Writing in the dark

My FFXIV Character Aralina Arai'li

As most of you know I’m a pretty avid gamer. My ultimate game being the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV.

Aralina

In this game, there are free companies, or what most people call guilds in other games. It’s a group of players who band together to help each other out in game. Our FC is large and one of the top FCs on our server. We also have several social media outlets to stay in contact with each other. Many of them I am in charge of as an officer of our FC. One of these outlets is Discord. A voice and text chat app. You can talk with your friends while running content in game for quicker easier communication or just sit and BS.

What does this have to do with writing? Wait just a moment, I’m getting there.

So I’m working on my edits late one night in an empty house. One of my writing quirks is I like to watch paranormal shows and spooky movies while I write. I’m making progress, chugging along through the WIP and all of a sudden I hear a loud and boisterous “Ahoy, Aralina!”

Aralina and Siegfried

My Chihuahua and I jumped clear out of the chair.

I realize that somehow Discord had connected of its own accord and my friend Siegfried had popped into the channel I was unwittingly sitting in to check in on me. Flustered, I closed the chat without a reply. This prompted Sieg to message me to see if I was ok (because he is a super sweet dude!) and I then had to explain how he had scared the pee out of me and my little dog too…

So kids, lesson learned. Always ensure discord is disconnected when writing horror in a dark empty house while watching paranormal shows.