The Wongery

So. At the end of this day, November will be two thirds over. That means I should have completed two thirds of my November novel. By the end of this day, to be on track to write 50,000 words by the end of the month, I should have written a total of at least 33,333 words. (Technically, of course, [math]\displaystyle{ 33,333.bar{3} }[/math], but let's be generous and round down.) Heck, on the first day I wrote more than the daily minimum, at 2,218 words (as opposed to the minimum of [math]\displaystyle{ 1,666.6 }[/math].) If I kept up that rate, then by the end of today I'd be at 44,360 words—not quite to the 50,000-word goal, but pretty darn close.

Sadly, however, I have not kept up that rate. After the first day, my average word count dropped considerably. That is to say, it dropped by over two thousand. By 2,218, to be exact. Yeah, to zero. I haven't written anything. (Well, I've written; I'm writing this blog post right now; but I haven't written anything further in the novel.)

(You might wonder why the title of this blog post is "Dream Job" if I am writing about my November novel—or perhaps, conversely, you might wonder if I am writing about my November novel why the title of this blog post is "Dream Job", which amounts to almost but not exactly the same thing. Although if you have read many of my blog posts, you are probably not wondering either of those similar but not quite identical things, because you will be used to the fact that I usually ramble on for several paragraphs about unrelated topics before getting to what is supposed to be the main point of the post. You may also be used to the fact that I have, I think, increasingly often entering into digressions in my blog posts about the fact that I usually ramble on for several paragraphs about unrelated topics before getting to what is supposed to be the main point of the post, which I probably ought to stop doing, if mainly because I think it may be getting repetitive.)

Why not? Well... due to a number of factors. This month I've been very busy with work, which, as I'm pretty sure I've said before on similar occasions (speaking of getting repetitive), is good from a financial perspective but not so good when it comes to having free time. As I think I've also mentioned before (I'm really repetitive), my job is such that often I just have to be present and keep an eye on things but can otherwise to some degree pursue my own projects while I'm there—but it's still not the same thing as being able to work on my projects at home. I still do have to keep one eye on what's going on at the jobsite, so I can't fully focus, and I frequently have to move around to different locations, so I don't often have long uninterrupted blocks of time I can work on my projects. Yeah, I often do get some time I can work on my own projects while I'm on the job, but it's broken up into small intervals and even then I can't give it my full attention.

But that's not the only factor (though it is one I'll be returning to later in this post). I've been distracted by other things, too; as I've (also) mentioned before (how repetitive), I've kind of been maybe spending a little more time than I should have on a sort of a worldbuilding game on Discord. And I've, uh, been spending more time than I probably should have Wizardposting on Tumblr, not only continuing (some of) my existing wizardposting blogs but for some reason even starting new wizardposting blogs, including one that somehow got hundreds of followers within a day of its launch so now I kind of feel like I have to keep posting on that one.

Honestly, though, I think except for having to work these distractions are largely symptoms rather than causes. Which is to say, I don't think it's so much that I've gotten so distracted by these matters that I haven't spent time as the novel, so much as it is that I've been procrastinating spending time on the novel, and these are my specific means of procrastination. (I mean, okay, honestly I might be spending time on the worldbuilding game and on Tumblr regardless, but just... not quite so much time.) And of course unfortunately it's not just the novel; I haven't posted any new articles on the Central Wongery lately either. But I think that's related, in that I kind of feel like the novel is supposed to be my main priority for the month, so if I'm not working on that I can't work on articles either, which is stupid, but... I'm stupid. I'm stupid. I'm a big stupid doofus who can't get anything done.

But anyway, why have I been procrastinating writing the novel? I do enjoy writing. Why has it been so hard for me to make myself write this? And the answer is, because I don't know what to write, and that's because I haven't done enough planning. When I did write those 2,218 words on the first, I was writing Chapter 2, because that dealt with a different set of characters than Chapter 1, and I hadn't planned enough to know how to begin the Chapter 1 characters' story. So before I actually started writing Chapter 1, I'd need to just sit down and do some planning, brainstorming and plotting and figuring out how various elements fit together. And that's the part I've been putting off.

When I was partially composing this blog post in my head before writing it, which is something I often do for some reason, I was going to refer back to the comparison I made in the previous post of the November novel-writing and 24-Hour Comics Day, and how maybe I could use a similar approach for the former to what I do for the latter. For 24-Hour Comics Day, I don't necessarily plot the whole story out beforehand, but I devote a couple of hours at the beginning of the event just figuring out generally where the story's going, and planning enough of the beginning to be able to create the first few pages, and then the remaining pages I plot and plan as I go. I could do something similar, I said, for my November novel, not necessarily planning the entire story beforehand, but at least planning the general outline of the story and where it's going, and plotting enough for the first couple chapters, and then doing the rest of the plotting as I go.

Only, I was going to say, clearly for the novel-writing this wasn't working. And maybe this was because there of fundamental differences between the two events. One thing about 24-Hour Comics Day is that I don't expect the final comic to be polished and perfect; it's not something I'm going to present as a professional finished product. For the novel, well, unlike the 24-hour comic I am "allowed" to edit the novel as much as I want after the event is over, so it doesn't have to be polished and perfect either, but at least enough of a coherent storyline has to be there that there's something to refine in the edits. Maybe I couldn't largely seat-of-the-pants it for the novel like I did for the 24-hour comic; maybe that just doesn't work.

But then I realized before actually writing this that it's not that this process won't work for writing a novel; it's that I don't actually know if this process would work for writing a novel because I haven't actually tried it. Even for 24-Hour Comics Day, I devote a precious few hours out of the 24—two or three hours, so about ten percent of the total time of the event—to planning and character design before I jump in and start to draw the pages. For the novel, I haven't done that. Sure, I did a little planning, very little, on the first day, but certainly not nearly ten percent of the thirty days of the event, and not really even the two or three hours of planning I do for 24-Hour Comics Day. The reason I've had a hard time making myself write is because I haven't planned what I want to write about. I haven't put in the prep time.

And this brings up I think a systematic issue I've been having, and that I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before (more repetitivity) but I'm going to expand on now. Hold on, let me look through my old blog posts. Okay, yeah, I touched on it in a blog post called "All Work and No Play". That post was I guess mostly about how I hadn't been taking any time away from trying to work on my computer to, you know, just take a break and watch TV or play games (and I still haven't, actually; since writing that post in July I think I've watched a total of maybe two or three episodes of TV shows), but in a paragraph near the end I also touched on the fact that I haven't been doing any offline planning for my projects, either. Any free time I had away from work I've spent sitting in front of my computer, generally trying (and usually failing) to get things done.

This has to change. And it didn't used to be that way.

When I was a child, I would spend endless hours planning things I would never make. I would, for instance, meticulously plan out computer games, drawing maps of their levels and settings on graph paper and sketching the characters and enemies players would encounter. I never made any of those games. I had no idea how to make those games. But I would spend hours on end designing them.

But now, the pendulum has perhaps swung too far in the opposite direction. I'm forcing myself to spend more time trying to actually do things, not just plan them. I'm teaching myself programming; I'm learning Blender and... well, I was learning Unity but given certain events of last year I plan to learn Godot; and I'm making myself sit in front of the computer and actually try to make things.

But I'm not doing any planning first. And that makes it hard to make things, when I don't know what I'm making.

It's not even that I don't enjoy planning out projects. I do. I maybe enjoy the planning part even more than the actual creation; I enjoy coming up with ideas, fitting them together, designing... worlds and characters and plot and everything that's going to go into a story or a game. I love that part.

So why haven't I been doing it?

And I think what I said in that "All Work And No Play" previous blog post did more or less nail it, so I'll (repetitively) say it again. The problem is that because my free time is so limited, I feel like I have to use it as productively as possible. And... it feels more productive to be actually sitting in front of my computer and writing, or programming, or doing something else that gives immediate results, than it does to be just planning, doodling out ideas.

But that's an illusion, and I really need to convince myself that it's an illusion. The planning stage isn't less productive. It's an important part of the process. And I need to spend more time doing it. If I spend more time on the planning, then I'll have a much better idea of what I'm supposed to be doing when it comes to the actual making part, and I'll be able to actually make the work in question—write, program, what have you—much more efficiently. I need to get over this hangup I have that I think I need to be maximally productive, and that in order to be maximally productive I need to be constantly writing and creating. I need to convince myself that it's okay to take time to plan.

So, anyway, I did spend an hour or two last night, and a little more time this morning, planning out my novel, and I think I have enough now that I can finally go ahead and start writing Chapter 1. In order to finish 50,000 words by the end of the month now I'd have to average 5,000 words a day (or if you count today, which isn't quite over yet, [math]\displaystyle{ 4545.bar{45} }[/math] words a day), but... that's not impossible. I can write pretty fast when I know what I'm writing about. This isn't a lost cause.

But at some point, I'd like to address the root cause of the problem. Yes, as I said, the reason I haven't been doing as much planning as I should is because, since my free time is so limited, I want to spend it as productively as possible. And sure, taking more time out for planning, despite my limited free time, will help. But of course the ideal solution is to find a way to have more free time.

Or rather, more time I can devote to my creative projects. I can't just... not work. I do, alas, need money to live on (and to pay for the domain registration for the Wongery, and ultimately I hope to pay for art and legal fees to finally get the Akinetic Media License written out and make it a real thing, and other expenses like that). So yeah, just not having a job obviously isn't an option. But I could have a lot more time for my creative projects, if my creative projects were my job. (Not necessarily just the Wongery—although yes, including the Wongery—; there are a lot of other creative projects I'm working on too.)

This... this would be the dream. It's not that I don't want to work. Heck, I want to work on my creative projects enough that I've been working on them anyway, even without being paid for them. I'd gladly put in the equivalent hours of a full-time job on them—between the time I'm devoting to them at home and the time I'm putting into them while I'm at my current job I may be doing that anyway. As I've said before (and here once again I will repetitively acknowledge my repetitiveness), I don't hate my current job; if I had to have a job that didn't involve creative work my current job is probably as good as any; but I'd much rather have a job that did involve creative work. Or rather, I'm doing the creative work anyway, because there are so many things that I want to create that I pretty much can't not do the creative work; but I'd much rather it be my job so I didn't have to take time away for it for... well, my job.

This is the dream. But I'm not sure how realistic a dream it is. Making a living with creative work—as a writer, or an artist, or an indie gamemaker—isn't easy. Am I a good enough writer (for instance) to write professionally? Eh... I don't know, but then I don't think I'm good at my current job either and I somehow keep getting work. Maybe it's possible.

But of course the more immediate point is that I'll never know if I can make a living as a writer (for instance) if I don't try to get something published, and that involves... well, writing something. Or rather, it involves finishing something. AIMB (I seem to be saying "as I've mentioned before" a lot in this post, so I though it might be worth abbreviating), I have a novel I wrote almost fourteen years ago that I've been meaning to rewrite and try to shop around, but... I haven't done that. I ought to do that. I need to do that. Not this month, because, well, I want to get my November novel done, but afterward... yeah, that's something I really ought to get around to.

Okay, but suppose I did have more free time; would I be able to actually make myself use it on my creative projects, or would I just diddle around and still get nothing done? Well, yeah, I may be easily distractable and I may have issues with executive dysfunction... but. A while back, on a day that I had off from work, I decided to try setting myself a schedule, setting specific blocks of time that I would devote to specific projects, with some short breaks interspersed where I could do whatever I wanted (like wizardposting). And... it worked. Having specific times earmarked for given projects, I was able to make myself focus on those projects for those periods and actually make progress on them. So why haven't I done that since? Mostly because I... haven't really had days off. I've been working nearly every day lately, and those few days that I haven't been working I've had other things I had to deal with (like taking my car in for maintenance). It turns out, when I have a free day and I'm able to set a schedule for myself, I can actually stick to that schedule and be productive... I just haven't had any free days. (And I can't really plan my schedule around my work hours, because I don't know my work hours in advance; I have an extremely irregular and unpredictable work schedule and often don't know what hours I'll be working on a given day until the night before. Okay, maybe there are some other ways my current job may not be ideal.)

Another case in point: At the end of last December, in preparation for the "hard launch", I got a lot done on the Wongery, that I'd been meaning to do earlier. I created several MediaWiki extensions and one phpBB extension (after never having created any extensions for any software before); I did a long-overdue update to the Wongery code to make use of API calls instead of kludgy direct calls to functions in the MediaWiki code; I completely redesigned the site. How was I able to get so much done in that week and a half, when I've never had a period of similar productivity since? Because I wasn't working. The industry I work on basically takes a break at the end of December. Turns out I really can get a lot done when I don't have my job to distract me.

So, yeah. If I weren't working, or rather if my creative projects were my work instead of something I was trying to squeeze in in my limited free time, I'd be making a lot more content. And I really do want this to be the case... but it's not going to be if I don't do something about it. I've got to try to get some of my projects done, to the point I can try to get them published and make some money from them. I've got to finally dust off and edit that fourteen-year-old novel. I've got to finish some of the game projects that have been languishing on my hard drive as I've been slowly picking away at them. I've got to get things done.

And what has to change so I can get them done? Well... I'd like to have more free time, but of course the catch 22 is that I have to get these projects done and start making money from them to have more free time. But also... yeah, I need to get over the mental block that's preventing me from devoting more time to planning. Planning feels to me like a waste of time, but it isn't; it's something I really do have to do to make the best use of the time I'm spending directly creating.

Obviously, I don't know if it will ever happen; I don't know if I'll ever make enough money from my creative projects to not need another job that takes up most of my time. But I can dream. Because that is the dream; if I could do whatever I wanted, that's what I'd be doing: writing, drawing, making stories and games and other creative works. I don't want to do those things because I think I can make money from them; I want to make money from them because it'll give me more time to do them.

I've made a post before about about things I would do if I were rich, but this is different. A lot of these things—writing stories, making content for the Wongery—I don't actually need money to do. I just need time... which I also don't have. But I could make a list of things I'd do if I had more free time, which would be different from (though I suppose not entirely unrelated to) the list of things I'd do if I were rich.

What the hey. I'll do that now, at least briefly. These are (some of) the things that I'd do if I had more free time, even if I weren't rich (as long as I had enough money to live on and pay the bills):

• Work more on the Wongery, of course. This one kind of goes without saying.
• Write. Mostly novels, but probably short stories too.
• Webcomicss. As I've said, I had a webcomic in the past—I had several webcomics in the past—and I can't draw and they were terrible, but I still enjoyed making them and... having them online. I'd like to do that again; I'd like to have a webcomic, even if the art looked awful (which it would, because it would be me drawing it). But I just don't have time. these first
• Make video games. (Sorry for breaking the pattern of the first three items all starting with W. It would have been kind of fun to try to continue the pattern, but not really workable.) Yes, I know, making a modern AAA video game takes lots of people and loads of money, and it's on my "if I were rich" list. But making an indie game doesn't; that can be done by one person with sufficient time. Which I don't have. (Well, and sufficient programming skill. Which I also don't have. But I think I could learn. Given enough time. Which, again, I don't have.)
• Make animations. I've dabbled in animation, using Toon Boom Harmony (and I want to try to learn the open-source OpenToonz, but haven't found time for it yet), and I've found that... whether I'm good at it or not (I'm probably not), I really enjoy it. I'd like to make more of my own animated work... but animation takes a lot of time. Again, obviously making a full cartoon series or animated movie is an expensive endeavor that takes a large crew of people... but brief indie animations can be done by a single person, given enough time. Which, again, I unfortunately don't have.
• Make tabletop games. Yeah, I mentioned video games above, but I'd like to make my own games too, and supplements for existing games. Especially role-playing games; I have a whole spreadsheet of RPG supplements and adventures I want to write for various systems that either are under open licenses or have community-content programs, and I have a lot of my own original RPGs I want to create, too, because of course I do. And I have started many of these projects, but, characteristically, haven't finished any... I need to do that. But not just RPGs; I've lately gotten interested in designing my own card games, and other tabletop games too; there just... isn't time for everything I'd like to do.
• Podcasts. I have ideas for a few (fiction) Wikipedia:podcasts I want to make. I even have some episodes written of one of them. And okay, I guess these would cost some money, in that I'd need to pay actors to voice the roles. But it would be a lot cheaper than a video series (which I'd also like to make, but which would be a lot more expensive), and I'm pretty sure I could afford it. What I can't afford right now, alas, is the time.
• Video series. Okay, speaking of video series, I do have a few ideas for video series that wouldn't require other actors, and that I probably could afford to make right now. Monetarily. Not in terms of time.

That's not an exhaustive list; there are probably things I'm forgetting, and there are one or two things I intentionally didn't list because they're unique enough that if I ever did manage to find the time to do them you'd know immediately it was me (or that someone else stole my idea, I guess, but I'm honestly not too worried about that). But those are some of the things that I would do if I had more free time.

There's at least one big difference between this list and the list of things I'd do if I were rich, though. The items on the latter list... I know are never going to happen. I'm never going to be rich. I'm never going to have the money to build my own theme park, or have my own streaming channel with original content. But I might be able to get to the point where I can make a living with my creative work. It won't be easy; it may not be likely; but it is at least conceivable.

And that, of course, would be my dream job. Just... sitting at home, creating. Writing. Drawing. Planning. Making things for other people to enjoy... and being paid enough to do it that I can make it my main pursuit, and devote plenty of time to it.

(By the way, when I say my dream job involves sitting at home creating, it's not that I don't want to interact with other people. Quite the contrary. Yes, my current job does involve a lot of interacting with other people... but because of the irregular and often long hours, it makes it difficult to find opportunities to interact with other people outside of work. It's hard to arrange meetups with friends, and I can't have, say, a regular gaming group when I don't know what times I'll be available. Honestly, maybe that's part of why I've found things like the aforementioned Discord worldbuilding game and wizardposting on Tumblr so alluring; when I do those things I'm interacting with other people, and interacting with other people online may not be as pleasant and satisfying as interacting with other people in person, but it's better than not interacting with other people at all. But if I had a job that involved just sitting at home alone and creating, sure, I wouldn't be interacting with other people while I was working, but with the ability to set my own schedule it would be a lot easier to find time to interact with people socially when I wasn't.)

But as I said, it won't be easy to make this my job, and it's not going to happen if I don't make an effort and make some changes. So. After I get my November novel done (I am saying "after", not "if"; I may be behind schedule but I'm still determined to do it), I am going to finally take a look at that fourteen-year-old fantasy novel and start the revision process. And maybe get a start on that YA science-fiction novel I've been wanting to write, too. And try to finish at least one of my RPG projects by the end of the year.

And I'm going to do what I said I needed to do before but didn't actually do, and start setting aside some time for planning, so when I do sit down and start writing I'll have a better idea of what I'm going to write about, and can make better progress. It may be tough at first because there's still a part of me that's going to insist it's a waste of time and resist, but if I keep doing it I can hopefully get over that and make it a habit.

Anyway, I don't honestly expect I'll be able to make a living off my creative work, to attain my dream job; I know it's a long shot... but I'm damn well going to try, and... well, we'll see what happens.