A Page A Day

June 5, 2018June 4, 2018 / JMatik / Leave a comment

So my writer’s group has made a pact to write a page a day for the entire month of June. When we came up with the idea I was fully on board and gung ho about it. I reassured the others it wouldn’t be difficult, you just had to make time. Well it’s day three and I’m finally writing. Silly me, I forgot how often life gets in the way, and how lazy I can be.

Tonight I have three pages. So it’s like I wrote a page a day. Shhh, don’t tell, I won’t if you don’t.

Anyways, I’m excited about this challenge, I like the excuse of having to write. I haven’t been feeling super motivated lately and this is a good kick in the butt. I plan to continue writing everyday, if I put it off again I know it will be several days and then I’ll have to find even more time to write many pages.

Also having a writers group is awesome. A) nice to talk to fellow writers, no one else understands the pain like one who feels it to. B) fun to hear other peoples writing in progress and discuss the challenges and triumphs. C) its best for accountability, we have to bring something to read to the group which means we have to write.

It’s getting rather late as I write this, so I’m gonna end it with this. If you’re a writer join a group if you can, some quick googling will surely give you positive results (it did for me) and join the page a day club. Get you’re writing friends to do it with you, or just do it for yourself to see if you can. You’ll be surprised at the result.

Balance on the Edge of Oblivion

March 15, 2018 / JMatik / Leave a comment

I’ve been reading through an awesome book called; Blood, Sweat and Pixels about the insane process of game development. Jason Schreier does a fantastic job of explaining the tomultuous process of developing a game, he does this by following many different games from inception to release. As a game developer it’s both eye-opening and awe-opening. One of the main themes that is present throughout the book is ‘crunch’. Crunch in game development terms is basically when the team has to work constantly to finish the game/project before the deadline. We have all crunched at some point, for school or work. It’s late nights and early mornings, bleary eyed and caffine fueled.

Crunch in game dev is a necessity, no game has come out without crunch. The reason I bring up crunch? Well it all plays into work/life balance. I’ve been thinking about this idea for the whole week. Work and life (or the rest of your life) is challenging to balance, even if you go to work at regular hours and don’t stay late or work from home it follows you. After work you have to try to forget or destress.

For creatives this is nearly impossible. As a game developer and author I can attest firsthand. My brain never stops working, either it’s characters and scenes or code and design elements or mechanics, it never fucking stops.

For me the only time I can let go is only sometimes when I’m either playing a game or totally engrossed in a novel. Otherwise, its a constant barrage of ideas or stressing about how something isn’t finished or isn’t quite right. Or it’s how I’m doing this instead of that, why am I not working on this, or why am I just laying in bed right now on instagram or facebook or reading an article? I could be working on something!

In the whole work / life balance thing, I find I go through cycles of productivity. I’ll have weeks of consitent productivity, then lull’s. This I have learned is not that uncommon either. But I also find when a new game comes out I tend to binge in a similar way when working on something new, it’s all I think about, how do I get to the next level or the next item or whatever. Right now I’m in a lull, unproductive and distracted by other work and a game. My brain is struggling to focus on my creative projects.

It’s very frustrating.

Novelling: The beginning

July 8, 2017July 8, 2017 / JMatik / Leave a comment

I’m writing a novel. I posted about it not long ago, in that post I said I haven’t been posting because of it. True as it is, I’m going to try to change that and write weekly updates about the writing process.

I have been watching hours of youtube, mostly videos of writers explaining the do’s and don’ts or the things to keep in mind, or how to write a good this or that.

This has been helpful, although a great deal of what I have been learning or watching hasn’t been entirely useful yet. Many of the videos discuss things that require a completed first draft. Which I’m still working on. It’s been a fairly slow process (one of the things I’ve been meaning to avoid is pronouns, I just used one, dammit).

I’ll fill you in on what’s happened so far. The story is a historical epic/futuristic apocalypse story. It starts in 2014 with the Ukrainian civil war and follows Anya Liski and others as the world erodes into a dystopia over their lifetimes. A bit ambitious maybe for a first novel. I have no idea how long it will be, or even how it will end. I had the idea brewing for nearly a year before a writing prof of mine told me I should write a novel (a thought I had never had). A few months later I felt the lightening strike of inspiration and wrote about 10,000 words over several days. That was 7 months ago.

That first week of writing was awesome, the story flowed out of me, I did zero planning, just writing. It was a great feeling to just write and write, no mental blocks or wondering if what I was writing was good. After that I tried to continue. I tried to write at least once a week, I managed that for a month or so but around Christmas/New Year’s I stopped. For a while. I didn’t write for nearly 2 months. I thought about the novel constantly but never bothered to write usually out of laziness. I always told myself it was a lack of inspiration but looking back it was definitely lazyness. One day, a few months ago, I suddenly snapped out of it, I picked up my laptop and decided enough waiting for inspiration to suddenly strike, just write. At first it was a bit of a challenge but I pushed on and within minutes of getting something on the page it came back.

I’m up to nearly 30,000 words. I try to write everyday, at least something, even if it’s a plot idea or a character sketch. I want to keep those creative juices fresh and flowing and once I start it’s often hard to stop.

Long Distance

September 23, 2014September 22, 2014 / JMatik / Leave a comment

Long distance is awful.

I had to go away for a few months of contract work and unfortunately my girlfriend was unable to join me. I am stuck in a city where I have basically no friends. I go to work and then I come home play some games or watch some tv and then go to bed. That is my life right now (apart from the writing). At the beginning it didn’t seem so bad, the days went by fairly quickly and it seemed totally manageable. Things changed.

Now I can’t stop thinking about her, every minute of every day I am haunted by her. It’s basically torture.

We have not seen each other or felt each other in just over three weeks.

It will be at least another two weeks before we get a weekend together.

I hate this, I hate being so far away with no one, not even a friend to distract me. All the people in the office I am at are at least 20 years older and they are nice but it’s not like I would go hang out with them anyways. I feel so constricted.

The only positive so far is that my creative side has had a bit of a revival. I write all the time, and drawing is starting to come back. (inspiration lately has been lacking).

We talk fairly often but not enough, never enough. Texting and chatting on the phone can only do so much. What’s worse is that we can’t Skype because she doesn’t have adequate internet where she is. It’s no ones fault but it sucks.

End of an Era

September 22, 2014September 22, 2014 / JMatik / Leave a comment

We spent the whole summer together.

The two of us spent the entire summer looking for work, basically wherever we could find it. Unfortunately this has led to a problem. Now we have jobs in different cities, and they are far from each other.

The summer was amazing. We decided to live together for the first time, and since neither of us was working we spent most days together just hanging out. Many naked days. It was impressive how little we fought considering how much time we spent in the same space.

Everyday we would wake up and then go into the room where my Xbox was and we would spend most of the day there, watching movies, playing games just hanging out. There were a few times when I found myself thinking “I need a bit of space, just a day or two” but those were rare and even then I didn’t really need it.

Now I wish so badly to go back to that time. When she was always in arms reach. When I could kiss her whenever I wanted.

Hopefully in a few months we can go back to something like that. Only where we both have jobs in the same city.

The Somewhat Unexpected Lessons from University Life

April 30, 2014 / JMatik / 1 Comment

The imagined library I thought every university had

I recently finished up my university career (in Political Science so my experience was probably slightly different than a science major, but bear with me) it was the usual length, 4 years to be exact. It was fraught with many perils, such as getting to class on time even with a head invaded by city workers hammering away. It was somewhat educational I will begrudgingly admit, although not in the way one might expect. I remember being a high school senior, ‘ruling’ the school and thinking I knew everything that was coming my way. HA! What an idiot!

What I assumed every university party would be like

I was a dope, a fool, a typical naive teenager.

I thought university was going to be like it was in the movies, going to class was mandatory, just like the parties, hangovers were something old people had and everything could be done the night before. University was a place to grow up and find yourself… right?

Well now I can say ‘based on experience’ unfortunately only some of what that foolish naive idiot thought was true.

University was a terrible amount of fun, that was true, but it was also not exactly the quiet hall of learning I was expecting. The biggest thing I was wrong about was the way you would learn, you went to class and the prof explained things ONCE to the CLASS, if you didn’t understand, too bad. If you really wanted to understand, better hop on the google machine. The prof expected you to do the learning, in high school my teachers would help everyone figure each concept out, they made you understand. University profs could give a shit, it’s up to you. This leads into my second thought, university was not about learning facts and concepts, it was about learning how to learn. I remember probably less than half of what I actually needed to know to pass classes, that information was deleted to remember more important things, like what games are coming out in the coming months, I know valuable eh? My point is that I have been imbued with the gift of learning, I know how to research, how to understand things on my own, I don’t need a teacher any more. That’s the key.

A weeks worth of drinking between 5 of us (first year)

The other thing is that university is way more fun than I could have imagined. If you want to have a good time, you will! My first year was for the better part spent drinking, drinking some more and then enduring the nightmare hangover the next day. It was an awesome amount of fun though, and I have no regrets, I don’t drink like that anymore and I don’t want to, but back then we had a great time and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Basically all my stories from those days begin with “we were so drunk when…” or “that [blank] party…” or “that time we drank soooo much…” you get it. The years after were much the same, at least second and third. Lots of drinking, I won’t lie, the thing I learned the most about was drinking… That and lessons of the opposite sex.

But that is for another time. 😉

What was your university experience like? Similar or different? It doesn’t matter to me, I’m just a curious person, so give me some insight.