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Thursday, May 23, 2013

Gamechef 2013

It's a work in progress - but here is my 2013 gamechef entry so far.

The prompts are pictures this year, and here are the ones I used and how I interpreted them:


I took the person on the double-sided arrow as a ghost; someone in limbo. Alternately, as a representation of people precariously poised between success and failure, good and evil.


I took the skull with a snowflake embedded in its cranium fairly literally, to evoke winter, stasis, and death.


I took the worm exploding out of the apple to represent summer, corruption, and latent sins bearing fruit.

I structured the game and story around these ideas. I haven't really had an opportunity to playtest it, so we'll see if it flies. 

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

In Defense of Writing Like a Maniac

So I started NaNoWriMoing seriously last year and I feel as though some defense of the practice is in order, given the jibes it gets from serious writerly circles for producing so much low-quality work. Though really, does it need any defense except that it's fun and productive? I honestly don't understand why writing anything, even drek, with your free time should be looked down on. It seems like a pretty respectable hobby to me. But I do think some defense of Wrimoing as a valuable tool for aspiring 'serious writers' is worthwhile.

I had half-heartedly participated a few times before I actually took it seriously last year. My word count was always laughably low and I usually got distracted halfway through. I didn't think you could write anything of decent quality in such a short period of time and honestly that level of volume terrified me. At least, without descending into half-baked drivel.

As a novice writer, if that's the correct term, my major problems were with length and finishing pieces. You can always improve your writing, of course, but there comes a time when it is obvious that your competence in one area has reached its maximum until you deal with your other inadequacies. I don't remember slowly building up my ability to write reasonably sized, complete short stories; I remember a series of startling breakthroughs. College got me past the 15 page mark - I minored in creative writing and simply having to turn in that first big assignment was enough to get me over the production hump. Having someone demand a 15 page, finished story from me if I wanted to pass the class turned out to be what I needed to get over my finicky production anxiety.

From there, I worked my way up to the 30 page mark through sheer enthusiasm and effort. Now that I had seen it could be done, I could go big! I could write a long short story. Of course, the classes also helped me polish up my work, once it had forced me to produce something to polish. It seems obvious, but it's actually quite hard to internalize that you can't make something perfect until you've started making it period.

The subsequent improvements to both my work and work process eventually made me feel like I had permission to have some professional aspirations. I finally felt like it was worthwhile to suit up and send out submissions to journals - and of course I finally had something to submit. Trying to get published is a brutal process composed largely of form rejection letters even for people much more established than I am, but even so three or four of my (extremely) short stories have made it out into the world where other people might read them. I'm still trying to chase down publication in a more widely read journal, possibly even of a story longer than a thousand words, but as far as I can tell there are two keys to getting published. One is persistence and the other is production. Having read the blogs of other writers who are further along in their careers - some of whom were generous enough to make their submission and acceptance rates public - it became quite clear to me that they were writing at an incredible volume that far outpaced mine, without sacrificing quality.

For me, NaNoWriMo has served the same function for the 100 page mark that the creative writing minor did for the 15 page one. And you know what? Those behemoth stories are easily some of my best writing, definitely higher in quality than the things I've actually had published. I also have had much more fun writing them. Now, it's much harder to get your book published as a newcomer than it is to get your short story out there. I'm not even thinking about dipping a toe into sending query letters out on these (I'm also not totally done with my pet project). But now I have confidence and facility with volume. I can crank out 50,000 words in four weeks and even if half of them are crap, I'll still have something I can use. Those 50K words don't have to all be part of one magnum opus - you can write an entire short story collection in that time instead. If your goal is to be a published, widely read author, that rate of production is probably necessary.

It's true that writing at that pace can lower the quality of your work. However, writing constantly raises your lowest bar. You get to a point where you improve through sheer bloody-mindedness. The distance between your best and your worst work closes and then you can narrow it further through ruthless editing. After there's something there to critique.

Make something, then start judging it.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Ch-ch-changes

So, this blog has been pretty defunct lately, and I don't think it's really been very coherent as a 'place to stuff intellectual resources or sometimes my rpgs!'. I officially give up internet; I think I'm going to keep a personal blog instead. I've been wanting to have rants about Society and Queer Things and all that. However, I'd like to have some semblance of anonymity while doing so and this blog not going to have that - so I'm moving things over to a new account. I might use this blog sporadically for fiction and game writing purposes, but for the moment not so much.

If you're interested in reading the new blog, post a comment or email me and I'll give you the link. Cheers!