Poll: How do you recover from the RP blues?

[BurningDaisies]

For the Mods:

I'm not sure if this belongs here or in off-topic. It's related to roleplaying, so I'm assuming it goes here. Apologies in advance <3

Hello humans and other creatures of inexplicable nature!

So I have a few questions for all of you, but first I feel a preface is in order:

I dearly love to write. It's one of the most fulfilling things I could ever do. And, I adore this site for it's wild and endless possibilities. But the adventure isn't without its obstacles.

So... I can firmly commit to a story. It's not terribly hard, but it seems to have a cycle, I guess you could say. I don't like write if it feels like a chore. If it's not fun and doesn't bring some measure of joy, it's not really worth writing. In general, I feel, if you're unhappy with something and you're just writing because of inertia, especially just to prolong a narrative that's lost it's vitality, then there's little point in it. Sad and unfortunate business, but it happens.

For every roleplay I've ever been in, the novelty inevitably wears off, and I do lose interest. It's not a matter of "if", but more a matter of "when". However, after a bit of a dry spell, that vile time where the only thing keeping me attached is sheer loyalty to the story, the novelty is somehow rediscovered. I could be listening to a catchy song, wasting my existence on tumblr, or absent-mindedly eating my lunch, and BAM! The muse returns. Many times it seems to just manifest from the ether and infect me. And again, it's only a matter of time before it happens. It creates a sort of endless cycle.

It's often strange and confounding, but it happens time and time again.

So onto my inquiries!

Has anyone else ran into this sort of thing? Does it only happen sometimes? Does a roleplay need a certain X-factor or je ne sais quoi for you to even join, or is the novelty there just because it's new? How do you guys deal with a waning or lost interest? Is it just a matter of grit and grim determination? Loyalty? For you, does a story ever lose its luster? How do you recover from the RP blues?

Feel free to answer any and all questions. Hell! Make up some new ones, if you like. =D
Or nitpick, that's fine too <3

[Ellri]

We think this topic fits perfectly in here.

We've not measurably had it ourselves recently, but we have had to find ways to remotivate other players/CoGMs, and it is never easy.

One way we've found is to essentially rewrite a CS to see if that unburies that character's mind. With others, we try to find something that hits a shiny in their minds. Sometimes it takes days or even weeks to find, other times it can happen instantly. We sometimes regain interest by focusing on something else for a while. It might be reading, it might be writing, it might be something else.

Sometimes it could require a different setting to work in, be it another RP or simply something night mindless.

[Engel]

I think one of the main problems for me with this kind of thing is what a lot of 1x1 partners are like. When you've been forced to drop another RP, or had another partner just disappear it gets hard to be positive and have any interest in any RP. I'd usually just leave for an amount of time myself if I didn't have any RP going. I tend to forget the bad parts about it after a while. It's one of the reasons I think I want to try GMing at times too. I forget how awful it really is after a few months.

At the moment I have one RP that I've done for like 9 months, and it's had its ups and down. There were times I didn't feel like posting at all, but I just forced myself to do it in the end. I think the main interest still remained thanks to good character chemistry and probably the best 1x1 partner I've had. There was a story planned out for it at first, but once we passed that we let the characters lead it where it would go and that made it more interesting cause you didn't really know yourself where it was going. We've tried to change it up quite a bit too over time.

I think for a group RP it needs to have something that I can't get in a 1x1, but again the other roleplayers can be what makes me lose interest and not want to do it.

[Makky]

Loyalty and time. Have forgone group RP altogether now.
Cannot keep up for anybody's life. How to deal? Not sure.
As @engel says, maybe just pure enforce of forging on?
Good stories and fun playing buddies too lose to the onslaught called time.
And the banks of free flowing tides of unreliable memory.
So many faces forgotten or left.. So many more sighs unaddressed..

Just got to force myself into a box, a single RP arena.
Maybe then, the memory is less prone to wander.