I haven’t been productively writing for a couple of years due to schedule and life changes, my bad. But I found it’s actually beneficial to never limit yourself to one single work in progress. Some people are great at focusing on one thing and that’s awesome if you’re so motivated, but sometimes you’ll experience writer’s block or get hung up in the middle of something.
The Stove Metaphor
I always described my process like working on an imaginary kitchen stove with an unlimited number of hobs/burners where pots and pans can go. The front burner is the official work in progress and gets the most attention. If properly-inspired, I can just furiously work on one project, but occasionally have stray ideas that don’t fit the WIP and instead of the usual reaction “no, not now, the WIP!” I find it’s better to not stifle any idea flow. Instead, I metaphorically throw that idea in a new pan and let it simmer on the back burner in mind - giving it a mental “yes, possibly” instead of refusal. In the course of writing or just daydreaming, little ideas for back burners will happen and I can throw them in like metaphorical ingredients even if I don’t quite understand what it will be yet.
I find that sort of visualization gives mental permission to mull other ideas and subconscious brainstorming I may not even be aware of. If something distracts you, it’s okay to take some time away from the front burner and season a peripheral side dish. Or move the pot with the distracting idea to the front and put a lid on the grand masterwork to stew for a while. I often have 3-4 projects in mind in this construct.
The advantage of that is if you have writer’s block or get stuck, you don’t have to sit and tap your foot waiting for inspiration with growing anxiety that you won’t do it - there’s three other things you can switch to temporarily and allow your main idea simmer a while in back to develop. You can take breaks from a main project and still be productive without stifling the natural, sometimes random creative flow.
The other advantage is your brain (or my brain at least) has best interests in mind, and suddenly I’ll have a flash of inspiration that the hole in my front-burner WIP I’ve not known what to fill with could actually benefit from that side-plot of Béchamel sauce from an unmoored idea in the saucepan right behind it that’s been developing and didn’t seem remotely connected before. I can merge them since both ideas were allowed time to simmer organically and develop concurrently without saying “no” to any of them.
Both Cannery Vale and robotsexpartymurder happened through combining multiple unrelated back burner projects when none of them would work alone.
End of annoying metaphor
I’m trying to get back in the writing swing. Right now I have crowded back burners but nothing developed yet because I said ‘not now’ to the Muse too many times since I’ve spent most of my time being a creative night-owl who now starts work at 5am.
- I really want to use ChronicleHub to make a QBN but those require a lot of high-level plot and mechanics development which is not as simple as writing normal plot and dialog. I’m also trying to learn exactly how it works and have had a few frustrating “why doesn’t this work the way I expect?” issues which @Randozart has graciously helped with and taken feedback from, but I need to make some successes in that system to inspire me to lay into it.
- I’ve also toyed with making an Inform 7 parser game, but knowing historically those don’t do well outside the IF community as my quasi-erotic choice narratives[1].
- I’ve got another hotel game, but I need to stop going back to the “hotel with a creepy elevator” well.
- I’ve got another parody sex game in mind, and I’ve had follower-requests on itch for this type of game, but issues abound.
- I have lots of great titles, and I am not above starting with an intriguing title with multiple meanings and playing on those, but these are difficult and need lots of stove time.
- My main problem was I was all-in on AXMA and had basically mastered how to make my weird brand of narrative in it, but it was abandoned and no longer works. I’ve experimented a lot with Twine Chapbook and just need to figure out a story I can complete in it. I have trouble conceiving short projects with higher success rates.
The one thing I’ve been trying to do is get back into reading fiction more. My attention span and early bedtime has made it hard to play a lot of everyone else’s IF and that’s my bad. I did get a Kindle and primed the pump with a mid-level Stephen King novel and am trying to refill my own idea well spoonful-by-spoonful on the stove.
which have in the last year become an issue with promotion on monetized platforms even when not monetized ↩︎