Monday transparency report

Hey guys!  I wish I could always only report smooth progress, but this week was creatively frustrating and involved some uninvited challenges.

Problem
I worked all 7 days since the last report, no days off, but I wasn’t able to get the remaining scenes into the place I wanted.

I know it’s just porn, but I love this story, and when it feels like the version on the screen isn’t coming out like the version in my head, it’s demoralising.

I kept grinding, but you probably know that when you’re struggling is when the discouraging voices seem really loud, and you feel like maybe they’re right, and this sucks, and you should quit.

For inspiration I went to Ira Glass:

All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But it's like there is this gap. For the first couple years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not that good.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase. They quit.

And fucking Macbeth:

I am in blood stepped so far that

Should I wade no more

Returning were as tedious as go o’er

I love you guys, it humbles me that you believe in me.  So I kept going o’er.

Solution
I’ve learned that sometimes when I’m in a negative place about the writing, it’s really my subconscious trying to warn me that grinding isn’t working.  And I need to stop trying to bend the plot and the NPCs into doing what I want them to do, and instead rework them to make everything flow more logically.

This feels like it’s adding on time, and that’s hard when there are persistent external voices telling you it just needs to be done (and making fun of you because it’s not done).  But it was the solution.

Thursday night really sucked, but on Friday I replayed the whole sequence from scratch and just gave myself permission to think and be creative.  All it really needed were some extra beats (for characterisation) and player choices (to nudge it a little bit further away from “Powerpoint slideshow” towards “open world”).  

It feels great now, everything is slotting into place, but it’s past 2100 on Monday and I need to sleep before I can keep pushing forward.  And I need to write this report before I can sleep, because XG told me I can’t skip them. 😭

Okay.  Report done – sleep next – more work tomorrow.  I’m really excited about hitting it with a fresh brain (and fresh coffee) in the morning, the stuff I added over the past few days feels really good.  🦀❤️‍🔥