I want people to read my stuff, of course. For any artist, there is that element of wanting to connect and communicate, which is why we make stuff in the first place and don’t just leave it all in our heads, so I don’t mind selling my books. In this world, people rarely value things if they get them for free. But if I sell them or don’t sell them, it won’t matter. The fun part is the writing.
And in my work as a teacher, I get to do two things I love doing: reading and writing. (And a third thing, which is working with young people, who are very funny and energetic and much more fun to work with than adults.) I get to read books in order to teach them to students, and also in order to learn and improve my teaching. And I write in front of my students and alongside them in order to model the process and techniques of good writing. Do I wish I didn’t have to devote so much time to my day job? Yes. A thousand times yes. But it’s a necessary evil. It gives me the security I need in order to be wild and free in my art. It relieves the burden.
The key to any day job for the artist, I think, is to find one that doesn’t drain you and leaves enough time and energy for you to make your art. For the last several years, prior to my attempts at freelance editing, I thought teaching was too draining. I never had time for my art. I thought if I switched to being my own boss, I could give myself more time for writing. And it was true, I DID have more time for writing. I just didn’t have much money. And not having money made it hard to use that time for writing. Crippling anxiety ensued, and do you know what crippling anxiety does to your energy? Drains you. Dries you up.
I’m not sure if I’ve solved the puzzle of how to be a teacher and not let it drain me, but I’m trying. I’ve set ground rules for myself to keep teaching in its proper balance both time-wise and emotionally. I’ve become even more disciplined in my art, making sure I get up early every morning and write. I’ve stopped setting too-ambitious goals for my art, focusing instead on daily habits. I think what caused my burnout earlier as a teacher is that I saw teaching as opposition to my writing. If only I wasn’t teaching, why then I could write five novels a year!
Maybe I could. In fact, based on some of my output this past summer, I could do it. In the month of July I wrote about 50,000 words. I could probably maintain that pace (or greater) if all I had to do all day was write. But even if I did write five novels a year, how do I feed my children in the five years it would take to write twenty-five novels? Where does the money come from while I’m trying to reach my twenty books to 50K?
It comes from a day job, that’s where. And I’m not ashamed to say it. I used to be ashamed. After all, isn’t the goal to be one’s own boss? Isn’t the goal to make a “living” with your art?
But what if that isn’t the goal? What if the goal is something else, something that doesn’t require putting a burden on my art? Maybe the goal is to make the art. Full stop. Make the art. Let the day job pay the bills. Let the imagination and the heart and the joy make the art.
There’s no shame in having a day job. Too often, we tell artists that they haven’t achieved success unless they are making a living from their art, but that’s Capitalism talking, not the truth. The truth is, making art IS the success. It’s the creative act that counts, not the bank account.
And one further note: Since returning to teaching and getting a regular paycheck, I now have some disposable income I can put towards supporting the artists I couldn’t support before when I was barely scraping by and watching every penny fly out the window like a frightened bird. Now I can buy digital and vinyl albums of my favorite bands on Bandcamp. Now I can support more writers on Substack. Now I can buy more books from indie authors. There’s something to be said for having a little cash in one’s pocket just for fun. Now I can give back and make life a little easier for my fellow artists. That’s worth a lot. It’s worth going back to the old 9-to-5 (or in my case, 8-to-3).
I had a daily fiction-writing streak going since early March, and yesterday I broke the streak. Didn’t write any words for my fiction.
I got up late, still needed to make lunches for me and the kids, and due to an emergency sinkhole repair on the main road I usually take to work, I needed to leave early. So when I sat down to write, I barely managed to get a few words into my writer’s notebook before I had to jump in the shower.
Today was almost a repeat of yesterday, but I made it to the writing desk a little bit earlier and managed to eek out one sentence. Nineteen glorious words. But they were enough. A new streak begins.
What’s amazing about those nineteen words is that as soon as I’d written them, I felt myself lighten. Suddenly the early morning sun seemed brighter. I felt this buoyancy and energy surge through me. Just because of nineteen measly words. One sentence. But it was enough. Even something as small as a sentence can give me that spark. This is why I write fiction. Whenever I do–the good days, the bad days, the days when the words flow, and the days when the words seem caked in dry mud–I feel better. There’s something about putting words to paper–storytelling words, words that make up new worlds and characters–that fills me up, that makes me feel whole. Even one sentence, one small set of nineteen words, can do it.
I may not be writing thousands of words each day like I was in the summer, but even a small smattering of words, written daily, keeping (or starting) a streak, can make a difference. Small words every day, 365ish days a year, adds up. But even beyond the growing word count, it’s the act of writing that gives me joy. One sentence, a few words. That’s all it takes.
I tried sticking to my homegrown reading challenge, but, well, I just couldn’t. The library is TOO GOOD to pass up. All those books! Infinite possibilities!
I did start reading a book that I’ve had on my shelf for ages (Raymond Feist’s Magician: Apprentice), so that was one good result of my reading challenge. And I gathered a stack of books from our home shelves and have them sitting by my bedside, so I’m ready to read more of the books I actually own.
But the library! I can’t quit it, not even for a season.
I suppose it’s because “reading recklessly” is just too much fun. I hear about a book, I want to read it. And the library lets me get it. I can’t stick to a prescribed order when it comes to reading. I just need to go where the whim takes me. If my ultimate goal is to read as much as I can and enjoy as much as I can, then I need access to my library. I need the inter-library loan system, and I even need my Hoopla app. I’m not strong enough to resist the power of the library, especially if what I really want when I read is to enjoy myself.
And that’s what I really want. I want to read all the books and have fun doing it.
Of course, by focusing more attention on the books I already own, I’m doing something good too. I’m glad to be reading Magician: Apprentice, and I’ll be glad to pick up Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales next, and the Lais of Marie de France, and Dragons of Winter’s Night, and Bradbury: 100 Stories, and so on.
But, yeah, I also need my library books. I don’t like artificially constraining myself. And the library is right there! It’s got all the books!
I’m often creating challenges and restrictions for myself in an attempt to try something new or push myself into an unfamiliar direction. I don’t think this tendency is a bad one, but I also am naturally rebellious, and the minute I start imposing restrictions on myself, I start bristling at them.
Anyway, I’m reading library books and ebooks again. But I’m also reading more books from my homegrown shelves. I’ve reopened my awareness to those books I already own, and I’m making it a point to reacquaint myself with them. I couldn’t stick to my challenge, but I did gain something from it. And that’s cool.
According to Esquire, short books are IN right now. I am part of this reading trend, apparently, because I too read This Is How You Lose the Time War partly based on Bigolas Dickolas’s recommendation on Twitter.
(I mean, not because of their recommendation, but because our book club thought it was funny that someone who goes by the moniker Bigolas Dickolas was getting a viral response to a tweet about this book, and also, it was a book we all had on our reading lists anyway.)
But I have always liked short books, so it’s not really a trend for me. I like really long books too. I basically really like books, all sizes.
But short books are having their moment, apparently, and that’s good for me (I guess) because I tend to write shorter books (at least for now… who knows what will happen in the future). Not that anything I’ve written has become an internet phenomenon like This Is How You Lose the Time War…
But I’m not interested in shorter books for my own career’s sake. I’m more interested in them for my sake as a reader and observer of trends in fantasy fiction.
My question is this: Has fantasy joined the short books crowd, or will the trend continue to be longish books? (I’m defining longish as 400 pages or more.)
I’m not against longish books by the way. (See above: I like books of all sizes.)
But there was once upon a time when fantasy novels were shorter than they are now, particularly the fantasy of the mid-20th century, and everyone was cool with it. We all know that Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings set the template for what a fantasy series is “supposed” to be, but even LOTR isn’t that long when you think about it. It’s one book that clocks in at roughly 1,000 pages (which is long, yes), but it was published as three separate books of roughly 350 pages in length (so, today’s normal book length or shorter).
But starting around the 1990s?, epic fantasy needed to be EPIC both in scope and size. Five, seven, ten books in a series, and each book is pushing 800 pages, and some are even longer than that, and it’s not really fantasy unless it’s dense with detail and world-building. Tolkien’s LOTR wouldn’t even be considered long by these standards.
I guess we’ve moved away from massively long books in recent years, but most fantasy is still around the 400-600 page range. Six hundred pages isn’t LONG, but it ain’t short either. Put it into a series of several 600-page books, and we’re talking about a commitment.
When I pick up an old pulpy paperback from the 1960s or 70s, I’m always surprised by how short these novels are compared to today. Jack of Shadows was SLIM. I just bought the Empire of the East series by Fred Saberhagen and each of the three volumes combined is shorter than many a single fantasy novel you’d see on the bestseller chart today. The Last Unicorn is sub-200 pages, so are Le Guin’s Earthsea novels. Patricia McKillop, Andre Norton, Poul Anderson, Michael Moorcock, et. al. were writing slim volumes back in the day and everyone was cool with it.
I know trends in publishing are different from trends in storytelling and reading, but the two trends intersect. If the market has decided a fantasy novel has to “be” a certain kind of thing, then that is what we often see getting published.
Slightly large caveat here: With indie publishing, writers can basically do whatever they want. We can publish shorter books and not bat an eye. So, in this sense, we’re not beholden to what traditional publishers are looking for when publishing fantasy novels. We can bring back the olden days of sub-200 page novels and live like kings and queens. Definitely. This is true. I’m living that dream right now, with my longest paperback reaching only 284 pages. Huzzah!
However, the expectation of readers can still be set by what the publishing norm is in any given genre, and if indie writers and trad publishers continue to put out fantasy novels that are 400 pages or more a pop, then readers have expectations for what a “fantasy novel” is. The publishing trend can impact the reading trend.
(Obviously, as we’re seeing with the overall trend of readers reading shorter works in general, the market can and will adjust to what readers want, so it’s not all puppet-masters pulling the strings from above. I’m just curious about whether fantasy READERS are interested in shorter works overall. Maybe they are? Maybe there already is a trend for shorter fantasy novels and I’m just missing it? Very possible.)
I know I’ve really enjoyed the shorter fantasy I’ve read from the 60s and 70s. The commitment isn’t as huge, so if the book is a little uneven or weird, it’s okay. It’s only 160 pages. The swiftness of the storytelling is refreshing too. Even though these books are short, they don’t skimp on plot or world-building or anything else. They move breezily from strange vista to strange vista, and I don’t feel like I’m missing anything from the experience even though it’s a much shorter experience than what I’m often used to with books from today.
As a writer, I know I will continue to write shorter books (and hopefully longer ones too!), but as a reader, I’d love to see shorter fantasy novels make a comeback. With that shortness comes a slightly different approach to storytelling that I think can be refreshing. In 200 pages or less, both the writer and the reader can take chances that we might not otherwise take if the story were longer. I’d love a return to the old pulpy paperback days. Give me 150 pages and some weirdness, and I’m in!
