Role-playing... and writing

I seem to run into an a slightly annoying situation where my older sister (Whom acts like she must be my younger sister) forces me to look at all the different character she is drawing that she came up with for this story she's supposedly going to write. The thing is, I keep having to look at these damn pictures year after year, listen to their biographies, and try and have an intellectual discussion about one of my favorite passions, writing, while not making her feel insecure about the fact that she's approaching making a story in the most retarded way possible. As a writer and a role-player I'm able to distinguish what is just simply, wasting my time fun pieces of writing, and something I'm serious about and put as much hard work and time into as possible. What's funny is, like my sister, I often find people making similar mistakes about the identity of what could be considered a good writing project. I mean it comes down to this... a writer writes. Making personalities on the side as a character profile is really missing the whole point of writing. Writing is supposed to be fun and if you're avoiding doing the actual writing by making all this history to it that won't actually be a part of the project.... then why are you pretending you want to write? Writing, although sometimes is laborious and not exciting... is supposed to be fun and something you can be proud of.It's funny, but what she's doing is standard procedure to making a role-playing character. She does LARP, so it makes sense that this is how she approaches it, but it's a mistake on her part none the less. However, role-players tend to make the opposite mistake that she makes. They think that role-playing is this serious writing project. It doesn't happen every day I try and find role-play, but too often (Once is too often....) people tell me that they are trying to learn their character for a story they plan on writing by role-playing said character with me. I'm sorry but.... NO! It's fine if you're both a writer and a role-player, I am, but they aren't the same thing. There are things to be said for it however... for instance it exposes you to other writing styles (Basically you're reading more...), it lets you talk with other writers (if they're both) on a personal level and it exposes you to other ideas and gets your mind ready for a free flow of creativity. I would say it lets you have someone correct your grammar and spelling mistakes, but apparently everyone has the sensitivity of a five year old's knee after they've been slip and sliding on cement sidewalks. However nice these things are, they're not the same for the same reason why what my sister is doing isn't writing. One is something for fun, the other is a serious project. If you wanted to write... you'd just do it. A while back I made a comment in one of my blogs "It’s a terrible cycle only kept alive by this idea that role-playing is the two person activity equivalent of writing a book and that what they are doing is a tribute to literature. It’s not of course, but this is their mistake." I suppose I should clarify, there are aspects of writing a story in role-playing. This is role-playing taking the form of written word... however there are differences, as I've state. The biggest being this isn't a book and the quality of writing tends to be below what you'd actually want to publish... I know some of the ideas I throw in to spice up a role-player are certainly mechanically held together by bubblegum and paper clips.... Just keep your role-play creativity away from your writing creativity. If you have a character you want to write a story... just write it! Don't waste time role-playing him/her! You're wasting all that creativity on something that is just for pleasure. At least that's how I see it.

Now for a little story of mine... the best experience I had, as in funniest, where I got pmed by a role-player making this same mistake. He pmed me flat out asking me to help him write a book. I didn't really understand why, but he quickly explained that he couldn't write from a girl's perspective and wanted me to do it for him. Clearly this was another way to basically... avoid the hard work that is writing... but it's also slightly homophobic and kinda anti-woman. Well feminism aside, it was pretty funny. I told him he better learn, no one was gonna want to write his story about his dumb role-playing character. I suppose I'm just a bitch though ;) Happy rp hunting