I’ve been fighting to get organized. Gilmore’s slam on Marie Kondo notwithstanding, I could use a bit of tidying up. I took an unusual step today, decluttering my memory banks of some Minecraft stuff, recording it in a book made specifically for that purpose. It helped in multiple ways, the foremost being the transformation of the ‘craft from boredom killing game to creativity engine. By starting to record this world I am building I also started to build the story of the world. I once again merged game with storytelling.
Sounds like a load of crap doesn’t it?
The truth of it is I started writing in this very fashion. I would write the stories of the worlds I explored through roleplay. I told the tales of D&D and Shadowrun. I still tell the tales of Shadowrun and Minecraft is only slightly removed from D&D. In a sense I have been doing this sort of thing forever and finding great pleasure, energy, and creativity in all of it.
The key here is imagination. So much of what people do today–myself especially–serves to kill or fails to incite imagination. Here I have found a way to do so. I feel like the hardest part of being a writer is holding unto that writhing snake of imagination.
Some Thoughts:
- Remember this? “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”