The little gamer deep down inside sure hopes it does.

Or is it just wishful thinking on my part?

I’ve tried so many things, to break my out of my writing blocks that playing games woudn’t be the most ridiculous of them. I’ve read countless books on the topic, tried multiple types of organization techniques, everything from Google Calendar to Bullet Journals. The bullet journal approach is my latest, so I’m holding out hope that this will be the one that finally tips the scales in my favor. I’ve practiced typing other great works like Lord of the Rings into a word document, in the hopes that the great Tolkien will wear off on me through my eyes on the page and my fingers at the keyboard. It did help a bit at the time, but here I’m am again stuck with very few words generated in the last few months.

So why not? Why wouldn’t playing a video game help? To me, at least at first glance, it seems like it should. I mean, just look at all that eye candy exploding on the screen in front of me. Isn’t that a bit like looking at art? Those of you that scoff that video game graphics can’t hold a candle to the exquisite pieces hanging on the walls of your local art gallery, clearly haven’t spent much time with current games. Try checking out the stunning vistas displayed in games like the latest incarnation of the Uncharted series.

Then, there’s the whole adventuring in distant lands thing. Travel to distant places is supposed to help stimulate many a writers prose. Just check out Ernest Hemmingway’s biography. His writing chops are undisputed and the man clearly liked to get around.

How about writing research? Sure, you could spend hours ruminating over tomes of Wikipedia pages looking for those little bits of minutiae that are guaranteed to saturate your reader in your story world but don’t dismiss the opportunity to journey to the sweeping mountains of Syria as Laura Croft in Tomb Raider. 

Here’s a couple of resources that provide more reading:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/video-games-creativity_b_1076391

http://news.msu.edu/media/documents/2011/11/33ba0f16-a2e9-4d36-b063-2f540f115970.pdf