[Ep 1.17 "Girls' Night Out"] Late report

Hey guys! Sorry for the late report. I started writing this yesterday but realised I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. 🤔

I’d prefer it if I could always report fast progress. But last week was a total fucking grind, and I covered less ground than I expected to. I’ve been feeling stressed out because it’s not in the place it should be. Things that should be quick are going slow. Yesterday I was just feeling dejected and inadequate to the task.

“No, they don’t [get easier to write], and the reason is that your expectations seem to always race ahead of your abilities…I’m sure I’m a better writer today than I was 10 years ago. But your expectations keep going a little bit faster. You’re always in competition with yourself.”
– TOM CLANCY

I’ve been struggling with a scene that (a) is really good, and came about 100% through conversations with female Female Agent fans about their own experiences of girls’ nights out – I’d never have imagined it on my own. But also (b) it’s not actually a sex scene, so I feel anxious about spending much dev time on it.

It was filled with placeholder text that I expected to just blast through. But instead, everything I tried to do turned to shit and the more I tried to speed up, the worse it got. I imagine the Wehrmacht felt like this at Stalingrad, only this was much worse than Stalingrad because it was happening to me. The struggle was undermining my confidence and amping up my stress/fear levels because this isn’t even a sex scene, it’s just a setup and why is it taking me so fucking long?!

I realised last night that these negative thoughts aren’t speeding me up. If anything they’re slowing me down. Part of me feels like I should be feeling guilty and miserable when the game is behind schedule.  But not if that slows down production, right?

Today I made a conscious effort to stop worrying about where it should be, and just work on where it is. Stop trying to finish it fast, just try to finish it. Trust that, for reasons I don’t fully understand, I need to spend more time on this scene than I expected, and the results will be worth it.

That’s right: my inner monologue started sounding like a filthy hippy. But I was desperate, so I tried it...and it actually fucking worked. Everything that was wrong with the scene was easy to fix once I committed to giving the characters (including the heroine) enough room to talk and breathe and think.

It’s hard to say more without dropping spoilers, but I feel like this situation is now unfucked and this week will be better than last week. I’ll push as hard as I can and report progress Soon™.

I'm sorry this is moving so slowly, guys.  😔  I just want it to be done and out so I can move on to the next episodes. I promise I'm working as hard as I can and doing my best.