Game Design Authorial Voice Blues
I miss my lady. It’s looking like we won’t see each other much this month – which is a dang old shame.
I gotta tell you – I have a new kind of feeling & when that comes up well, here’s where I work that out.
I’ve been making a lot of books. The writing of books is a pleasure, even making the pictures – that’s fun. A positive time. But there’s this aspect- the print sizes, the formatting –the actual making of the book. It’s always going to be more than a little amateurish – and that’s great – I persuaded myself that that’s even what I’m really going for. The old-school authenticity – making it seem like it’s the work of a group of earnest people, really interested in this new thing. Which is true.
But also, I think it dovetails beautifully with my eternally punk-rock sensibilities. Why not do it yourself? And mean it? Why not do for yourself while institutions falter, while the world breaks & fails.
Why not indeed? So there’s no reason not to get ambitious and make what you want to make.
I’ve been heard to say, lately, “A man’s got to have some residual IP income.” And kind of? I think it’s true. Making books and selling them. Well, I will. I’ll do that.
Here’s the thing though – and this is the new feeling. It came on strong over the weekend, and young idler Agatha was no great help here. So you ‘finish’ your book. It’s past the finish line but it’s not exactly a victory – it’s pretty good, nothing to be ashamed of – but there’s a sense, still, that it could be miles better. That you’re not completing the work so much as abandoning the effort.
So there’s a muddled sense of accomplishment but along with it a sense of ennui – that there’s more to do still, and maybe next time it’ll be better. Every attempt improves things, but every attempt is still just an attempt. I’m trying to do something great – I’m doing my best to do something great – and there are milestones sure – but there’s always more to be done.
And I am on pace with these books – 2 a month since October. Seriously.
Seriously.
And I’m seeing that I have signed up for this experience of weird, complicated feelings every month. So I’m trying to work out what it is exactly that they are. Inadequacy? That’d be pretty weird huh? If that’s what I was gonna feel. Maybe that’s it. I’ll decide that that’s an exciting new territory to explore I guess. Maybe it’ll be fun to feel uncertain & confounded. Huh.
On the phone she tells me that I’m an artist and suffer with these feelings – which I never did get, I thought the struggle of the artist was always mere survival, never put it together that there’d be the intense dread of making things incomplete.
She laughs at me and has her troubles, and I laugh too, and want to see her and do not want to go to Chicago.
I gotta tell you – I have a new kind of feeling & when that comes up well, here’s where I work that out.
I’ve been making a lot of books. The writing of books is a pleasure, even making the pictures – that’s fun. A positive time. But there’s this aspect- the print sizes, the formatting –the actual making of the book. It’s always going to be more than a little amateurish – and that’s great – I persuaded myself that that’s even what I’m really going for. The old-school authenticity – making it seem like it’s the work of a group of earnest people, really interested in this new thing. Which is true.
But also, I think it dovetails beautifully with my eternally punk-rock sensibilities. Why not do it yourself? And mean it? Why not do for yourself while institutions falter, while the world breaks & fails.
Why not indeed? So there’s no reason not to get ambitious and make what you want to make.
I’ve been heard to say, lately, “A man’s got to have some residual IP income.” And kind of? I think it’s true. Making books and selling them. Well, I will. I’ll do that.
Here’s the thing though – and this is the new feeling. It came on strong over the weekend, and young idler Agatha was no great help here. So you ‘finish’ your book. It’s past the finish line but it’s not exactly a victory – it’s pretty good, nothing to be ashamed of – but there’s a sense, still, that it could be miles better. That you’re not completing the work so much as abandoning the effort.
So there’s a muddled sense of accomplishment but along with it a sense of ennui – that there’s more to do still, and maybe next time it’ll be better. Every attempt improves things, but every attempt is still just an attempt. I’m trying to do something great – I’m doing my best to do something great – and there are milestones sure – but there’s always more to be done.
And I am on pace with these books – 2 a month since October. Seriously.
Seriously.
And I’m seeing that I have signed up for this experience of weird, complicated feelings every month. So I’m trying to work out what it is exactly that they are. Inadequacy? That’d be pretty weird huh? If that’s what I was gonna feel. Maybe that’s it. I’ll decide that that’s an exciting new territory to explore I guess. Maybe it’ll be fun to feel uncertain & confounded. Huh.
On the phone she tells me that I’m an artist and suffer with these feelings – which I never did get, I thought the struggle of the artist was always mere survival, never put it together that there’d be the intense dread of making things incomplete.
She laughs at me and has her troubles, and I laugh too, and want to see her and do not want to go to Chicago.