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Alana Joli Abbott ([personal profile] alanajoli) wrote2007-10-28 08:35 pm

Myth, Meaning, Alumni, and Playtesting

What a weekend!

I spent the past two days up at Simon's Rock College, where I spent a good four years of my life, learning things that I apply in my writing pretty much every day. I was on three alumni panels and did plenty of mingling with parents, faculty, students, etc. (One of the parents asked a panel what classes we took outside of our subject area that we're glad we took. I had to say that I applied about 90% of the classes I took pretty much every day as a writer. I don't use much Chemistry, I suppose, although it did make my great ice cream experiment easier. I'm not sure if I wrote about that at all, here, though, so I'll skip that until later.)

It's a nice feeling to think just how much of the learning I did at college still applies to what I'm doing. I may not directly use the books that I used for classes (although I did at least once while writing the beginning section of Cowboys and Aliens II), but a lot of the kinds of things I was thinking about in college, including myth, meaning, language, literature, and culture, come up all the time in what I write about. It's like I've been able to extend my education into the real world, and I love the thought of that.

In other news, I did finish the first draft of the module on time (although the stat blocks were a little rough), and the DM who ran it for me did a marvelous job, as did the playtesters. I've got a lot of good feedback to work into it over the next week before I actually have to turn it in. Of course, I also have that reference assignment I'm still working on, so it might be another slow week from Alana-land.