All fired up, podcast, etc.

Going to Gorilla Con got me to thinking about all the projects I'd been working on around and since the last Gorilla Con, and that got me to thinking about how little I've accomplished in the last year.

So I've spent a lot of time this past few days thinking about what I want to focus on… part of my problem was that I'd started trying to do too many things, and I ended up doing none of them well.

So I've got three big things that have been on my plate:

The Art of Roleplaying podcast

I podfaded before I even had a podcast. Episode 0 was a test, and it was actually recorded a year before I decided that I had enough to say to fill a podcast. But then when I recorded Episode 1, I got hung up in editing… recording is so different from writing, especially when you're doing it extemporaneously. So I got into editing and found that there were things I'd left out, things I wanted to say differently, etc. I'm afraid that if I scripted, I'd still have some of that problem. The perfectionist in me likes to fine-tune… but when you're down into editing, new content means going back to the mic and editing it in. And I'm not convinced that I can accurately reproduce my sound well enough to merge segments seamlessly. So Episode 1 sat for six months! I didn't realize it'd been so long.

The Wichita Roleplayers and Game Days

Game Day 2 disappointed me, and although it was probably due to my being in the wrong frame of mind, it discouraged me enough to consider throwing in the towel on this local networking thing. Add to that that we decided to discontinue the bi-monthly meetings because so few people were showing up, and I just let the whole thing slide for about eight months or so and didn't do much with it.

My roleplaying publishing business

This one was also kind of still-born… I got started with a clear picture of what I wanted to do, but some things happened to muddy the waters. And the longer I delayed, the muddier things got… RPGNow and DriveThruRPG merged, Spirit of the Century changed the face of the Fudge market, and I got really discouraged with the Fudge community in general. I found that, despite having this Fudge rulebook, and over ten years of Fudge publishing, that Fudge didn't really have the foundation I wanted to publish on top of. This got drowned out in indecision and frustration.

–-

So after some thinking, I decided to pursue the podcast. I've always wanted to do voice work, and I really like listening to roleplaying podcasts, and I think I still have something to say that isn't filled by any of the existing podcasts out there. Hard to believe that when we recorded Episode 0, there were like five roleplaying podcasts, now I can't keep track of them all. So it'll be harder to get established, but I'm going to give it a go.

Of course, I've also been working on some Wichita Roleplayers stuff, trying to plan a Game Day 3, improve the website, put together more get-togethers, etc.

So that makes the real decision the tough one… because the publishing thing requires the most commitment to keep it going, I've decided to leave that on hold for awhile. I'm going to get back to it someday, probably after I get the house sold and I move to cut my commute down from 1.5 hours a day to something more reasonable. But the thing about pushing the publishing to the back burner is that it is liberating… I actually feel more freedom to write whatever I want to work on, so I can get some writing done, instead of feeling that I always need to be working on the project at the top of the publication schedule.

I've finished editing Episode 1 of the podcast. I just need to record a better intro and splice the elements together… you should see another episode Friday night. Then I'll start working on the next one. I don't know if we'll make a every-other-week schedule, but I'm going to give it a try… monthly podcasts seem too darn far apart. I'd rather have a thirty minute podcast every-other-week than an hour-long one once a month. I figure once I get rolling and make room in my schedule, things should be smoother. (I can quit thinking of Friday afternoon as reserved for the business writing and use it for recording, too.)