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| Alphabet of Uncial Gothic Capital Letters, 16th Century. |
Well, I did it! To me it, it was with satisfaction that I posted all 26 days without missing or getting behind (I made no goal as to what time I would post everyday. As the oracle said, "Know Thyself.") I had a rough plan sketched out in advance that had multiple options for almost every day, and some days already set. A few days I didn't decide until the day of, and a few I changed, but the loose plan as a whole worked well for me and gave me some freedom. I started out with an emphasis on mythic archetypes and as we came to the end, I started focusing on the beginnings of a hypothetical setting as an exercise in using mythological sources as an inspiration for world-building, which wasn't planned. The experiment brought in some new readers and pulled them from a different part of the blogosphere than I was reading before, including new followers and commenters. That it was fun for me and seemed successful statistically renders it a win-win in my eyes. Naturally, I hope that you all agree. There a few comments I still plan on getting back to, so I hope folks check back on the comments from time-to-time. I really, really do appreciate your challenges, questions, musings, poesies, nose-gays, what-have-you.
In particular, I'd like to mention three aspects that I appreciated about this undertaking, looking back on it. First, there was a plan, but it was flexible. I know that some people were more focused in approaching the 26 day challenge than I was, for example, 26 Days of Pie (Did somebody really do that? Don't get distracted by mouth-watering visions of pie, it's an example). I could have, for example, treated 26 archetypal figures or 26 locations in the World of Ygg or something like that. Such a tighter plan might be interesting for a future undertaking, but frankly, just getting a blog up each time that I thought was interesting and decent on any 26 subjects that fit the domain of my blog was enough of a discipline for me this time around. Second, I liked the discipline of doing it. I hope that it improved my blogging skills and it gave the blog a reliability factor that it didn't have before, when it was essentially whenever the wind blew me over here with something to blog about. Third, I liked the kind of creativity that this challenge pulled on. Normally, I would blog when I felt like I had something specific to blog about, whatever that was. The arbitrariness of the alphabet married to the demand of having to post something at a given time pulled my creativity in different directions than the previous program of blogging did. This raises the question, Whither now?
Entering the demanding crunch time of the semester, I will now tend back to my "Let the Spirit move me" [non]discipline out of a kind of practical necessity. But seeing the helpfulness of structure and discipline to myself and, I take it, for my reader's expectations, I am going to minimally post on Mondays in addition to the random posts that will appear based on happenstance and inspiration. So, if you are wanting to look out for my posts on a particular day, say to yourself, Mythopoeic Mondays! The other posts will likely be more occasional and ad hoc, the former, more epic and thought-out. Well, maybe just more thought-out.
But above all, I'm looking for ways to improve the blog. You will notice that I've added labels to facilitate exploration. I'm also going to be adding tabbed pages at the top. I'm not sure what all will end up on those pages, but one will definitely be specific to gaming resources. I keep playing with house rules and other resources to produce Basic/Expert (Moldvay/Cook) mechanics, rules, and possibly setting material that fit the kind of pulpy, Sword & Sorcery game that I have been in the mood for lately, and those may go there. Whether this ever comes together as my own fantasy heart-breaker, we shall see, but maybe such material would be of interest to some folks and I'm sure would benefit from feedback, so those are a candidate for their own page.
Now I turn to you, gentle readers, and your desires, druthers, and determinations. I'm very interested in hearing:
1. What do you, the readers, want from our mythopoeic rambles?
2. How could the blog be improved?
I'll entertain any feedback you care to share. I appreciate it!
