[Note: This item is getting a bit more positive response than I expected, therefore I am cheating it back to the top just this once. Forgive me and I will not repeat this little date/time alchemy.]

Now that I have the attention of every gamer who reads Blogcritics, I'm proposing a new project — follow up to the recent disastrous Blunt Swords debacle. Blunt Swords was to be a discussion forum for writers that actually works. But it didn't work. It didn't work because online forums for writers don't work. I knew this. I also know that if I get very drunk I will have a three-day hangover, yet I've indeed willfully intoxicated myself to great extent in the past. So I guess I just had to stick my hand in the fire to discover that writers' forums are too hot — or not too hot, as the case may be — to manage.

But this new gig, this is all about fun: We are forming a video gaming league for writers. If you're laughing now, piss off. There's a precedent for pen-wielding gamers. Alex Garland and Martin Amis. And Martin Amis and Alex Garland. And Trent Reznor — okay, he's a songwriter, which is not exactly what we're after; but if Trent Reznor wants to join and be my new best friend, he's in, baby. However I'm sure there are a great many writers who don't quite have that sort of name recognition who pine passionately for pastimes popular perhaps betwixt periods of perpetrating purple prose and violating virginal volumes with venomous verse. You get the picture.

The rules, because there are always rules:

1. You must be a writer. This does not mean that you must be a published writer, or work in a writing-related field; you must only aspire to the writer's life. And keep after it daily or at least weekly. If you put food on the table by working at Blockbuster or as an automotive mechanic or a soft-porn star, so be it. You simply must define your avocation and potential vocation as writing.