Lessons Learned in a Year of TTRPG Blogging
This will not be one of my normal posts. I usually like to offer advice and express my general views on tabletop, but today is going to be more of a reflective post. I am working on this on the one-year anniversary of publishing Bjarke the Bard’s first blog post, Tips to Run Your Sessions More Smoothly. Since this first post, listing a few of my favorite tips for running games, I have put up 39 posts on the website. I have also been a part of two books, Nocturnes & Nightmares and the recently released Beyond the Golden Vault. I help with The Creator’s Cove, a discord server for creators in the TTRPG space to collaborate. All of this in a year, and it has taught me a lot. But the main takeaway I had was that sometimes you just need to act, not stay stuck in the planning.
The Plan
While my first post was in February, I had purchased both my website and domain name back in November of the year prior. Prior to that, I had a talk with my spouse about wanting to give back to the community, and wanting to do that through writing in a blog. She told me what I would need to do that and recommended which sites to use. I waited until the Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals came around to pull the trigger and registwww.BjarketheBard.com.
My plan at the time was to give it a year and see what came of my endeavors. If I thought it was worth it, I would keep going. I ended up renewing this November, and was more than happy to continue on with Bjarke the Bard, but it took me almost three months to get my first post up.
Editing and Revising
Something I have always done when working on a project, be it a D&D campaign or something else, is to get stuck in the editing and refining process. I will get most of the work done, go through it, and then want to go back and make minor changes and revisions. After those revisions, I would go back, time allowing, and make even more changes. Although I would feel like I was improving my work, it would come with the drawback of delaying the actual completion of the project. Sometimes, I wouldn't get the project done.
The Causes
Why do I do this? I think there are a few key factors to keep pushing the editing boulder up the hill that would affect me in varying degrees. One of the big factors is that I can be a serial planner for projects and ideas. I would get an idea, work out the specifics, and then follow it along to a certain point. Revisions would happen, but a lot of these ideas would get put away for when I had time to “perfect” them, only to collect dust in a notebook or the digital equivalent of a DOOM box. Now I have tried to get a bit more organized for collecting ideas, but it has something I have always struggled with as someone with ADHD.
Another big issue that I have had varying degrees of Imposter Syndrome. Prior to writing Bjarke the Bard, I would often have voices in the back of my head, asking what justified me by giving advice out to people. Although I have spent a good deal of time (more than I like to admit) playing D&D as well as GMing campaigns and adventures, it sometimes feels like I do not have the experience to be telling others how to run their games.
Identifying these was my first step in being able to handle these issues so that I could avoid leaving projects unfinished. With my website, I made a few choices that helped keep me moving forwards to a point where I would post.
My Solutions
So even though I had these issues getting myself started, I could get myself going. I started writing and have been doing so since then. I had a few ways that I found made it much easier to do so.
Putting Stakes in the Game
It is easy to make plans. Like any GM, I constantly come up with ideas and schemes that would be amazing to work through. I usually end up filling up note sections with these ideas. But sometimes, that is all they end up being. Even the best formed ideas mean little without having something done with them. As a habitual planner, I have seen many good ideas come and go. They just do not get any sort of momentum in getting from planning to executing. But when I started writing, I had the perfect way of doing so.
Even though I started writing in February 2021, I had my domain name and website purchased back in November of the previous year. The price was right, and I knew I wanted to give writing a shot. But at that point, I was not ready to write. But putting the money and effort into getting my website was a way for me to give myself more of a stake in this idea. Even if I was not ready to go through with my plan, I was investing money in it. By doing that, it gave me a bit more internal accountability. I could avoid using any of that for the entire year, but it would mean that I wasted that money. It kept the idea of writing in the back of my head. In the time between purchase and start of Bjarke the Bard, the idea stayed in the back of my mind. Being aware and accountable helped me build my plans up bit by bit, making the eventual start easier.
While investing some money into an idea was my choice for this, it does not always have to be that choice. Sometimes just sharing your plans with someone else, either in person or on social media, can be enough to make me feel like I have accountability for whatever I am working on. The distance between plans in my mind and plans spoken (or typed) seems to be enough for me that it gets that momentum moving. So I recommend if you want to do something, find some way to get that accountability, whether it is to yourself or with someone else.
Something is better than Nothing
When I write, having a good flow helps me speed through the drafting process. I can put my ideas into something that appears to me like the beginnings of a post. That is not always the case. Sometimes I end up staring at an empty page, struggling to get my thoughts out as words. In those cases, I often struggle to have the perfect use of words and structure to express my thoughts. I want to convey my thoughts the complete way the first time, and anything else feels wrong to me. I have found this mentality to be a trap.
When I wait until I have the perfect words to express my thoughts, it can lead to me stalling out as I try to put together the perfect sentence. This stall out can have a cumulative effect. If I start out writing with all my ideas, getting caught in the middle of explaining things. By spending all of my time and brainpower on deciding how to say something, I lose the energy I have to map out my thoughts.
In order to avoid this, I try to maintain steps in my writing process. I get my thoughts out, not worried about the order or making sure the wording is right. I just want to dump all of my thoughts out onto a page. Next, I structure this into an outline that starts with a paragraph summarizing what I intend to talk about, taking my thoughts from before and organizing them into the skeleton of my eventual post. After I complete the outline, I move onto creating my first draft. I am taking the outline and filling in my ideas. I still do not worry about the right wording, just that I am doing my writing. After that, comes the editing and polishing. At this point, I can take the time to go over my previous thoughts, rewording as I go.
Using this method, I find I can put out work more steadily and suggest it for anyone who struggles with putting out drafts regularly. Though it may have more steps overall, it means I can be more consistent with my writing.
Give Yourself Slack
Sometimes my biggest critic is myself. Like many creators, I see the flaws in my work more readily than others. They stand out to me because I know them well and work to avoid them. It can make me self-conscious to release material, and make me get stuck in a loop of editing and revising, constantly trying to rewrite and improve something so I feel it is fit for viewing. It can also come into play if I get writer’s block or just cannot find the time to work on my project because of the real world. Sometimes this mindset is good, and can make sure that I keep working along. But sometimes it just creates more stress, making the problem worse instead of solving it.
I also got in the habit of expecting a pretty rigid schedule of content from myself. Early on, I got into the habit of making blog posts. Every Thursday I would have a post out, and I liked the regularity of the new material that I was releasing. That pace was both a blessing and a curse. The pace kept me motivated to put regular work into my posts and chip away at them. It kept writing in the front of my mind, and would keep my engagement with the community pretty high. But it became a status quo that I felt the need to keep. If I had a week where I found myself unable to come up with a post, I would feel guilty about not putting anything up. It would lead to me working late nights and early mornings, trying to squeeze in a little time here and there to get something done in time. It would also lead to somewhat sloppy work, which would further frustrate me.So I realize that sometimes I just need to give myself some slack.
Giving myself slack comes in a few different ways. The easiest is to realize that I will be the most harsh on anything I do, and that sometimes I just need to release my blog post, supplement, content, etc without revising it. I try to trust in the process that I have developed and tell myself that I do not need to do a second or third final revision before releasing. Sometimes I will need to do a little more work on a post or reorganize it. But that will not be the usual case.
I also try to give myself the benefit of the doubt if I end up with a creative block or am just too busy to create. Writing every week is nice when it happens, but life can (and will) impede that sometimes. Especially over the holidays, it became harder to churn out regular content. So I gave myself a break if a post did not release every week. If I was close, and just did not feel like I was ready, I would just shoot out a message saying as much. This would make me feel better about not producing.
Final Thoughts
These tips were my top lessons I have learned from writing for the past year, but certainly not the only ones. I wanted to do a short introspective on what I have figured out and figured my top ideas would make the most sense. In the future, I may revisit this and continue writing more about the act of writing and creating content.
Conclusion
After one year of writing for Bjarke the Bard, I am glad I took the step to move into this side of the TTRPG community. It has helped me meet many wonderful people, and learn a lot about creating. I could identify and work on many of the hurdles that would affect my ability to create. Going from planning a project to doing a project can be one of the most hard steps, and was something that I struggled with until I realized that finding accountability can help with that. Putting some of my own resources, such as time or money, into starting can help give myself more of an incentive to continue creating, as well as finding accountability through telling others about my intent. When I struggled to create a project because I felt I needed perfection from the start, I focused on building a system that would allow me to focus on laying the foundation for my project instead, and building to the final product. This meant that instead of getting caught up with word choice, I would make sure I had the basics down and build on them. Finally, I realized that sometimes I am just too hard on myself and can set expectations that are unrealistic and lead me to excessive revisions. Keeping myself aware and giving myself the benefit of the doubt helped keep me from burning myself out so I could better enjoy the process.
With one year down, I am looking forwards to year two. If you follow me at all, you may have seen that there is a lot more to come in 2023. I am very excited about all the chances I have moving forwards, and cannot wait to share them with you all.
Looking for some material to run a heist? Feel you need some 5E material to make it feel right? Don’t just want another anthology of adventures loosely based on crime and capers? Sounds like you need to go Beyond the Golden Vault.
My newsletter, Bjarke’s Dissonant Whispers, is now live! Find out what I am up to, what is coming up, and other miscellaneous things. If you are interested in signing up, check here. My most recent issue gave a sneak peek on Nocturnes & Nightmares, and can be found here .
Have a question I have not covered and want my thoughts? Want to collaborate on some work in the future? Reach out to me on Twitter or here and let me know! I love getting new ideas and collaborating with other creators. Either way, I hope to hear from you!
Nocturnes & Nightmares is out now! Currently Electrum Best Seller on DMsGuild, this book has everything you need to run horror in 5e. Buy now here.