Use it or Lose It

I once heard an acquaintance of mine remark that “writing is one of those skills, you either use or lose it”. In the past week I’ve found out that he’s right.

I’m currently in the process of working up a thousand word sample for a site I want to write for. It’s not going well. My first draft was filled with redundancies and terribly written. My next draft was tighter but boring as hell. I’m in the process of a third draft, that is a bit more entertaining, but it still doesn’t “pop” or “kick the reader right in the ballsack” as a friend of mine put it.

I started to wonder whether it had always been this way. I never remembered struggling so much with a piece before. Looking at the current draft, I think it’s a lot better, but I’ve never struggled with a piece so much. I started to wonder if my previous writings that had been so easy in comparison were as terrible as my first draft of my current piece. So, I hit Google and dug up some of my older stuff, and it was better... a lot better.

I’m not sure how I feel about that. At least it means I didn’t suck as much in the past, on the other hand it does mean that over time I’ve lost the ability to write cogent copy. I guess I just have to take my acquaintance’s advice “use it” more.

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On a related not I found out that this piece I wrote for Gamasutra was a hit in Japan. There were no less than three separate Japanese translations of it. I also found the piece singled out as an example of Gamasutra being “remarquable”. That’s something at least.

The Internet has left me

I still don't have internet in my new place. I should be getting hooked up on Saturday. I'll have a larger post then.

Life has finally reached a point of relatvive stability. At least stable enough to allow me to gather my thought and begin writing again.

I am going to create a new blog (seperate from this one) that will allow me to focus on my professional writing. It's going to be game focused. However I'm still trying to decide the exact direction I want to take it. The problem is that game's writing is filled with people. There are five million gaming blogs out there. I really don't want write anything that's similar to anything else that's out there. The field is crowded enough already. I'd like to focus on long forgotten genre's and games. I have a soft spot for terrible 90's FMV games and consoles. However, I'm probably going to be writing a guest collumn on a well known site concerning that.

So my question to you guys is this: What kind of game's writing would you like to see? What kind of content to you not see readily or at all? I know not all of my friends who read this blog are gamers, but the majority probably are. If your not a gamer, what kind of commentary do you like to see when reading about Books, Movies, Music or your other hobbies?

Now that that's out of the way...

Life here at the moment is pretty rad. March and the first part of April were filled with changes; New job, new apartment, new city, new roommate, new everything basically. I'm currently in Yokohama teaching at a middle school. It's a big shock moving from elite high school to normal middle school. Not exactly an ideal change but it certainly provides me with motivation to figure out what the hell I actually want to do. The new blog mentioned above is part of figuring out process.

Still no Fencing! I've been rendered poor by my move. Japanese moving costs usually total up to at least four months worth of rent. So until Uncle Sam gives me my tax return I don't even have a working foil.

That's it for now. Please tell me what you think about the questions above in the comments! A friend of mine in the industry asked me last week why I wasn't working in games already. I really didn't have a good answer for him. I had some reasons but they all sounded like lame excuses. So help me out and tell me what you think.

Oh, and whoever linked to this blog with my full name can you remove the link. The of this blog was to have a place to blow off steam. I'd like to not have it show up in the first page of results when editors google my name.

Never Any Time

Jesus, it's been three months since I last wrote anything. This is just a quick post mentioning that I'm still alive. I don't know when I'll get a chance to write a longer post. Probably after I move to Yokohama next month.