it's december

You might recognize this text. It's from an essay here: 

https://docseuss.medium.com/on-the-art-of-how-to-be-making-your-players-give-a-fuck-4d20dbde4241

I've been telling you for a good long while that I wanted to take my essays and turn them into a video. Well, my friend Kevin Fox, who's a writer out in Hollywood making a short film called Happy Traveler--

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/happy-traveler-short-film#/

(I did a minor edit pass on the script for Happy Traveler, and Kevin and Phil co-wrote Adios 2's first 45 pages with me. They're both working on our next game as well)

--Kevin heard me talking about it on discord and went "hey, I could probably help edit those if you like." So, well, that's what we're doing now. We're turning an old script into a video, and our plans are to start turning more of them into videos from here on out.

Now, to that end, I wrote my biggest essay yet--the one supported by all you wonderful, amazing patrons here.

I was working on that Last of Us 2 article, but after Grandpa's passing at the end of October, I really struggled. The momentum on it just died. I'm gonna get back to it, I promise, but when my ADHD-addled brain runs into a wall, rather than beating my head against it until I beat myself UP...

Well,

Often, what I do is I pivot, let things percolate, come back later. So I decided to hit an essay I care about, but one that's also a bit of a struggle. It took a long time for the final bit of research material (a book called "David Lean: A Biography" by Kevin Brownlow, the writer of The Parade's Gone By, an essential book for anyone interested in how art, particularly film, is made) to arrive, and I ended up writing about 20,000 words in a day. I wrote more than that; the entire piece is around 27,000 words long, and I probably wrote around 30,000-35,000.

I always write more words than ends up shipping since I cut a LOT and often move entire sections around until the flow feels right; usually, I have a set of loose points in my head, and then it's just a case of following that flow until I hit every point. Sometimes, I have a good sense of the structure to begin with; other times, I start to see the entirety of the problem emerge before me as I'm writing the essay, which is why they sometimes have that stream-of-consciousness approach. Still, I tend to be seeding ideas that come up, sometimes planned, sometimes organically, the way that the Borges reference I made in this one keeps coming up, until I have a good draft. Usually, after a quick grammar pass, I publish it. I do most of the editing while I'm doing the first draft, getting those ideas organized, moving entire chunks around as I go.

Several people have said this one's really good, which surprised me cause of how niche I thought the subject was. But I do have this super firm belief that good writing is applicable writing (never put it that way before, but that feels like the best way to sum up the gut feeling), and as always, I emphasize "here's why this subject is interesting and worth caring about," and it seems like that went over really well this time.

Occasionally, I get comments praising the piece and I get to sit back with a kind of awe and go "woah... that's me. I am the guy who wrote that. People are replying to this positively! They like it! I did a good job!" and it feels really amazing. I don't wanna snap my proverbial suspenders here; I couldn't have written this without your support, after all. I am just... man, there's a bit of an afterglow. It feels really nice after how bad the past several months have been.

Anyways, here you go: my biggest essay ever, nearly twice the size of my previous biggest essay, I think?

https://docseuss.medium.com/a-lot-of-people-think-auteur-theory-is-bad-but-the-truth-is-way-way-funnier-than-they-realize-c7d491f846ff

So, what next? Obviously the video, but I've also got several essays I'm working on in parallel, and whichever one I finish first will be the one that goes out this December. I am not sure if I'm going to write one or two essays before the year ends. It's dependent on a lot of factors, but this Last of Us 2 piece is nearly done, so I'll try to get that one out and then see if I have another in me before December 31.

If you're wanting to buy Adios, just as a head's up, we'll be on sale near the end of the month on most major platforms. EU/Aus starts a bit late on the eshop; that's out of our control. We will have an Xbox (and it's Play Anywhere, so if you buy it on Windows Store or Xbox, you can play it on both and the saves shoooould be cross-compatible).

We're still really touch and go game development-wise--just about everyone who sees the game goes "holy shit that's kind of genius," which is encouraging, but nobody's bitten yet. I've personally been dealing with some bad health stuff and I'm unlikely to be able to keep paying for as much medical care as I've been getting unless we can get a game funded soon. We're looking for something in the $250,000 to $500,000 range, so if you know anybody, hit me up. I'm most responsive to Discord messages or Twitter DMs.

Thank you, seriously, thank you so so so much, I could not do this without you. Every time someone has responded to this latest essay, I'm delighted; I had no idea this one would be so well liked. Auteur theory is a loaded problem because so many people misunderstand it, but like... that was the point; the reason so many people misunderstand it is because someone wanted you to. This essay was about exploring the extremely funny origins of auteur theory and the walking basket of sour grapes who wanted to ruin it for everyone.

I am gonna try to get the next essay out soon, but I'm pretty burned out. I've been limping along for a while and I dunno how much more I got in me. I need to get our next game funded so I can take a break, but right now, I'm like a shark. If I stop moving, I drown.

Maybe this Youtube stuff can alleviate some of the pressure, I dunno.

Doing my best.

Thank you. There will never be enough thanks I can give. But thank you.