Hey guys! Its been awhile. I’ve missed you, and I know this is never fun to hear, but we need to talk about our relationship. Because I’m a melodramatic blogger who takes his electronic word page far too seriously. There’s a TL;DR at the bottom if you need it.

When I started my little break, I ostensibly did so because I wanted to improve my life by looking for a less miserable job in a much better city. Then I got the news that my grandfather’s health was failing, which sucked. Then I had a fun little adventure in dentistry, which also sucked. Stuff sucked and I figured it was as good a time as any to take a break from P&P. Truthfully, I’d wanted to take a break for a long while, and bad stuff happening was a convenient excuse. Not to pacify you, good reader, but to convince myself I wasn’t just being lazy.

My writing here has always been more important to me than it probably ought to be. I do that; I take things too seriously. Failure to meet my self-imposed update deadlines would ruin my whole week. It’s an unhealthy way to view a project like this one, I know. But Papers & Pencils made me feel as though my life had some forward momentum when I was severely depressed from lack thereof. But it was stressing me out, and draining my creativity, and the moment I gave myself permission to be more lax about updating, I stopped updating completely.

In case I haven’t made it painfully obvious with my whining, I’m not fond of my current life situation. Things took a wrong turn for me at some point a long time ago, and I’ve felt lost and out of control for years now. I want to make a better life for myself as a working writer and game designer. It’s not a profitable life goal, but it’s a life I think I can be happy with. Papers & Pencils has been an expression of that goal. My attempt to discipline myself as a writer, to teach myself about tabletop games, and to practice my craft day after day. In these goals I think I have been relatively successful, but I passed the point of diminishing returns some time ago and I failed to notice. I need to push myself in different ways if I want to continue to improve.

What needs to come next for me, I think, is focusing on and completing larger projects. The Hidden Tomb of Slaggoth is a step in the right direction, and I want to keep that momentum going. I’m already working on a new tabletop project, which I’ll discuss in an upcoming post. And when that’s done I want to do another. A module, or a gaming supplement, or a collection of short stories, or a novel, or a complete sourcebook. Some of them will be free, (like Slaggoth), others will be for monies because at some point I have to gather up my balls and proclaim to the world that I think I’ve made something which I deserve to be compensated for.

So what does all of this livejournal nonsense mean for Papers & Pencils? Hopefully it pleases you to know that Papers & Pencils isn’t going away. But up to now, I’ve treated P&P like the most important thing in my life*. This will no longer be the case. Whatever major project(s) I’m working on will take on that role. So while I am aiming to maintain a rough M/T/Th/F update schedule here, I’m resolving not to stress about it if I miss a day.

*Yes. This is the best I could do with something I thought was that important to me. I’ve got a real future as a writer, amirite?

I’m also aiming to write shorter posts in general. I’ve always aimed for a sort of “informal essay” style while writing for this site, but that’s hard to keep up with day after day. So while an informal essay will still pop up if I’ve got a topic I really want to dig into, I suspect things will get quite a bit more “blog-ish” around here. Not to say that’s a bad thing, just a different thing than I’ve been doing.

I like Papers and Pencils. I like sharing what’s on my mind, I like the great friends I’ve made, and I like YOU. I’ve received more emails from readers in the last month and a half than I think I received in the year prior to that. It has been so encouraging to chat with the people who enjoy reading what I think, and to hear what they think. I hope I can continue to entertain you with my scribblings.

TL;DR I’m gonna spend more time working on books. P&P will get less attention, but it’s not going away. I still love you. Hope you still love me. XOXOXXXOOO

If you’re reading this, you’ve made it! Welcome my friends, to Papers & Pencils! The new website has all the posts and comments from the old site, and I won’t be slowing down at all moving forward. I’ll continue writing and posting on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday-Weekend schedule. So please update your links and bookmarks, and for those who link to my blog, or any of my specific posts, on their websites, I would consider it a personal favor if you updated your link to redirect here. However, if you don’t, I will be leaving up the old site indefinitely as an archive. So links to old content will remain good–there just won’t be any new content over there.

I must confess to a bit of nervousness taking this site live. I’ve been designing websites since I was 14 years old, but I’ve never put one of my designs up for hundreds of people to see. Not that I can take full credit for the design, most of the heavy lifting is done by WordPress, the Mandigo theme, and a number of plugins. However, I’ve spent the last three months fiddling around with the code. There’s nothing you can find on this site which wasn’t modified by me in some way.

I sought advice from a lot of people in putting this site together, and I’d like to make sure each of them receives the proper thanks for the time they spent correcting my mistakes, and giving me tips on how to proceed forward.

The remarkably talented Melanie Tetro provided me with the kickass Papers & Pencils logo and topbanner. And not only did she keep me involved in the design process throughout, allowing me to give my input on the nitty-gritty details of the design, but she was fast! The whole thing was done several days ahead of schedule, and she kept working with me to make sure I had everything I needed for several days after we were done. All for an extremely reasonable price.

Noëlle Anthony, Todd Williams, and Tim Hunting each spent a lot of time giving me detailed notes to help me improve the site’s design. I had originally made a number of design faux pas which probably would have remained in place without their advice. I really can’t thank them enough for their significant time investments, writing emails and having conversations about the finer points of web design.

Jennifer L. Davis gave me the benefit of her significant experience both as a writer, and as a blogger. Not to mention giving me a bit of legal information which I had previously been unaware of.

Pike had a lot more to do with getting this site going than she probably realizes. Not only did she spend years telling me I ought to start writing a D&D blog, but she was a large motivating factor in getting myself off my ass and actually starting Comma, Blank_ in the first place. She also saved me from weeks of work by pointing the Mandigo theme to me, which is a much better starting point for the design I was aiming for than the theme I was working with before that.

Shane S. gave me a lot of technical advice, actually diving into the way the site was coded. I am not skilled enough to implement all of the suggestions he gave me, but his input was invaluable in streamlining a few of the site’s elements.

I also need to thank Amber, Cynwise, Jeremy Dearing, Vitaemachina, Karethdreams, and my girlfriend Morrie, each of whom helped me to get this project done. Whether it was going over background images with me, letting me know my visited-link colors were off, or proof reading my posts, their contributions to the project were important. I thank you.

There’s still a lot to do, I’m sure. The website can be polished, the code cleaned up, and other improvements made. I’ll likely continue tweaking things here and there forever. And if you come across any problems, or have any suggestions for how to improve www.PapersPencils.com, leave a comment on this post, or visit the contact page to drop me a line directly.

Now that this whole deal is out of the way, I’ll return to writing about sitting with friends and pretending to be dorfs.

This will be my final post on Comma, Blank_, because I now have my own domain! All new posts can be found at:

www.PapersPencils.com

Comma, Blank_’s  entire archive of RPG posts has been successfully ported over to the new site. I have also transferred each and every one of the post comments by hand, including links back to each commenter’s profile, because I put a high value on the feedback you, my readers, leave for me. However, no new posts will be posted here after this one. And I will not be monitoring comments on this site any longer. So update your bookmarks, feed reader, or whatever it is you use to access my writings! I consider it a privilege to entertain my readers, and I would hate to lose even a single one of you in this move.

This site has been of immeasurable value to me, and I must confess I’m sorry to leave it, even if I’ll just be doing the exact same thing on the new site. Before I started this site, I was not very happy with my life. A quick peek at the first post on the blog, entitled “Worthlessness,” (which is one of the few non RPG posts here, and will not be moving to the new site), might give you a bit of an idea of just how down on myself I was. Truth be told, that’s not even the half of it. I was struggling through more emotional distress at the time than I want to bother talking about here. Suffice to say, my life was not going well, and I had very little hope that it would ever get better.

The blog trudged along lazily through August and September. I was aiming to put up 3 posts every week, but I was failing, which was business as usual for me. In my mind, it was a foregone conclusion that eventually I’d get bored of the blog, and go back to being an “aspiring writer,” who thinks a lot about writing, but never actually does it. I felt shitty about myself, and to be honest, I should have felt shitty about myself. I have no pity for the faults in myself which are rooted in my own lack of will. During a moment of courage in early October, I decided I was going to push myself harder. I was going to get 15 posts done that month, I decided. On October 10th, 2011, while driving my girlfriend Morrie to the train station in the morning, I told her that I was going to try to put up 15 posts in October. She snickered.

“No you’re not.” she said flatly. The comment stung, and I think she sensed that. She quickly qualified her statement. “I mean, you’d have to do a post what…every night?”

Don’t judge her harshly. It was an off-the cuff response which she has repeatedly apologized for in the time since. I almost didn’t even mention that it was her who said it, but I want to make clear that this was the opinion of someone who matters to me. The comment stung. I got angry. I’ve heard a lot of writers say that a dismissive comment, or a rejection, is what motivated them to keep going. I never understood the sentiment until that day. As soon as I got to work I pulled a calendar off the wall and began marking off days. I figured I shouldn’t write every day, since that would just burn me out. I would, instead, write every other day during the week, on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule. I have the weekends off, so decided I should have plenty of time both to rest, and to write on Saturday and Sunday. By that schedule of 5 posts a week, I figured out that I could have 19 posts done by the end of the month. That was plenty. Over lunch that day I started working on Magically Generating New Adventures, which remains one of my most popular posts. I started keeping tally marks for how many posts I had for the month. I was going to prove Morrie wrong. I was going to hit 15 posts. I could even skip 4 days if I wanted to.

I didn’t want to.

I kept to my schedule exactly. Even on Halloween, my favorite holiday, I was answering the door between writing paragraphs of The Problem With Feats. I tapped away at my keyboard despite a finger which I had severely burned on an ultraviolet light. Despite the fact that my hair kept getting in my face, since having it down was part of my costume. Despite the fact that I had already reached my 15-post goal. The goal didn’t matter anymore. Proving Morrie wrong didn’t matter anymore. I owe her a lot for that single insensitive comment, because without it I don’t know if I would have managed to forge the self discipline which has allowed me to devote myself so fully to this writing project.

I continued my 5-posts-a-week schedule through November, which proved harder. By the end of November I had decided two things. First, writing a Comma, Blank_ post five days a week was too much for me. I started to worry that I was going to burn out, so in December I officially dropped down to only one post over the weekend, bringing my work load down to only four posts per week. Second, I decided that it was time to devote myself more fully to the writing project. So, in early December, I did some budgeting, and some brainstorming, and registered the www.PapersPencils.com domain, and purchased two years of hosting. Yeah, I’ve been working on this for almost three months. What can I say? I’m a busy guy.

Since starting Comma, Blank_, I have missed only 2 posts, which were over the Christmas holiday. My life is better in countless ways. I feel like I’m improving myself a little bit with every word I write. And my readership is growing as well. During the month of February, there has not been a single day where traffic was lower than the corresponding day of the previous month. It kinda makes me want to continue using the old site until Wednesday just to see if the trend actually continues throughout the whole month. But, to be honest, it has been a serious pain in the ass to format everything post twice–once for Blogger, and again for WordPress. I’m eager to be done with that. Besides, in 25 days of February, I’ve already surpassed the traffic during the 31 days of January by over 200 unique hits, and broken the 1000-hit-per-month barrier for the first time. And I don’t intend to stop there. I’ve got so many plans for future projects and improvements–you have no idea.

So thank you, my readers, and everyone who has ever linked to me. Thank you to my friends on Twitter, and to my girlfriend Morrie. Thank you to -C of Hack and Slash for sending me several unique hits ever day, and to /tg/ for giving me years worth of scintillating conversation and inspiration, and to every RPG blog I’ve ever read which has given me an idea or caused me to question my preconceived notions. Thank you to my friends who play these tabletop RPGs with me, who have been very patient with me when I’ve allowed writing about games to distract me from running games. You all rock.

By the way, if you were wondering, this blog was called Comma, Blank_ because I originally envisioned it as a project “in between” the major projects of my life. The idea was that looking back, the stuff I worked on before this blog would be considered significant, and the stuff after this blog would be significant, but this blog was likely to be somewhat forgettable. That’s what I thought at the time, anyway. Thus, this blog was the comma between the things I did in the past, and the things I would someday do in the future. Ironic that it ended up becoming a project which I used to redefine who I am. For three days, the blog was actually titled simply ” ,_ ” but I started to feel like too much of a hipster douche for my own taste.

I figured I ought to tell that story, since I likely won’t get another chance.

See you on the new site, friends!

-Nick “LS” Whelan

There’s still one post left in Star Wars week coming up this evening, but I wanted to take this opportunity to make note of a new project of mine which some of my readers may or may not be interested in. I rather like superhero cartoons, such as the old Batman animated series. My ladyfriend, Morrie, quite likes them as well. So we settled on a fun project: watch each and ever episode of the five shows produced by Bruce Timm (Batman, Superman, Batman Beyond, Justice League, and Justice League Unlimited) and write about them in turn. We call the project Trapsing Through The Timmverse, because I like assonance.

If you’re uninterested in my non-role playing shenanigans, then simply enjoy this lovely picture of a Batdwarf.