Unusual struggle...

Oy, 9pm and I've yet to pick up my sketchbook. I'll call it a period of rest for my poor appendage.

Earlier this week I said with conviction that I'm settling down with drawing, and not planning to spend too much effort on game design or heavy duty writing any time soon.

Today I spent an hour at work jotting down notes for a multi-book fantasy epic that I'm totally jazzed about. After I got home, I spent another while talking with Reagan about those ideas and hashing out some finer points of the fantasy's cosmology.

So now I'm stuck. Do I take time away from my drawing to put effort into the writing project? Or do I just keep a spiral of notes about this fantasy, let characters grow and play in my head, and wait till I reach some landmark with my art before setting it aside to write?

This isn't just a post it idea I can stick on my wall and let rest in darkness until I'm bored enough to work on it. I've got four distinct eras of world history to work with. I've got four strong characters with motivations and struggles, and a story arc for each. I've got a handful of minor characters with their own ideas about how things work. I've got a number of smaller archetypes that emerge from the situation this wold of mine is in. I've got a cosmology that is a unique expression of my philosophies and does not feel expressly derivative of anything I've read. These things excite me and churn in my brain.

I have a feeling that even if I do press on with my drawing, these characters I met in my head today, and the world that surrounds them, will creep from my hands and remind me that they are in my brain and in my heart.

Oh. and it all started from six words I read on the back of the Carnivale season 2 box set.