Writing, One Year On
What a long, strange trip it’s been
This month is a special one for me. Outside of this being the month that brings us Thor: Ragnarok, and the one year anniversary of my magical trip to see Hamilton in New York, this month marks the one year anniversary of the first time I wrote and got paid for an article on video games. It was a piece on WoW lore, the Emerald Nightmare raid had just been released and since I was brought on the team to write lore articles for the various Blizzard franchises and beyond, this was my gig.
In retrospect, it was too long and too dry, but like the drawing of the hand turkey your mom still keeps in her drawer, this piece holds a special place in my heart. This was the day that I became a video game writer (journalist?? Person who writes about video game news??) I stepped out into this field on faith and it had finally bore some too long, too dry fruit.
But if you had asked me then what that piece meant, I wouldn’t have said much. Honestly, it didn’t mean anything to me. Sure it was something to show friends for cool points or to my mom in defense of my years of misspent youth.
“Video games? Girl you betta play you some math games and turn off the damn game boy.” (Y’all, everything, from my Sega Game Gear to my PS2, was a damn Game Boy.)
But this piece was only my second paid article and my third published gig — not enough to have a portfolio worthy of the folks at Kotaku, PC Gamer, Polygon, Gamespot, and the other titans of video game journalism industry. I wasn’t real writer, not yet, this is nothing to celebrate, get to work.
And so, like Rihanna advised, I worked.
One year later and my portfolio’s a little thicker. I’ve started, abandoned, then relaunched this blog, and I’ve even managed to land another sweet ass gig writing for the lovely folks over at Minecraft.net. But amidst all that, I’d still tell you I’m not a real writer yet.
Because impostor syndrome…err… because the work is never done.
So on this one year anniversary, let’s talk about work; the kind I want to do, and the work that’s yet to be done.
Consistency
One of the reasons I don’t quite feel like a writer yet, aside from the damnable spectre of impostor syndrome, is because of this here blog.
I am not consistent. It’s hard being consistent, hell it’s hard just writing, and it’s even worse when it’s expected for you to churn out constant content.
Y’all I have a 9 to 5. Two writing gigs with weekly assignments, a dog, a life, and an active fandom that sometimes reaches with its hooked fingers and snatches me into the Upside Down of fanfiction for days at a time. It’s hard being consistent when all your creative juices are wrung out from every other bit of life’s demands.
But. If one is to be ‘bout it, like I mean to be, I gotta make time.
My primary goal this year, before all others, is to be better about consistency. Even if it’s short, simple, or silly, it’ll be here. And what I hope to ultimately gain from this commitment to consistency is better time management. Schedules I stick to and banked content planned and written in advance. From now on, this blog won’t go another 5 months without an update.
I hope.
Commitment to Voice
I have a voice problem.
One of the things folks have constantly said about my writing, high school english teachers, history professors, folks leaving comments on my fanfiction, is that I have an incredible voice.
And I’d like to think I still do.
So my voice problem isn’t that I don’t have one, but that I don’t give it the opportunity to shine. I self censor, second guess, and scrap whole drafts because I keep worrying about is this good? Is this right? What will readers think? When I should just let it flow and let it be.
I’m not going to get better if I worry about how others will receive my work. Improvement can’t happen in a vacuum. And yeah a lot of this fear stems from the Internet Hate Machine. Being a black girl with video game opinions on the internet is the digital equivalent of walking into Jurassic Park with steak stuffed underwear. I do not want to open myself up to that kind of vitriol. It’s happened before. But my desire to accomplish far outweighs my fear of abuse (and to a lesser extent, fear of critique because nothing feeds the impostor syndrome demon fatter that ‘this is good but…’)
Going forward, I’m going to be honest. I’m going to publish my unfiltered and unsanitized thoughts and I’m going to accept whatever those thoughts bring.
Content
So we’ve talked my need for consistency, and my need to be committed to my own voice, damn the consequences, now let’s get to the stuff I really want to accomplish in the next year: content.
My ideas are legion, I’m awash with daily thoughts of ‘Oo! What if I did this?’ But only a few of those ideas have stuck around long enough to be actual, factual good ideas worthy of pursuit.
The first content goal for the next year is streaming. I began the year streaming, with a schedule, I had my games picked out, I streamed, and it was lit.
That fell apart, consistency kneecapping me yet again, and I resolved to return to Twitch once I was settled in my new apartment. Well I am now, and I’m ready to resume regular streaming on Twitch in the quest for Affiliate status and, dare I dream, Partnership.
I’m still figuring out a schedule and the games I want to play, struggling to strike the balance between what’s popular and will bring viewers and what I am personally interested in playing. I also want to upgrade my equipment and set up to bring y’all the best quality experience I can offer. Expect details and updates soon and follow me over on Twitter for updates on when I’m live.
Ok, I know I said my most important goal was consistency. I kinda lied. I mean it’s my technical most important goal. But my creative most important goal, my biggest ambition for the year to come: I wanna do a podcast.
Now you’ve heard me talk about my struggles with delivering timely, regular content and that’s honestly the thing that’s scaring me the most about this project. I’m trying to plan and manage my expectations for this so I can produce something without making promises I can’t deliver on.
But I know it does wonders for a goal to just put it out into the aether, so I’m doing that now.
I’m gonna start a podcast.
On Dragon Age.
If you know me, you know I love Dragon Age. And if you don’t know me, allow me to tell you: I fucking love Dragon Age. Those games have consumed my life utterly. Saved my life utterly. Those games got me writing again, matched me with some of the greatest friends I’ve ever had, and inspired several, several, novel’s worth of fanfiction. (25 works and over 450,000 words)
I’m honestly surprised an idea like this didn’t occur to me sooner or occur to me at all, it took a friend to plant the idea in my head where it’s grown like a choking, damn vine. A podcast on the Lore of Thedas.
Bitch, if that ain’t me.
So my goal for 2018, my ultimate be all, end all, fantasy, head in the stars goal is to research, write, record, edit, and publish a podcast on the Lore of Dragon Age. I don’t care if the last Dragon Age game was three years ago, and I don’t care if DA4 is a distant dream from now.
I’m not looking for fame or popularity or anything like that. While the idea is tasty, I’m not shooting to be the next Welcome to Nightvale or anything like. More than anything, this podcast is a project to put in my portfolio of works, something I can point to and say ‘I did that’ when I transition out of the current phase of my life into the next. I know of 2 souls (and they know who they are) who care that I’m (trying) doing this. And if I attract more along the way, gravy. If I don’t, eh, then it wasn’t for me.
Conclusion
Pursuing purpose is an interesting thing. Something uniquely human. I don’t expect any of the goals I’ve explained here to contribute one dollar to my bills, the opposite in fact streaming is expensive, hosting bandwidth for podcasts is expensive. This is all energy I expend without the barest expectation of reward. From a survival perspective or even a practical one, this is wasteful. By the day, the world grows more and more precarious. A single tweet and we all might be living in a Grave of Fireflies. It’d be better, safer, for me to enjoy the cushy pay and benefits of my current job and fight like hell to keep it.
But I can’t. I shouldn’t. And that we could all die tomorrow in nuclear fire is the best reason for why I shouldn’t settle. Even knowing what I know about my student loan bill.
I’m going to do this, all of this, every bullet on this list. Just to see if I can, just to say I did.
I’m gonna.
See you in a year.
