Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Three in the AM Thoughts

Insomnia is a rough muse.

One of my most vivid memories of my grandmother growing up was hearing--like clockwork--the heavy tread of her feet up and down the tiny, cramped hallway way past the witching hour. Muttering curse words in Czech, she'd bang the heavy cast-iron pans and pots around baking and baking until she exorcized whatever demon was keeping her up.

I remember it well because also like clockwork I was wide awake too. In fact, it was liberating for me to shed off the excrutiating clock watching and be able to get up out of bed and sit down in the cozy kitchen at the little round, ornately-flourished wooden kitchen table that my great-grandfather built.

When I was a younger child I would half-listen to her repetitious, often painful stories about life “before the War”, but mostly just sit there contently drawing pictures of planes, tanks, and super galactic dreadnaughts or watching the late night movie specials.

As I got older—and the mad plans of D&D took my brain—that was the time I did all my creative heavy-lifting as a DM. Sheets of graph paper and pencil-smeared notebooks would fill up until my brain pooped out finally and I drifted back to my narrow little trundle bed.

Today those “3 am thoughts” still dominate my creative process. Sometimes that period is pure gold, nearly all of my best adventure sites in the campaign were first conceived in that long, graveyard haul where my mind is only really half “on”. It's in those times that visions of biomechanical golden domed barges and beet demons take shape, where the early renaissance rationality of the HC setting twists and turns.

Other times, well those sleep-deprived ideas are quite terrible or at best malformed. And then there is just the endless parade of strange project ideas, a recent example:
FLAILSNAILS by Southwest. A face-to-face convention to be held immediately after the much ballyhooed SXSW in my lovely hometown of Austin, Texas. Would only work if we could get all the cat herd rockstars running Constantcon games on Google Plus to show up live and with pants. Imagine Vornheim at one table, Wessex at the other etc. etc.

Perhaps you are a sound sleeper and don't understand that quiet twilight time when the well ordered brain mixes with the near dreams. But perhaps you are also treading up your own hallways, graph paper in hand and dreaming of your own vast lands of the mind. Do this ideas get filed in the little round file or do you run with those hobgoblins?

[Editor's Note: written after a long, long night with the Nefarious Nine and a cheap bottle of Portugese vinho verde.]

16 comments:

  1. I would go to FLAILSNAILCON as long as it worked out for me timing-wise (which is always a challenge).

    I also have a long history of insomniac-mad-scientistism.

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    1. Well it would likely be the third or fourth weekend in March if we did it after SXSW.

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  2. walks. long walks with loud music blearing in a set of isolation headphones. and chemicals.

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    1. Late night walks were my preferred solution as a grad student. In the main because walking around a town as laid-back Amherst, Mass is at 3 am seemed to not draw any attention.

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  3. I should add, half of those walks start around midnight.

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  4. Lately those times for me end up in reading blogs, reading things those blogs have linked to, reading pages about things those have brought to mind.. etc. Then turning them over in my mind.

    I'm not sure I'd do anything if I picked up paper instead of turning the computer on. I'd like to think so.

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    1. Most definitely try turning the flickering screen off. My dad was telling me about a recent sleep study that found that people who were reading things on the computer up to 30 minutes before turning in had markedly harder times going to sleep.

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  5. This is probably one of my favorite posts of yours. Very well written.

    I used to be a "morning person" until I got a roommate my Freshman year of college in the dorms who was more of a night person, and my schedule gradually changed to the point where now I'm a night person. I'll often doze off on the couch watching TV and wake up around 2:30 or 3am and then spend an hour reading blogs, thinking about my campaign, and writing down ideas for new games that come to mind. I still keep a little pad of paper and a pen on my nightstand for when "middle of the night inspiration" strikes.

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    1. Synchronicity. I was reading your blog recently and thinking that I should start back up the Grandpa D&D stories (which seem to come to me with increasing frequency since turning 40).

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  6. Bummer, our game session broke up tonight due to work pressure from many of the players. We play at the office; so, in times like these I walk home and dream up a better session for next time.

    I'm off...

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    1. Your impulses are the same as mine. If a session falls through or seems flat to me, my 3am brain kicks into overdrive. I guarantee you that I will be awake paper and colored pencils in hand grinding out the next one.

      Have you ever thought of running G+ sessions?

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  7. Riding my bike at night is probably my most creative time. There's literally nothing else to do but turn the cranks and think.

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  8. I have periodic bouts of insomnia and it really sucks if I have to get up early in the morning for work. If I don't have to get up the next day, sure it's a great time for working on something creative, but if I do that's the worst thing I could do because it makes my brain even more hyper, which is probably why I have insomnia to begin with. My solution is always to find the most boring book ever, crunchy rulebooks with lots of feats and skills also do the trick to lull my brain to sleep.

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  9. I, too, am afflicted by the Curse. I, too, tend to have my wildest imaginings during the schizophrenic hours at the end of 2 or 3 days without sleep

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  10. Replies
    1. Yes indeed, the foundation of one of my favorite sessions recently. Basically vaguely inspired by this Clark Ashton Smith story: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/213/the-mandrakes

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