A.M. EDMONSON

Why Romanticize November?

November 1, 2018October 21, 2018 Audra Edmonson11 Comments

Ever since I was young, I’ve loved November. Though I also love October, and September, and all the -bers, really.

The clue’s in the name. Ber. Brr. Cold.

I am a child of wind and snow. I always attribute that to my birth in Seattle, but it goes farther than that. Like my pale skin is a throwback to some icy past. Like ice and driving rain and wind are in my veins.

Maybe in a past life I was a peasant in the Siberian wilderness. An Eskimo. A snow otter. Whatever the truth of the matter, I am always more comfortable in cold weather.

When the wind begins to brisk, my whole being perks up. It’s like something inside awakens, and sniffs the air, and my mind and soul seem taller. There’s a spring in my step and a renewal of hope in the world when the cold begins.

Crunching leaves. Dark branches of bare trees. Grey, cloudy days. Wind whistling through windows. Fireplaces. Blankets. Frosted eyelashes. Boots covered in snow. Breath visible. Hands shaking.

These are a few of my favorite things.

When I was seventeen, I went on a mission trip to Russia in January, when it was cold enough to freeze the inside of bare nostrils. I loved it, and soon enough acclimatized to the temperatures.

When I was in Korea and the snow came, before the cars threw it into sludge on the roads, I loved the soft sound of walking to school through snow, carefully, delicately, while the world slept and dreamed.

We talk of eternal summers, and I get it – the freedom and laughter and joy summer evokes. But in me there is an eternal winter – peaceful quiet bliss, clean, pure as the driven snow, and waiting…

I once had a dream to chase winter, as some people chase summer, all over the globe and across hemispheres, to be in snow year round. Perhaps someday I will. Perhaps my dream of herding reindeer in Finland will pan out.

Until then, I satisfy myself with hoodie dresses and opening the windows of my Texas home to let in all the cold I can.

November is the grey month.

Why I’m Giving Up Self-Help Books for One Month

October 29, 2018October 15, 2018 Audra Edmonson10 Comments

I’m a self-improvement junkie. I’ve listed it as one of my hobbies because it takes that much time, energy, and passion from me.

The thing is, the proportion of the amount I’ve read to the amount I think I’ve improved isn’t as much as it should be. Have I improved? Absolutely. Hands-down, books have been my greatest teachers in learning how to understand myself. But compared to the vast, VAST amount of books and articles and podcasts I’ve consumed? It should be more. I’ve read enough business books to have started a hundred businesses. I’ve read enough dating books to be married. Or so I think.

The thing is, at some point, self-improvement books become another means of putting off actual action.

For instance, I need to stop logging the time I spend reading self-improvement books as productive work time because it’s really not. I’m enjoying the books and getting a buzz off them, but they aren’t upping my rate of actions taken or anything. In other words, the return on investment stinks.

Just like how I can plan and plan my business and project and never actually get anything done, I can read and read about writing and never have a novel written, but still feel like I’m getting somewhere. Only I’m not. A self-improvement book is a whirlpool in the river to progress, sucking me around and around. It feels exciting and fast-paced and useful, but I haven’t gotten any farther.

So…I’m swearing off them for a month. Starting November (when NaNoWriMo starts, so it’s a great time to buckle down) I will only read for pure pleasure. Like fiction. Or history. Any time I might have spent nobly reading a book on writing will be spent…you know…actually writing. Any time spent reading a book on communication will be spent, hopefully, communicating. Any time spent reading books on business will be spent on actions around that business.

I’m hoping I can count on you guys to help keep me accountable for this. Tweet at me, Instagram me, comment here…however you want to barrage me with reminders to stop reading and start doing, please do so. Heaven knows I’m addicted.

Preptober; or, the art of procrastinating by blog

October 25, 2018October 24, 2018 Audra Edmonson2 Comments

Preptober is a pretty awesome time. For one thing, it takes place in October, one of my favorite months since I love Halloween so much.

Preptober is the name given to October for those of us who take part in the yearly madness that is NaNoWriMo (short for National Novel Writing Month – we’re fond of acronyms, can you tell we’re wordsmiths?). It’s a time when, supposedly, we’re hard at work outlining scenes, sketching characters, pinning location pictures, and gathering snacks and rewards for the month ahead.

In practice, everyone’s preptober looks a little different. Since I started doing NaNo in Korea and did the next two there as well, my prepping was fairly limited in scope, as my job was pretty demanding. I thought about my story a lot and wrote some vague notes and scene sketches, but that was about it. I saved most of my planning for when I needed it in my writing.

This year, being back in America and with a much less stressful job, I decided to kick it up a notch.

I printed out calendars, checklists, got some rewards planned (like real ones, not just cheesy ones), and even printed off an announcement of my novel on the NYT bestsellers list, as recommended somewhere. That was fun. It’s hanging on my bulletin board, a little embarrassed, but still pretty neat.

And….it’s actually going okay. I’ve gotten further into planning than I ever have pre-November. I’m able to actually visualize and distinguish my two main characters from each other, a feat in itself, and have a solid grasp on their story arcs.

I have location notes, an overall plotline, some incidental characters, and even some useless background information.

Here’s What I’ve Learned

Preptober is never going to be as productive as you want. You can watch all the videos, print out all the calendars and checklists and schedule away, and life will intervene. In case I forgot, life happens. Oh, right.

No checklist has everything you need, and a lot of them have stuff you don’t need. Cross those off and continue. Don’t get into a check-mark-induced tizzy because you didn’t actually do the thing you didn’t need to do and can’t check it off. Just check it off anyway. Weirdo.

Organizing your bulletin board of prep materials does not actually count as prepping. Right.

Blogging about preptober doesn’t actually count as prepping either. Stop it. Stop it now.

What I Used

I’ll admit, I kind of went nuts, and some of this stuff is redundant, and I certainly didn’t complete everything, but here it is anyway. Use it well, friends.

Snowflake Method (I made my own short document to list everything out – one of these days I’ll post it)
Rachel Stephen’s Calendar and Checklist
Novel in a Month Notebook
Scrivener

Huh. When it’s all laid out, I didn’t use much, did I? Well, it’s still about three more things than I used last year.

To all my fellow NaNo-ers, good luck. To everyone dealing with a NaNo-er, good luck to you too.

There was this awesome year I did this…

…and I may do it again this year. I haven’t yet though. I mean, that one was just so perfect…

Curse of Strahd Sessions 5-10: Game Master Series

October 15, 2018October 9, 2018 Audra Edmonson5 Comments

You know, before I started DMing Curse of Strahd, I was really nervous. That doesn’t quite cover it. I was terrified. I was going in blind to a group I’d never met, never played with, with a campaign I had only skimmed, off of the legacy of people like Matt Mercer and Chris Perkins, who are masters of storytelling, and who are popular enough in the D&D world now that most people assume their groups will look something, even if only a little, like the ones they see online.

Fast forward to the present, where we’re ten sessions in and I feel like it’s old hat. I mean, I’m by no means comfortable, and I still get fluttery nerves before we start, meaning I need at least one beer to calm me down and get me going, but I feel like I could even pull a fairly decent one-shot out of a hat and not do too badly. It’s a nice feeling.

Other than that, there’s not a whole lot to say on my end of the session. My players are getting better and more creative, the story is picking up and getting really creepy, and I’ve figured out some good resources to use.

Trello

Let’s look at Trello. I thought I would use it all the time for planning, and would even have it open at the table to reference NPCs and locations. I don’t do that. I hardly use it at all, to be honest, except to check on the players’ board.

See, I gave my players a board to use as well, to track group funds and give them a place to read the table rules. That’s all I thought they’d use it for, but it’s been astonishing how useful it’s become.

Not only do they track the campaign day and group items, they also track quests – completed, in-progress, and dropped – and keep track of NPCs they’ve met and locations they’ve visited or need to visit. One player also posts his notes post-session every week, which is handy for the others and me. It’s fascinating to see what they’ve focused in on and what they’ve missed or gotten wrong.

(I correct very few things, such as names or spelling, but most other mistakes I let stay, because that’s what the players think, and it makes the game far more interesting to let those play out.)

Notes

As for myself, my notes tend to be typed up and then written on in my binder. I’m using the Guide to Curse of Strahd from DMs Guild, and it’s been a life-saver. I feel like I could get away with not using it now, but in the beginning, it was absolutely vital for me to make sense of the intended flow of the story.

Usually, I read through both the section in the campaign book and the notes from the Guide and then plot a simple course of action, laying out key dialogues and all the clues the players will receive. Each session, I mark off what they’ve done and keep what they still have to do, adding notes as needed. I can’t do speeches and such off the cuff, so I type those up as well. I’m much better at writing different voices than speaking them, so I write up a few lines of dialogue for each major NPC and practice them in the accent I want.

NPCs

Since I’m no voice-actor, I use voices I’ve heard before that are memorable and easy caricatures. Nuances aren’t really my strong suit.

For instance, recently my players encountered an older noblewoman with a prickly personality, and I used Jim Dale’s Professor McGonagall from the Harry Potter audiobooks as a reference. She’s got a very unique voice, and even if I didn’t mimic it accurately, it was certainly different enough from my other voices.

I try to do that for most NPCs – have a unique voice – but I’m finding that I’m trying a bit too hard in that direction. It’s more important to remember the goal and desire of the NPC than how they sounded or even their manner of speaking. For the players, the role of the NPC is more important.

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Now the big question – do I still enjoy DMing? I can say with complete honesty that yes, I do still love it. And I still prefer it to playing. I like the planning beforehand, the control, and being able to take a back seat to the action in most cases when the players are interacting amongst themselves.

In fact, I’m planning a special Halloween one-shot for my group as well, as a kind of break and also to let them stretch their wings as players and experience other styles of games.

The life of a DM never ends, and it’s wonderful.