The Creative Process #28 - Variegated Slurry

On occasions you can get the timbre of a month’s creative endeavours. Ah yes, autumn, comfy drinks and brisk walks through carpets of umber leaves! I shall plan out my memoir!

This October — where it is not Autumn here — felt like the final crescendo of The Beatles’ A Day in the Life, complete with those weirdo snippets at the end. A lot happened creatively and anti-creatively, and somehow we got to November.

Farm Stay

At the top of the month was our little family vacation. We visited a little town called Bundanoon, and stayed at a farm stay — some semi-heritage-ish place surrounded by a small farm.

Holidays are great for me, creatively. Driving long distances in Australia gives me time to marinate ideas. Exposure to the peccadillos of whatever situation you find yourself jolts you out of your usual routine. And you can find inspiration if you know where to look.

The start of our stay had a funny little puzzle that reminded me of interactive fiction. The people who had provided the place to stay also provided a fourteen page set of instructions, with at least a dozen different typographical flourishes like colour, bolding, indentation… Yet their instructions were confusing as to where the house was.

We pulled up at a place that looked like a likely suspect. We needed to find the key, which was in the mailbox, so said the instructions.

We couldn’t find one. The house did have a tiny model of itself out the front. My daughter and wife tried the little door on it, but it was painted on. Perhaps we had missed the mailbox in amongst the random road signs, combination bike/wood storage sheds and knick-knacks stapled to the fence. My 14kg 2 year old had to come, so I lugged him all the way up the driveway. No mailbox.

On the way back, I was convinced the little house was the mailbox. I spied a handle from afar.

Then my wife and I had an interactive parser experience:

Me: “Ah, the key is in the house!”

Wife: “Well that’s not very useful!”

M: “No, the little house.”

W: *looks at shack we’re about to live in*

M: “No the other little house.”

W: “???”

M: “Just open the door.”

W: “I would if we had the keys.”

M: “I’m sure they’re in the house. Just use the handle.”

Both wife and daughter look at the front door of the shack and the model. At this point I was within range. “The handle on the model!” I said. There was a handle that looked like a drainpipe but with a bit of force, let the entire front facade of the model swing open. The key was revealed!

The stay had its pluses and minuses. We found some fantastic food in town — a bowls club served up fantastic meals while the bartender informed me that I was a member and thus eligible for cheap alcohol. Walks around the area were great with thick scrub suddenly giving way to tall cliffs.

My daughter got to wake up early, get dressed and go to the chicken coop nearby and get fresh eggs for breakfast. My city slicker kids got to watch me feed horses because they had never been so close as to be licked by one. We visited a fantastic cricket museum dedicated to the great Don Bradman.

Counter to this fun was that I had to co-sleep with my son on a thin futon. He was sick and spent the night coughing in my face and nestling into my jugular. The house was… let’s say very heritage with some bizarre upgrades and other things just left to the fates. It was specially designated as being for kids, and had approximately ten thousand random plastic toys in caches throughout the house, in between the maybe locked cabinets of fine glassware. And there was only a hot tub for baths or drowning in. And let’s not mention the fireplace.

If it wasn’t for my son’s bioweapon attack, this would all be good grist for the creative mill. Alas, I got sick and energy got downgraded to survival for a while. Creative mode budget minimal.

But that’s family holidays for you!

IF Comp

Judging for IF Comp lasts six weeks, upgraded some years ago when the number of entries was prohibitively large for a mere four weeks of reviewing. My goal was to review twelve entries. I had been stuck on seven for ages. With the deadline approaching and me sick as a dog, I willed myself to be alive enough to review a bunch more. My final total was thirteen reviews, and I felt they were decent enough.

I had expected more response from the authors, but got very little. That’s okay, everyone deals with reviews in their own way. While some of the games didn’t quite hit for me, I tried to be encouraging.

My favourite game, The Bat, ended up winning IF Comp. It’s a beautifully done minimalist parser game where you are a valet to a guy kinda like Bruce Wayne, but more… batty. You are trying to keep a fundraiser together with your own two hands, and the calamity keeps piling on. Fantastic game with superb writing and gameplay that all neatly knits together.

I had been helping out with some of the IF Comp organizing, and it was interesting to see how things operate behind-the-scenes but also how the community reacts. DICK MCBUTTS GETS KICKED IN THE NUTS got a sequel: ROD MCSCHLONG GETS PUNCHED IN THE DONG. Many people wondered if it was a true sequel or just an imitator trying to steal its fire. I knew beforehand because of organizing, but it was fun to keep mum and watch the conjectures fly.

I still love IF Comp. It’s big enough to matter, but small enough to be the product of a few dedicated individuals.

Cart vs Anne vs Me

Back in May I managed to get my creative fires lit warm enough to write half of a short interactive fiction game called Cart. The aesthetic and writing of Cart is quite different to my usual style. It’s unrelentingly brutal and goes places I often avoid in writing.

I needed another day to finish it, but needed to have the right space to do it in. Cart is a bit of a commentary on real-world events, so I wanted to finish it quickly. Unfortunately it was impossible to take even a day off in amongst all the sick leave. And I was too drained to even attempt it on those days.

I returned to an accidentally abandoned routine of taking my commonplace book everywhere. During lunch at work I sketched out the rest of the piece and tried to assemble as much scaffolding as possible for me to use when I did get proper time. Cart took front-of-mind and I have lots of little notes to myself, including one that was just the words “warm, variegated latrine slurry”, which is an important thing to record. Apologies if you were eating.

Fate intervened and my wife had to take a day off with me looking after her. With her blessing, while she slept listening to Korean reality TV cooking shows, I punched out the finale of Cart. It took me until deep into the night, and into some dark places, but I finished it.

I have two trusted testers playing it at the moment. I have no idea how it might be received in general , although one of the testers has given me very positive feedback. I didn’t enter it into EctoComp although I conceivably could have. I’m not sure what to do with it, though. I feel like it is good work, strong work, but it’s not a fun ride.

In parallel to Cart’s concerted guerilla effort, I’ve been thinking about my main work-in-progress, Anne of Green Cables. I had a minor artistic tantrum regarding the 3d art I shared last newsletter. The image wasn’t working for me in a few ways, and I couldn’t convince myself that it was a few small changes away from success. So I have set that aside for now.

I did, however, write a finale confrontation with a thoroughly evil villain that I’m super pleased I recorded. I think the strongest part of this work-in-progress is the writing, so I’m trying to not let the peripheral stuff like art dissuade me from the project.

Survival and creativity

Given all my opportunities to daydream this month, whether driving through Australian farmland, or lying in bed waiting to be unemplagued, I wandered through all my current and future planned projects. I was desperate to take (healthy) leave to capitalise on it, but alas, too busy. Sometimes being unable to indulge my creativity is actually good for it, like some twisted version of “treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen”. But while I had some victories this month, it would be nice to not have them in the gaps in the mortar.

Creating things for myself or others is definitely way at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Which suggests I could have just ridden this month out and worried about physical concerns. But there’s a pressure from the top, a gravity.

Just livin’ is just livin’.