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Dungeons & Diaries

Since just before the pandemic, I’ve been involved in at least one Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) game. I’m currently in two: one every fortnight in Dundee, and another every six to eight weeks in Fife.

For those unfamiliar, D&D is a tabletop role-playing game where players create and improvise adventures, guided by the Dungeon Master (DM). Players describe what they want their characters to do, and the DM narrates the outcomes based on dice rolls and the game’s rules. The setting is usually a fantasy land where weapons can be wielded and spells can be cast.

Every D&D game is unique. In my case, the Dundee players are all in the same writing group and live in the same general area. As such, we know each other well and sessions tend to be filled with in-jokes. By contrast, the Fife players generally need to travel and won’t see each other from one week to the next. We make the most of our time with longer and more intense sessions than the Dundee game.

One of the few factors that unites both games is that I’ve volunteered to be the designated note-taker. I’ve long been able to touch-type, so I can keep an eye on the action at the same time.

But why is this important? The simple answer is: there’s a lot going on. It’s not necessary to capture every detail, but because campaigns can span multiple sessions, it’s easy to lose track of key names, plot points and locations.

It must also be stated that my notes are still predominantly from my character’s perspective, so I can’t stress enough that the other players should keep additional personal notes. For instance, while tidying up the Fife notes yesterday, I realised one character had encountered two others in a room we entered, but I hadn’t recorded what happened to them during or after that interaction.

It sounds like tedious admin, but I enjoy this process as it helps me out enormously with co-ordinating the two games.

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A Personal Path to Paisley

Back in July, I mentioned I had my poem January & You published by Speculative Books. The launch was scheduled for Tuesday of last week in Glasgow.

I knew I wouldn’t have much time to catch the bus after the end of my shift. As such, I’d kept my phone off to avoid any distractions, only turning it back on once I was on the bus. Shortly after it pulled away, however, I received an email. It explained the launch had to be cancelled because of illness, with apologies for the short notice. There is a hope to reschedule it for later in the year.

My time on a Tuesday evening is typically ring-fenced to run a writing group, but I’d arranged with the other leader to make an exception. Had I seen this before we started moving, I might just have cut my losses on the cost of the tickets and stayed in Dundee to help out with the group. Now I was stuck on the bus for around 45 more minutes until we reached the park-and-ride in Perth, so I considered my options.

I could have stopped there and found my way back to Dundee. But some of the buses are painfully slow and infrequent, while the railway station is at the other end of Perth, so I might not have made it back before the group was over. Besides, booking at the last minute is never cheap.

Instead, since I knew the writing group was in good hands, I elected to continue to Glasgow and then on to Paisley.

I was at university there between 2002 and 2005 taking a BSc Music Technology course, long before I was interested in prose and poetry. While I’d been back several times, my most memorable visit took place in 2017 when I thought I might find some inspiration for poetry.

I did find inspiration, but not in the way I’d expected. In short, I barely recognised the place beyond the town centre and I wrote an entry about this when it happened.

Today, I would have taken the time to find the layout of the area, see where the side streets were leading and work out the most convenient way to visit other places. For example, I used to volunteer at a community radio station in the Glasgow district of Govan. I can’t understand why I always paid extra for buses when I can now look at a map and see two more direct routes covered by my travel card.

I didn’t intend for this entry to be so personal, but I also didn’t intend to visit my alma mater. If there was a silver lining, it’s that the resulting poem from 2017 was published in a collection about the town. The more I think about it, the more I’m inspired to write a sequel, so I’ll see where that takes me over the coming days.

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The Fringe, But Not That Fringe

A few weeks ago, I announced a show called the Virtual Nonsense Tour of Dundee. The premise was to present an audience with ten stories about the city and ask them to guess whether they were true or false, in the style of a pub quiz.

Just over a week ago, it finally happened. My co-host and I adopted the alter-egos Magdalen Green and Albert Street – named after real locations – and took the risk. It helped that most of the audience knew one or both of us, which helped the banter to flow.

We’d built in a lot of slack to allow for chat, delays and/or technical hiccups. It ended up being too much time and we finished early. Most shows run over, so it was a refreshing change in that sense. Of course, we weren’t the only act in town – far from it.

For the last four years, Sweet Venues has run the Dundee Fringe. It’s run on the same principle as its much larger and more famous Edinburgh counterpart, in that they provide space for acts rather than running shows or dictating the content. The scale, however, is very different. Approximately 70 acts were booked, which was huge for our single venue but dwarfed by the 3,700 acts who pack out the capital every August.

I made a point of going to other shows, with highlights including the student burlesque company Marvelesque taking their show off campus for the first time, Buckets of Blood featuring Grimm fairy tales told as they were originally written, and Tango the Pain-Proof Man who performed stunts such as chewing glass and lying on a bed of nails.

I can only speak for the shows I attended, but while crowds were small, they were loyal, and I’d often meet the same people at the box office. I hope there is a 2025 edition and that the enthusiasm continues, especially as I’ve now had time to reflect on our virtual tour and understand what to do differently next time.

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Leaving Hotchpotch After Nine Years

Persons! I had a technical failure yesterday, the like of which I haven’t seen in a long time. This meant I couldn’t bring you a full entry.

I was at my weekly Tuesday writing group as usual. The Internet can be dodgy there, but it normally connects after a few tries and/or a reboot. This time, my laptop was having none of it, so I tapped out a short entry on the Jetpack app briefly explaining the situation.

However, it’s another literary group I want to talk about today. Long-term readers will know about Hotchpotch, which is a monthly open-mic primarily aimed at writers, where members can sign up for five-minute slots. I didn’t set up the group, but when I took over in 2015, it had already existed for five years.

One week ago, at the last meeting, I announced my intention to step down from running it after nine years and pass it on to Eilidh, who’s been assisting for well over a year. We’ve taken a couple of months to discuss how we would make the transition, and that process will continue into our next event in October.

The reason I chose this time is not because Hotchpotch is in a bad way. It’s arguably the most streamlined and consistent it’s ever been, and it’s precisely because it’s so strong that I feel able to step back from it in favour of new projects.

Indeed, that very Sunday, I took part in a one-off show as part of the Dundee Fringe, and in next week’s entry, I’ll cover how that went.

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Technical Problems – Join Us Again Soon

I’ve had a technical failure today like nothing I’ve ever had, with my laptop failing to connect to the Internet since lunchtime.

As such, I’ve had to bash this out quickly on my phone, and I’m not going to be able to type out everything I want to. As such, I’ll aim to put a full entry out by 8pm tomorrow.

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Leaving NaNoWriMo – Six Months Later

For many years, I was involved with National Novel Writing Month; for brevity, we’ll use its diminutives NaNoWriMo or NaNo. We gathered such an enthusiastic group that we started running weekly meet-ups from 2015, even outside the novel-writing challenge of November.

Six months ago, there were a couple of scandals. The first was when a member of staff in California stood down after making a racist comment about a colleague. Separately, the organisation was slow to remove a forum moderator who was sending inappropriate material to minors. You can read the full reasons in the entry from March 2024.

After this, it was a relatively simple decision for my fellow organiser and I to withdraw our affiliation and continue as an independent group. In my view, this group is now much more streamlined while keeping the experience much the same for members.

Then over the last couple of weeks, NaNo has faced another backlash, this time over their implicit approval of members using artificial intelligence in their projects. Literary news rarely makes it to mainstream outlets, but the New York Times and Wired both reported the story.

The statement from NaNo was a long and rambling piece, but the most widely reported passage was:

We also want to be clear in our belief that the categorical condemnation of Artificial Intelligence has classist and ableist undertones, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege.

This statement has now been somewhat retracted, but not before several board members resigned and partnership organisations considered whether to continue their involvement.

It’s not just the message that disappoints me, but the tone of it. The organisation I joined in 2010 would never have been so confrontational. The organisation I knew would have considered the question carefully and then addressed it with good grace and humour, reminding members of their core values.

I’ve imagined below how they might have phrased their statement.

We recognise there are strong feelings in the writing community at large about the use of artificial intelligence software, both in favor of its use and against. As NaNoWriMo is self-guided, we can’t stop you from using such software to craft your novel. However, we feel typing or writing each word by hand, day after day, is more in-keeping with the spirit of the challenge.

By ditching the attitude problem, isn’t it so much more pleasant to read? You can also bet the old NaNo would have responded to any feedback in a measured way. Its new version has fallen into the same pattern of making brash statements and then backing down but without apologising.

The next test of NaNo in its current form will be the main November challenge.

If the current organisation manages to scrape through the next three months without involvement in any other newsworthy events, then even I concede it stands a chance of surviving until 2025 and beyond. However, it will almost certainly be with a much-reduced membership who will be watching the situation carefully.

If something else happens to rock the boat during that time, I reckon that’s the end of NaNo as an organisation.

Nobody asked me, but I’d recommend National Novel Writing Month announces a voluntary winding up of operations in December. This would allow members to complete one last novel, to download their data from the website, and to end the organisation in a relatively neat manner.

But that won’t happen because any good grace and self-awareness has now vanished from National Novel Writing Month.

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Taking a Show on the Virtual Road

For the last couple of months, I’ve been working on a pet project. Now the proposal has been accepted and advertised, I’m finally at liberty to tell the public.

Since 2021, Sweet Venues has organised the Dundee Fringe. Like its Edinburgh counterpart, the organisers don’t run the shows themselves, but provide the venue and invite performers to apply for slots. In previous years, I’ve run a game show, but this time around, it was time for something different.

In fact, I already had a solid idea with pal who shares a similar sense of humour. One of our recurring jokes was to talk about organising a tour of Dundee but telling tourists absolute nonsense about the city instead of facts.

I half-seriously wondered whether we could actually make this happen, even as a one-off event. Then when Sweet Venues put out the call for performers, the final piece of the puzzle fell into place. We didn’t need to take anyone around the city; using just a projector, the city could come to them.

Just before I made the application, I started by pulling together a presentation, making sure my pal was willing to co-host. We held our first rehearsal at the weekend, ironing out a few flaws in the script and making sure the technical side worked without fail.

If you’re in or around Dundee, you’ll be able to see The Virtual Nonsense Tour of Dundee on Sunday 15 September.

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Back Into Short Story Writing

I’ve been unwell for the last five days or so. It’s been frustrating in many ways, having to stay in the house most of the time. On the other hand, it’s given me the impetus to work on some writing.

The work referenced in this entry was published under a pseudonym on a well-known website. For the avoidance of doubt, I’m still not at a stage where I wish to claim ownership of this, so the references to the plot will be vague.

A year ago this month, I finished writing a series that was supposed to be a one-off but ended up as 24 parts. I was partially spurred on by the positive reaction to the previous parts, plus I was able to take the existing characters to different locations where they met new characters, which generated new plot points.

In the intervening time, I’d had another promising central idea plus a few unused plot points that couldn’t be put into the first series. I then spent some time figuring out how to differentiate the two universes.

In April, the elements fell into place and I published a new story on the same website. I made it clear this was not related to the previous series, but I did believe there would be a second part, so I left the ending open enough to allow for that.

And that’s what I’ve been working on while I’ve been in the house. I think this series will be five parts long, so significantly shorter than the first series, but I don’t yet know where this will take me next.

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Last Call for Creative Scotland Open Fund

Over the last couple of days, Creative Scotland has announced the closure of its Open Fund for Individuals.

In short, the decision has been taken because the Scottish Government were unable to confirm the release of £6.6m in the Grant-in-Aid budget. There is a full statement about the closure on their website including the deadline for all applications: 2pm on Friday 30 August.

As the closure has only just been announced, the long-term effects have yet to be seen. The topic has dominated my recent conversations with other organisers. One possible outcome is that it will be more difficult for artists to host riskier solo events, and instead prompt them to join established companies who might be less willing to take risks.

I’ve been fortunate in my projects that I’ve never needed to apply for funding. Yet having this avenue cut off potentially limits the scale of my future endeavours. I hope next year’s budget brings a more favourable result.

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The Attraction of the One-Off Piece

I make a point of seeing at least one show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival every year. My first one was yesterday, titled The Greatest Literary Beef of the 21st Century, hosted by Ross McCleary and Stefan Mohamed.

While I’m only familiar with Stefan by association, I’ve known Ross for a couple of years now. He has a highly surreal sense of humour often centres around highlighting a concept and workshopping possible ways to make it funnier, with a lot of help from his online followers, many of whom were in the audience.

This show followed the surreal route. It took the form of the two poets exchanging paper letters to intentionally create a feud between them both. It benefitted from its brevity, with the show itself restricted to just one 40-minute performance rather than a multi-day run. There was also a donation bucket offered at the end, so the audience could choose how much to give, if at all.

I’ve always been particularly attracted to works that are a one-off rather than part of a series or serial. For instance, one of my favourite books is the standalone Wired Love by Ella Cheever Thayer, while I don’t think Spike Jonze is likely to direct a sequel to one of my favourite films, Being John Malkovich.

I’m going back to the Fringe over the coming days, so I hope to see more off-one bangers while I’m there.