Moment of Flight, originally uploaded by continuity_guy1.

Between one wingbeat and the next...

The Hidden One, originally uploaded by continuity_guy1.

Cemuflauge.

Me and You, originally uploaded by continuity_guy1.

A surprisingly intimate moment with Almos at the Cougar Mountain Zoo this last weekend.

Shadows, originally uploaded by continuity_guy1.

Arboretum near the University of Washington, on a day seemingly devoid of color and light.

Finally. A reality show that writers can relate to!

'The Voice' involves a total of four judges who have been in the music industry for quite a while - Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green, Adam Levine, and Blake Shelton. What makes the show unusual is that when the judges are choosing their team members in the initial blind rounds, they have to listen to their voices, back turned, in chairs turned away from the singer without any clues about who they are, what they're about, or what they look like, save for the sounds of the song they're hearing and whatever clues they can discern from the power and character of the contestant's singing voice.

I'll admit my bias - in watching bits and pieces of other reality talent shows in the past, they've often felt more to me like a fictionalized glamour contests with a Hunger Games overtones. While I'm actually fond of Hunger Games, I'm not a big fan of the shows. But this, the opening "blind" section of 'The Voice' really, really works for me. The fact that the judges are judging the merit of the performer's work and building their competing teams purely off of opening impressions - off of the 'work' rather than the person - that to me is really damned interesting.

Especially as it's quite a lot like sending out a batch of new novel queries and sample pages to a group of industry agents and editors and wondering who's going to write back... Not to mention the hope and thrill about wondering whether you're going to get the shot to send on more pages, more chapters, or even a full manuscript to a industry veteran who's curious about what you can do with your... writer's voice. ;)

Later,
-Scott

As an unpublished but ever-determined novel author, I've diligently worked on my craft, my voice, and my manuscripts over the last ten years and have six novels in query rotation to show for it. As a game design consultant, I've netted over dozen small game credits over the last two years with companies up and down the west coast and have earned a pretty good reputation for getting quality stuff done on time.

But until this weekend at Norwescon, until I got to sit through a host of panels crewed by a lot of damned smart and witty writers of every stripe and flavor, I never imagined that the learning curves, methods and gnosis for both of my utterly opposite endeavors would start to cross, to merge to achieve a kind of symbiosis. That the two different skill sets required to run both of my conflicting passions would one day start to coalesce together, that they would start to build and riff off of the other, to share methods and patterns in an identifiable way.

For those of you that know me, that know how I think, it's so shocking that I don't even have a catch-phrase or quick title to describe it.

It just is. And that's kind of awe-inspiring all by itself.

Now, don't get me wrong - I haven't found the secret, I don't have any magical juju, and I'm not chugging down the grape Kool-Aid. I'm not published yet, and I'm not a lead designer yet either, and I'm not letting my head get ahead of me. But I see now that the strength and determination I've put towards these twin passions over the last five years is really starting to come together, and that when I really learn to combine the two skill sets into one whole, I bet I'm going to feel even braver and stronger than I am right now - and I'll be even more ready to chase the world.

Going forward?

- It's about having the faith in myself and the chutzpah to keep going forward, to not settle for low-hanging fruit against all storm, wind, weather and adversity.

- It's about recognizing the value and financial validity of the self-publishing path, and knowing now with absolutism, to success or ruin, that the self-publishing path isn't for me.

- It's about looking back five years to when I was just learning my craft - hell, back ten years when I didn't have anything but spit and passion - and imagining what my life is going to be like if I just keep writing more books and designing more games like I have been? It's about shooting for the long game and gambling that I'll get there.

Life is short.
Life is uncertain.
But you just have to go for it and see what happens -- 1,000 words at a time.

I think that's the rub. The faith that there is going to be a tomorrow. It's about the faith that I'm going to keep bolstering my skills and am just going to keep working for all kinds of opportunities to come - the ones I'll find, the ones I'll make, and the ones that find me.

Let's talk writing. You game?

Dark and Light, originally uploaded by continuity_guy1.

California Adventure, down on the piers, at the end of a dark and stormy night. On our first night it was raining sideways in the park, hard enough that it drove just about everybody out. By 10:30 the rain had let up and the park was... abandoned. We walked right up into rides without another soul in sight - it was like we had the place all to ourselves...

Rave Tower, originally uploaded by continuity_guy1.

More TRON goodness, the DJ booth at the center of the crowd. I still have a pocket full of tokens from Flynn's arcade at the end of the block, where you could play Berzerk, Centipede, Pac Man and Tron for a quarter a throw, old-school.

Cycle of Light, originally uploaded by continuity_guy1.

ElecTRONica, Daft Punk, glowing mohitos, thundering bass and hundreds of top-level dancers. Would you believe that this is all at Disney's California Adventure after hours?

2010 has been a pretty strong year on the self-development front. Apart from the wealth of creative stuff I've tackled over the last year, I've also worked a ton of small to medium contract gigs that's kept my resume rolling ever upward. This year has brought self-confidence and a faith in my own capabilities to a level I've never had before in my career, that is spreading across my game design, board game creations and writing all at once.

After finishing up with Playdom this last summer, just before the $760MM Disney buyout(!), I've been working for myself as a contractor/consultant for game companies in California, Oregon and Washington state. While I'm making dough pretty reliably over the last twelve months, working as an hired hitter still makes me feel like I'm walking the razor wire financially, live or die, stand or fall. But I'm starting to think that's ok. The freedom to make my own schedules and the instigation to work my ass off really works for me. Being able to work on novels and short stories, game design pitches and full game design docs all at the same time keeps my mind busy -- and the dangerous horned wildebeest of boredom at bay.

Before this, I spent five years working my way through the corporate ladder in different companies, earning my credentials, putting in my 60-100 hours per week, learning the different business models and figuring out how the system worked. I got good reviews, made good friends, and earned some great kudos during my time. But at the end of it, after the layoffs and the rough patches and the abrupt corporate endings that killed projects that really should have survived to seen light of day, I'm looking back across the five years wondering if I should have spent my time better as a consultant - high risk, high reward - rather than chasing the FTE badge.

Out here, beyond the security of the cubicle and corp-paid insurance and the steady paycheck, it's a bit more wild, with wolves howling outside the cabin walls every time you finish up work in the evening. But I like the fact that you're bound to your skill in everything you do, every day, and that if you can do what you promise, you're seen as a professional. You're putting your neck on the line to prove your worth, to prove your skill, and it's a rush that's difficult to put into words. Do you need a design doc for a well known game property in under three days? Bring it on! Want a writeup for a new game IP involving this set of existing game resources? Consider it done! Need a world-bible build for a game that already has a few hundred pages of creatures and stories? No problem, sign on the dotted line...

Now, I'll be the first to say that contracting is just as arbitrary as working for a corp directly. But it does have the advantage of featuring a lot of one-on-one relationships rather than just being part of a one-to-many hierarchy. It's a binary world where you either hit your deadlines or you don't, and you either get lauded for nailing a milestone with a great pitch - or it's your own damn fault for not seeing the curve ball coming and reacting accordingly. But so far I'm pretty pleased to be out in the wilds for over a year, and I'm hoping that 2011 will bring more of the same, wolves, contracts and all.

How are you folks? Got work, or still looking after the collapse of 2008? Are you back in your field now, or are you working gigs that will let you get by until the American job market gets more back to normal again? Are you taking risks that you wouldn't have normally tolerated a few years back, or are you sticking to the straight and narrow waiting for the time when it gets better?

More soon,
-Scott