The Creative Process #25 - Pushing the Cart
It's honest work.
We’re in the depths of winter at the moment. That means cuddling up under blankets at night, a nightly ritual cup of tea, and embracing a warm ray of sunshine if one can be found. Last month I mentioned I was in a creative doldrums, at least for my main project, Anne of Green Cables. This month I remain a little quiet, but I’m on the upswing again.
Community Work
Occasionally I’m in awe of other creative types in my area who seemingly always have irons in the fire and release piece after piece. I’m a more ebb-and-flow person at the moment, but I do try to keep my interest high, even if my effort isn’t.
This month I spent a reasonable amount of time doing some work for the interactive fiction community. I did some beta-testing and worked on community projects. I put in my yearly donation to the Colossal Fund, supplementing my regular contributions to the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation.
The interactive fiction community is good for encouraging small contributions across projects. There are always activities going on, and if you did a forensic analysis of people’s involvement with all sorts of projects, you’d see reviewers doing beta-testing or writing things themselves. Other people from the community might run a game jam, prepare an awards ceremony or design an educational course, alongside live-streaming games or publishing deep-dive articles. Everyone’s fingerprints are everywhere. The community is small enough that you might just be able to see the other far edge of it, but big enough for a continually thriving calendar of work.
Comparing it to other communities I’m nominally in, the interactive fiction community seems to have hit this effective size and growth. The roguelike community has a few standout people, but then it often feels like a lot of mad monks cloistered away, working on their passion projects and perhaps sharing it before they die. The 3d art world is especially large and solitary.
The mathematics community is huge, but the big names are so big as to be mountains. I could probably hit up anyone in the IF community and get a response. I’m unlikely to get the attention of Terry Tao without some amazing papers as groundswell support.
I enjoy the IF community where I can get a feel for the landscape, but also contribute meaningfully. So this month has been a lot of tinkering in that direction.
Cart
But that was not all my effort this month. Like a craftsman in Dwarf Fortress, I was struck by a fey mood. I had a project spring fully-formed in my mind, with a very well-defined scope. I quickly organized a day off work the week before, and on that day, smashed out a solid half of a project. Four and a half thousand words in a day. This happened to be the day after that guy shot at that other guy, so it was both easy and hard to block out the world.
The project is called Cart, and it’s about a cart. The inspiration is extremely strong and specific, but I don’t want to talk about that now. I wrote the first half of the game, and I have the second half plotted out. I definitely know the ending.
It’s a medium-length Twine choice game, maybe an hour, tops. It’s set in early Industrial Era England, although I flip-flopped between a few periods: medieval Europe, the Australian Gold Rush, or even some vague fantasy medieval time. I even had to research things, which is a rare treat for me.
My project last year, Hand Me Down, was a bittersweet bit of imagined nostalgia. In April I wrote One True Love, a goofy fantasy comedy. Cart is very different. Friend of the newsletter, Mike from Armiger Games, got to play the first draft of the first half. He commented that it was:
“One hell of a dark opening. It’s pretty gripping.”
Which is great, because I’m aiming for very brutal, effective writing. The complete opposite of my other two projects.
While conceivably I could finish this and enter it into IF Comp, I won’t. I’m helping out there and don’t want to sully that most sacred of events in the IF calendar. I could keep it for Ectocomp later in the year, but it’s not really “spooky”. There are murmurings of a revival of the IF Art Show, but this might be too story-driven to be applicable.
Or I could be a big boy and just release it on its own, without the shelter of a jam or a competition. Imagine that.
In any case, I’m stoked that wherever this fey mood came from, it produced some nice initial work, buoying me through the month. As an extra bonus, it got me back into Anne, and I had two consecutive good ideas in the shower this month.
Not Resting in the Rest of Time
Actually, looking back over the month, I felt like it was low-key but it probably wasn’t.
During the school holidays I took my daughter to the movies. We went all out in the fancy theatres where they brought you hot food and fancy drinks, while you reclined in big leather couches. This in itself blew her mind, but then the movie was Inside Out 2, so it was “THE. BEST. DAY. EVER!”
It was a great movie, great inspiration for me to play around with 3D art again, and a nice source of vocabulary and experiences for father-daughter conversations. I used the word “squeamish” with her, and she understood it in relation to Disgust. When emotions got heated, we remembered Anxiety having a panic attack and how Riley calmed herself down with breathing.
I put Animal Well aside for good… well until Ryan Veeder and Baf started discussing it midway through the month. I got a few more collectibles in that. This time for sure I’m putting it down.
Mike from Armiger Games finished Isles of Sea and Sky, and told me how long it took him. So out of sheer hubris, I had to finish it quicker than that. (Look, we can’t always be motivated by honorable intentions!) Unfortunately it looks like we might have a similar finishing time, so I can’t claim super-genius status.
Isles of Sea and Sky remains delightful and infinitely aggravating. I think the above image shows I need 3 more gems, about a dozen more stars and to defeat a boss or so.
A Robust August
Next month should be interesting as we inch closer to Spring. It’ll be my son’s second birthday! He is adamant he wants a rocket cake, so it is up to my wife to create one that does not look like… well, something else.
I’m excited to try some new routines in my life. I hope to finish Cart and get back into Anne. I’m gravitating towards doing more 3d art, as well as being incredibly keen on doing an escape room. September will be the new early IF Comp and I hope to review a lot of entries. It feels like activity and creativity are due to blossom.
And most of all, I intend to ignore the news as much as I can.