RPG Authors: How Do You Do It?

[Southern Oracle]

I have nothing but admiration for the many RPG authors that frequent these boards, both the freelancers and those who have hit it big. I read their published works, I read their threads about their personal games, I read their blogs, and I read their off-topic posts about family and the world in general. All of this has filled me with one nagging question -- how do you do it?

How do you find the time to write professionally, DM a game or games, work a steady job (or two), spend time with your wife and kids, maintain a story hour, write a blog, manage a website, etc., etc., etc.? Evidently I've reached my limit, because I just can't get it all done. Ever since I took over DMing my tabletop game, I haven't been able to find the time to write anything for publication...my free time is spent preparing adventures for my group. And yet there are some professionals here who manage to juggle the whole ball of wax. Share your secrets, please!

 

[arwink]

Things I found helped:

I don't work a steady job. Instead I have fluctuating hours, and variable workloads depending on the time of year. That helps a lot, although it means I don't earn the money I once did.

I learned to type - being able to belt out eighty or ninety words a minute tends to speed up the process of getting stuff written.

Rather than looking at my regular games and asking how I'm going to prepare them on top of my writing workload, I look at my regular games as the source of the ideas that I'm working on. Most of the products CGW has published started as something I wanted to prepare and use in my games.

And, most importantly - a year or so ago I asked myself what I really wanted to be doing with my life, and how much I'd be willing to give up to persue that. In the last year I've probably been to the movies three or four times. I watched maybe five or six hours of TV every week, and even then I'm usually making notes or writing a draft. I wrote a writing schedule that I had to meet, and I asked my significant other to respect it (and she does). I cut back on the hours I worked at my day job, took the cut in disposable income, and used the time and relatively poverty as motivation for getting more done. I set small goals, and I push myself to meet them. A lot of it is just a case of practice - once you get into the routine, it becomes relatively easy to maintain. The rest is just dogged determination and a complete lack of sleep.

 

[Ghostwind]

I could never be a full-time writer without the support of my wife. She works full-time and I am a stay-at-home dad. During most of the day, my time is spent caring for the kids with breaks of an hour or two to do computer-related stuff (such as website maintenance and browsing forums). I tend to do most of my writing between 10pm and 1am, sometimes 2am. So assignments that I work on are usually done in that window. I'm fortunate in that I work one day a week at a local comic/gaming store where I am paid to do nothing but run games every Saturday for 12 hrs. straight. The store pays me an extra 3 hours each week for game prep that I do at home which I squeeze in during free moments.

The main thing is keeping your discipline and sticking to the schedule you've set for yourself. If you say that you are going to write for 3 hrs, then you need to do that and not let yourself get distracted by other things like browsing the Net, answering forum posts, watching TV, etc. But it's also important to set aside time to relax and have some recreation. Writers who don't take time to play burn out fairly quickly. When I first started writing with my best friend doing books for Bastion, we were literally cranking out a book every six weeks. By the time we finished Pale Designs, we were ready for a break because of how much it drained us and the toll it took on our families. Once we readjusted things a bit and made sure our deadlines were a little more reasonable, it wasn't so taxing.

As for inspiration, I get it from everywhere. I only see 2 or 3 movies a year at the theaters but I check out DVDs from the library on a weekly basis. I don't watch a lot of television, but the shows I do watch usually give me something to work with (such as CSI). The biggest source of inpsiration comes from reading novels and other gaming books. I am always trying to tinker with existing game concepts and come up with a better wheel, so to speak. That's what makes the creative juices flow. "This is cool but can I do it better and differently, yet make it simple?" Something most RPG authors tend to do...

 

[philreed]

See, I frequently feel as if I'm not getting enough done.

 

[Dragonhelm]

I've done some freelance work in my time, and I have to say, it isn't easy! Not only do I do that, but I run the Dragonlance Nexus and help around Dragonlance.com, have a wife and two kids....there's a lot I have to deal with.

I'm lucky that my job allows me some writing time, so that helps. What I can say, though, is that I do not, by any means, get 8 hours of sleep a night. More like 5-6. I don't recommend it, and not everyone can pull off a lesser amount of sleep.

Tracy Hickman has stressed a couple of things to me since I've known him - take care of family and don't quit your day job. The RPG business doesn't really pay enough to live on, not unless you're doing it full-time. Even many of the full-time RPG designers I know are struggling to get by. I think average salaries I've seen have been about 18K - 22K a year (correct me if I'm wrong on that).

So if you are working on RPGs and you're not a Big Name (which most of us aren't), then I suggest that you keep working your job, take care of family, and do the RPG thing in moderation. Be sure to take time out for yourself and have some fun, otherwise you'll burn out. If you do reach a point where you can survive on an RPG designer salary and do it full time, that's great. Be realistic, though, and note that it may not happen for some time and take care of what's really important (friends, family and self) first.

 

[haiiro]

I'm not at all a "big player" in terms of RPG freelancing -- I try to always have a project or two on the go, but my list of published credits is fairly small (for now!). But I do juggle that with my day job, spending time with my girlfriend, running a website, playing (and soon running) a weekly game, a weekly boardgame night, and heck, posting here.

I love to write, so it's an outlet that I make time for. I watch a lot of movies, but not a lot of TV. I read a lot, but in bits and pieces around other activities. My girlfriend and I can happily do our own things, and my work schedule is fairly regular. I don't think of myself as a great time manager, but the combination of factors works out well for me in terms of writing in the evenings and on weekends.

When I started freelancing last year, I quickly set a goal for myself: always have a project on the go. The corollary is: never take on so many things at once that I have to sacrifice the quality of my work, or the quality of the other parts of my life. So far, that's been the perfect combination for me.

No idea if that rambling answer helps at all -- and I think once I switch from playing to running a weekly game, I'm going to be feeling the crunch a lot more than I am now! Depending on how much prep time you put into your game, Southern Oracle, I can completely understand why other things -- like your freelancing -- would fall by the wayside.

 

[RodneyThompson]

As Steve said, the most important thing is discipline. Back in the fall, I was a full-time college student (18 hours of class) working two day jobs (one at the mall and one at a printing shop) and I still found time to write books for Green Ronin, The Game Mechanics, and Wizards of the Coast. The most important thing to remember is to budget your time carefully, expect delays and give yourself a time buffer, and no matter what do not allow yourself to become distracted. You must write every day. Now, I've been late on a couple of assignments (due mostly to those aforementioned full-time class load and two jobs) but on the whole being careful with my time and diligent with my writing seems to have helped. But, hey, I'm no Monte Cook or Erik Mona, (or a Steve Creech, or a Phil Reed) so maybe you should listen to those guys instead.

 

[Vigilance]

See, I frequently feel as if I'm not getting enough done.

Amen brother, I hear that.

One thing that helps me keep my creativity high is to read read read. Not usually RPG books either, though I read a lot of them to keep my finger on the pulse.

But a lot of time if I am feeling a little burned out, a nice trip through Patrick O'brian or Margaret Atwood or Walt Whitman will recharge the batteries better than anything else.

Chuck

 

[Southern Oracle]

Thanks for all the responses. It looks like I have to make a choice about things, and if I want to write, I have to cut back on something else. I work full-time on the night shift, and a part-time job during the day. I run a weekly Star Wars d20 game at my house, a weekly Planescape game online, and play in a bi-weekly Eberron game online. I've got a wife and four kids. I only get about 5-6 hours of sleep a day, as I have to watch the little ones while my wife is at work, which includes cleaning, cooking, laundry, etc. I think I'm just doing too much, so I'll have to trim back to make time to write.

Now, the question is, what do I cut back on?

 

[Storminator]

Honestly, with that list, I'd ask why you want to write more. Really, think long and hard about it. What are you going to get out of it?

PS