Sail To The Moon; or, Taking a Trip Down ‘Story’ Memory Lane

My best friend and I absolutely love to trash talk each other. It’s always done with tongue firmly dug into cheek and fingers delicately crossed behind our backs, of course. It’s always done with love. Last night was no different; we spent at least a good half hour laughing over her making fun of a nightmare I had. I was terrified in the dream, but talking to her about it pulled the entire anxiety inducing dream to a perspective where I couldn’t do anything but laugh so hard my stomach ached and tears rolled down my face.

I absolutely adore her.

One other thing she teased me about last night was my “taking a break from writing” to go and “write something else”. I’m not taking a break so much as giving my writing space to breathe since I hit it very hard after quitting my full-time paid job to prepare for my son’s upcoming remote school year. I was playing with a used laptop my husband purchased from a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend and discovered that, though it was a “gaming laptop” it was sorely lacking the hardware required to play most small “indie” games. The good news is, the laptop allows me to play with a program I have been staring at in my Steam library for the better part of two years: RPG Maker VX Ace. I didn’t want to expend the energy to create a new story for game development, since backing away from my current running pieces was intended to recharge my create-o-meter for new content in those worlds. This meant I had only one option: Kick the dust off an old tale.

Of course, I had a few options at my disposal. I could use a short story for practice and to learn. With hindsight, this is probably the best option but obviously I’m not going for easy or smart because obviously. I instead decided to shuffle through my old D&D campaigns and see if any of the stories were crying out to be resurrected. There were two that always demand my attention; one is being reserved for novel adaptation after I complete my other novel. The second choice is a campaign I wrote and ran for my husband’s friends that has since become a bit of a legend in the group; it’s the first real campaign everyone got into really hard and set the bar for future campaigns and future DMs in the group. The story is quite solid, if I may be permitted to toot my own horn here. What stands out the most, however, was how deeply involved most of the players got within their own characters, how hooked into the story they became and how they blossomed as role-players. Some of the table talk is still inside joke material between the group today.

Clearly, the latter was the only real choice. Since I ask all my players to draft their own back stories, I requested permission from the players to use their characters and pre-written back stories in the game I am now developing. Everyone was very enthusiastic about the chance to play their characters again and maybe see them come to life in this new way. Personally, I was happy to get a chance to finish the story since it was cut short due to burn-out on my part plus my work schedule. The campaign was shelved and other ideas floated around, including anyone else running a game but me oh please someone else run a game and let me play. At that point, I had been running D&D games for over a decade with players that were more than content to play anything I made but were a bit skittish to run games themselves. I mean, when you have an experienced DM with all the books and info, why wouldn’t you just let them do their thing, right?

That old campaign got me so excited to try another new avenue to express my creative story adaptation skills, I have spent what little free time I have doing that. It’s a huge undertaking, mind you; I fully intend to utilize spriting, learn how to do pixel animation, and find music production software to make this an experience. Also, this is meant to be fun, not just another endeavor to distract me but a chance to see if my writing translates well to other mediums, and if I have the skill set to do the translations myself. See where my limits are.

I suppose what I am getting at is, never be afraid to look back at old writing and see what kind of new life can be given to it. You might find a new spark in the inspiration those dusty words, hidden in the portfolio or buried in binders. ❤

-V. Raylean