The Hobbit: Wingnut vs Unions (Round 1)

I feel like the current negotiation-by-press release between Peter Jackson/Wingnut Films and the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance is worth some closer analysis.

What I thought I'd do is have a look at the bigger blog posts and press releases I can find, and extract facts and negotiating positions from them. Going into this, I don't have a strong opinion about the outcome; I'd say my default attitude is that I think unions are a useful and sometimes necessary counter-balance to the power held by an employer.

I think what I'll do is start with the stuff.co.nz article where I first read about this: Jackson fights to save Hobbit. Here are the first two paragraphs:

Sir Peter Jackson says he is fighting to save The Hobbit films, thousands of jobs and the New Zealand film industry in the face of a threatened actors' boycott orchestrated by an "Australian bully boy" union.

The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) says Hollywood stars Sir Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving support a boycott of the film because actors may be employed on inferior non-union contracts. 

I'll try breaking down the rest of this article into 'verifiable facts',(*) 'opinions' and 'leverage' (for a negotiation).

* Just because a fact is 'verifiable' doesn't mean I've verified it. It just 

means someone's making a claim that could be fact-checked.

• Jackson said he was a "very proud and loyal member" of three Hollywood unions (verifiable fact)
• [Jackson is] "not anti-union in the slightest". (opinion)
• He always honoured actors' union conditions if they were union members (verifiable fact/opinion)

These first three points are presenting Peter Jackson as a reasonable individual to negotiate with.

• "An Australian bully-boy [is trying] to gain a foothold in this country's film industry. They want greater membership, since they get to increase their bank balance." (opinion)
• "I feel growing anger at the way this tiny minority is endangering a project that hundreds of people have worked on over the last two years, and the thousands about to be employed for the next four years, [and] the hundreds of millions of Warner Brothers dollars that is about to be spent in our economy." (opinion/leverage)
• Losing The Hobbit would leave New Zealand "humiliated on the world stage" (opinion/leverage)
• "Warners would take a financial hit that would cause other studios to steer clear of New Zealand", Jackson said. (leverage)
• "If The Hobbit goes east [East Europe in fact], look forward to a long, dry, big-budget movie drought in this country. (leverage)
• "We have done better in recent years with attracting overseas movies  and the Australians would like a greater slice of the pie, which begins with them using The Hobbit to gain control of our film industry." (opinion)

Jackson presents the MEAA's demands as a financial entity muscling in on New Zealand, operating purely for profit and power, and simultaneously trying to ruin the NZ film industry (a long, dry, big-budget movie drought) and 'gain control of our film industry'. These quotes also use quite a bit of emotive language ('anger', 'humiliated', and a general tone of fear).

The interesting thing that struck me about this section was the idea that Warners would be spending hundreds of millions of dollars on this project in New Zealand. The natural question to ask is, "How much would allowing unionised actors to work on the Hobbit cost the production?"

• The International Federation of Actors, which represents the world's seven major actors unions and actors in 100 countries, has told members not to act in The Hobbit until they get a union contract.(verifiable fact)
• MEAA national director Simon Whipp said "all performers" were concerned about the lack of standard union contracts for the US$150 million (NZ$204m) two-part Hobbit films.(verifiable fact/opinion/leverage)
• "We have spoken to all the performers who have been approached, or are rumoured to be involved in, the production and all have expressed strong support [for the boycott]."(leverage)

The article summarises the problems with a lack of union contracts as leading "to concern about whether The Hobbit producers would pay fees contained in a standard union contract, such as payments from DVD sales and video rentals."

• "Those are the things all of us are concerned about and differentiate New Zealand, from a performer's perspective, from working almost anywhere else in the English-speaking world."(verifiable fact)

Support for Peter Jackson's position comes from South Pacific Pictures chief executive John Barnett

• Barnett says the Australian union's claims are duplicitous and inaccurate and made by an organisation with no legal standing in New Zealand."The MEAA has been struck off the register (of NZ incorporated societies) for failing to file any reports in the last three years, which is one reason that the production company can't enter into any agreement with it. (verifiable fact)
• The claim that actors were at the mercy of production companies was a complete misrepresentation as there were absolute guarantees about working conditions which had been in place for the past 15-20 years. (verifiable fact)

Now I'm wondering what the absolute guarantees are that Barnett has mentioned.

At this point, I think it'd be a good idea to find the MEAA's original press release at scoop.co.nz. The press release itself is simply advising members of international actors guilds not to accept work on The Hobbit, which it categorises as a non-union production. The press release links to a 'Hobbit Factsheet', which links to a series of letters written to Wingnut and then to MGM and New Line.

The first letter,'Re: ENGAGEMENT OF PERFORMERS ON THE HOBBIT', contains the following points:

• For some time it has been a concern for performers around the world that our colleagues working in New Zealand are not being engaged on union negotiated agreements. (opinion)

The letter goes on to state:

Recently, The International Federation of Actors (FIA) became aware that the production of “The Hobbit” intends to hire performers under non-union contracts.

For this reason FIA, at its most recent meeting, unanimously passed the following motion:

“Resolved, that the International Federation of Actors urges each of its affiliates to adopt instructions to their members that no member of any FIA affiliate will agree to act in the theatrical feature film “The Hobbit” until such time as the producer has entered into a collective bargaining agreement with the Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance for production in New Zealand providing for satisfactory terms and conditions for all performers employed on the production”.

FIA therefore encourages you to meet immediately with representatives of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance in order to reach an agreement covering all performers engaged on this production.

Given the bluntness with which this position is stated, I can see why Jackson might have reacted by categorising the MEAA's approach as bullying.

The second letter restates the position:

We would encourage you to meet with representatives of the Media Entertainment & Arts
Alliance (MEAA) as soon as possible. In the interim we are advising our members to refuse to sign contracts for this production until they receive confirmation from us that a satisfactory resolution has been reached with MEAA. (leverage)

The MEAA's 'Hobbit Factsheet' summarises the position since the letters were sent:

• The producers, through their lawyers, have refused to negotiate with the union. (verifiable fact)
• The producers claim it would be unlawful (and a breach of New Zealand competition laws) for the
  producer to enter into an agreement with the union covering the engagement of performers on the
  production. (verifiable fact)
• The Alliance has obtained legal advice that there are a variety of lawful means which could be used to
  establish the minimum wages, working conditions and residuals for performers on the production.(verifiable fact)

This difference of opinion - whether it's legal for the union and the producer to enter into an agreement - seems like something that's either (a) easy and obvious to resolve, or (b) liable to end up working its way up to the Court of Appeal over the course of three to four years before a judgment is issued.

• The producers have indicated that, notwithstanding the request to meet and discuss the terms of
  engagement of performers on the production, they intend to make imminent offers to performers. (verifiable fact)
• In addition, they have now advised that they propose to pay some performers “residuals” on the
  production. These residuals are significantly less than the Alliance’s usual agreements in every respect.
  The producers have offered 2% of distributors gross receipts to commence for exploitations 2 years after the first US theatrical release of the film. However, it is unclear on what they would be based (for
  example what about sales which occur before the 2 years relating to use after the two year period), how these residuals would be divided between the performers and how they would be enforceable.
  It is not clear which performers may be offered this arrangement. (verifiable fact/opinion)
• Under all Alliance agreements all performers are entitled to share in residual payments and there is no
  uncertainty about how each performer’s share is calculated or about enforceability. (verifiable fact/opinion)
• The producers have advised they do not intend to negotiate with the union. Consequently the usual
  provisions of the New Zealand contract would apply. These include a provision which permit the
  producer to terminate the contract at any time without obligation to pay out the performer’s contract.
  This provision could also be used to justify non-payment of any residual obligation which may have been agreed above (even after the performer has performed all their work on the film and even if the
  performer’s work is used in the film). This clause alone makes the residual offer above meaningless. (verifiable fact/leverage)

To summarise (hopefully reasonable accurately), the MEAA says that Wingnut are about to start contracting actors, offering them residuals (" a payment made to the performer in a creative work for subsequent screenings of the work") that are at less-than-standard rates. The New Zealand contracts (*) can be terminated at any point, even after the performer's finished filming and their performance is included in the finished product; the termination of that contract means the producers don't have any obligation to pay residuals.

* It's unclear (but I'm assuming that) the contracts referred to in

the final bullet-point are the ones intended for just New Zealand 

actors, rather that for every actor (New Zealand and international).

If that's accurate, it seems like a hell of a loophole to have in your contract. Even if you assume the company you're working for will act completely in good faith and not screw you over, it still seems like an avoidable risk.

Next up, I'll have a look at the left and right wing analyses of this from The Standard and Kiwiblog. I'll also check through Peter Jackson's actual press release to see if there's any further nuance that the Dominion Post/Stuff article missed out, and through the CTU's press release.

The Have Done List: April to September

Here's some of what I've been up to for the last 6 months:

• borrowed CDs from the library for the first time in 20 years
• listened to MIA
• gave feedback on Blowback - a new game about spies by Elizabeth Shoemaker
• discovered a new author (Tim Powers) and read two of his books.
• rented Rec 2, one hella-crazy zombie film
• sent Bad Family off for peer review
• finished a series of posts about the New Thing
• got slightly sick
• rescued a yellow-feathered sparrow from a cat, nursed it back to health and watched it fly away
• won speed dating
• went to roller derby
• got stressed at work
• managed a complicated cross-government data-entry project with slight political ramifications
• starting writing a project I care about
• managed a creative disagreement
• met a great woman
• Gave feedback on Jenni's novel
• pitched Workplace Bully to Sean
• lead a series of team meetings based on what I've learned from Made to Stick
• gained confidence
• started re-learning to cook (one of my 12 goals in 2 years)
• wrote a pitch for Workplace Bully and got great feedback on it
• had a heart-to-heart with a co-wo
• moved into a new flat (and it is great)
• ate a pistachio and chocolate twirl from Simply Paris
• cooked tofu for the first time
• went on a weekend away
• started working on a new feature film storyline
• figured out how to play Apocalypse World

Things are good. Blogging will sort-of resume while I get my life back into balance after shifting flats.

Books: February to March

The Iliad occupied most of February. I worked my way through two translations: the funny, pulpy Rieu, and the beautifully written Fagles. It's an impressive war story with a surprising focus not on the beginning or end of the war, but on the showdown between Hector and Achilles. It makes me keen to read the 7-part graphic novel Age of Bronze that tells the story of the war from Paris' dream to the post-Trojan Horse slaughter.

The Hunger Games started off as a ho-hum rip-off of Battle Royale and a third of the way through the book became utterly gripping due to a single character reveal. Vivid, tough, brutal and the sequel (coming up in a few paragraphs) is even better.

I read the script for Tell No One, an adaptation of a Harlen Coben novel. A fast tight read with that thriller plot arc: amazing hook, great second act where you have no idea what's going on, and then a conventional finale. Conventional, but with strong emotional pay-offs.

It makes me think about Se7en, which follows a similar structure but whose finale transcends the conventions through some magical combination of simplicity, implication and acting. However, I've always been taken with the idea that the true ending to Se7en involves David obeying John Doe's instructions: becoming Wrath, conducting the execution, and then - in full view of the camera - blowing his own brains out.

I know that version of the movie could never have been made in 1995, but there's such a dramatic purity (and relentless logic) to that ending that I can't help reshooting it in my head (heh) every time I watch it.

Bully In Sight is an English book about bullying. A little bit of research for Workplace Bully, natch. 

The Complete Indigo Prime - in my mind, Indigo Prime is a classic 2000AD serial, riffing off of Sapphire and Steel, and creating an amazing story about reality engineers saving the universe. Turns out that it's far crazier, patchier and more incoherent than I ever remembered, and that I read far less of it than I thought. Nice long story arc involving Jack the Ripper and a time-travelling train, though. 

Catching Fire is the sequel to The Hunger Games, which is basically a version of Battle Royale (teenagers fight to the death in the wilderness for the amusement of spectators) in post-apocalyptic America, with a fair bit of class warfare thrown in for good measure. It took me a while to warm up to the Hunger Games, but Catching Fire was excellent - mostly because it completely defied my expectations about how it would play out.

If it's the obligation of the writer to find the way forward that you didn't expect but realise makes perfect sense, then Susan Collins definitely fulfilled her obligation to me. I won't say I'm a raving fan, but I am very much looking forward to Mockingjay.

Shafts of Strife was published as a comic in the Listener in the 80s. I can remember the beginning and the end but had no idea it told such a tight little story.

I followed that up with Aliens vs Pooh, courtesy of Mr Morgue.

The Complete Persepolis is a lovely story about a girl growing up in Iran, that contains an unexpected detour into another country that I found delightful, funny, boring, off-topic and ultimately moving. It's odd to read an autobiography that straddles the line between finding a deeper meaning in the author's life, and just being a series of events that happened.

Dark Days is the sequel to the graphic novel 30 Days of Night. It didn't leave much of an impression on me, except that there were some good action sequences.

On giving feedback

This quote by Paul Czege, author of My Life With Master, contains a nugget of such concentrated wisdom that I wanted to share it all with you. Let's discuss feedback:

Many years ago, years before I ever found my creative medium in RPG design, I dated a quite intelligent woman. I would show her my fictions and nonfictions and tell her about my ideas. And she would provide constructive criticism, upon which I could base improvements. Because, of course, the world ignores works which aren't excellent. That, or it rides roughshod upon them with cruel hooves.

There is a great deal of generally accepted wisdom about the value of constructive criticism that I now believe is bullshit. The institution of "constructive criticism" in creative communities is born of anxious, self-serving neuroticism and white-knuckled paternalism.

Danielle taught me that I need none of it. It does nothing but keep me from wielding the full force of my creative powers. What I need is feedback that puts energy into my efforts. What I need is feedback that helps me see the full elephant, to understand the meaning of the whole beast that has yet only a crude shape under my mortal hands. I am already scrutinous and critical enough of my creative efforts. What I need is feedback that strips away the bullshit that's holding me back, empowers and armors me against the certain doubts and contrary notions of others, and gives me energy and momentum.

Look at this game you have, find the love you have for it, and instead of criticism give it the feedback it really needs.

The keys, for me, is 'feedback that puts energy into my efforts' and 'feedback that helps me understand the meaning' of the thing I've created: the implications I haven't drawn out and what it can potentially become.

There's an uneasy course to navigate here, between telling someone what you would do with their idea vs. telling them what you think their idea could be, but done well you can be a valuable member of a creator's support team.

There are a couple of other relevant posts to check out on this topic:


  + Seth Godin uses his graph-fu to explain the value of the green dot (someone who's cheering us on, showing how great it will be when we finish and share our creations with our audience)


  + Alex Epstein talks about great feedback here. He emphasises the importance of developing your own 'giving feedback' skills.


So I open the floor to you. Tips for giving good feedback? What sort of feedback do you prefer? Do these quotes and articles strike something in you like they did for me?

Workplace Bully: Public debut

Just pitched Workplace Bully to Sean. This is a big improvement for me: with The Limit the gap between thinking about the story and pitching it was about two years. With this it's been ... ah, ... less. Like maybe six months since first thinking about it, and about a week since first starting to work on it.

Pitching, as ever, remains difficult for me. This was my first time describing the whole story to someone else. I prefaced it by explaining that, and asking Sean to keep a lookout (while I pitched) for the emotional flow of the story. Were there any odd or inexplicable character decisions? Any big leaps where things didn't make sense.

The pitch was a bit of a conversation, a bit of recitation (from my outline), and a bit of discovery (I figured out a few scenes while explaining the story). Sean and I also know each other pretty well - he felt comfortable asking questions about things that were unclear to him. I felt comfortable pausing to write things down. To an outside observer, it would have seemed very stop-n-start, but for us it was like hitting pause on a movie, and then getting right back into the story.

Two big discoveries from pitching it

First, this marked the beginning of the story's transition from a bunch of related scenes to something coherent, with themes and a structure. The conversation with Sean really drew out a few big points, including how epic the confrontation between the two main characters in this story really is.

Second, we examined the emotional logic behind one of the characters deciding to fight back. It felt facile to me as I pitched it, and it felt an odd transition to Sean as he listened. Together we were able to really dig in to what was going on for the character at that point. This is some of my favourite writing work - to figure out all the implications of the plot event on a character and then determine how they'd really react to it ... and what that means.

Now it's time to absorb the rest of his feedback and get to work on refining my outline so that it's readable. There's much work to be done, but I'm on the right track.

Workplace Bully: It begins

Workplace Bully was the New Thing that gathered the most comments back when I was blogging about my next projects. I've spent the last couple of months researching and thinking about what could happen when you're bullied.

Rather than take extensive notes, I turned each idea or interesting-fact-from-the-research into an episode idea (describing each idea in a sentence). That gave me about 200 ideas ... and out of that research, some insights into the characters and what I want to do with the show have emerged.

I've found that I've been a little torn between my original conception of creating Workplace Bully as a webseries and discovering the story along the way vs. outlining the whole thing for an upcoming Film Commission thing. That tension has brought back some of my old fears about writing, but I seem to be dealing with it this time by breaking each stage of outlining in small, quickly-and-easily achieveable steps.

My big goal was to create an outline of the story that I could show to my first audience of readers (Sean, Andrew, Chris).

First step was to take those 200 scenes and identify the main emotional beats - the moments and decisions that make me care about the characters and the story I'm watching. With that done, I culled even further ... and identified what I called the 'keystone' beats: the absolutely essential moments in the script. There are seven of them.

The order for those 'keystone' beats was pretty clear, but on their own they don't make a story. Now I had to take the main emotional beats and use them to create a flow of events between each of those keystone beats. This took a bit of doing; after refining my first crack at it, I took a day to just reflect on the story and what I considered to be the core of it.

Finding the core of a script or a story, figuring out what it's about, is something that I constantly refine through doing a project. Here's what I think is the core for Workplace Bully, at the moment: it's the story of an ordinary woman who has to become a hero. That captures the sense of the everyday setting of the story coupled with the epic nature of the struggle that I want.

Now I've refined the story a little more based on that. With previous projects I might have kept going on this for days. Now I'm going to pitch it to Sean as soon as I can. Get his feedback, restructure it and get a very rough written outline to Andrew and Chris (if they're willing) as soon as I can.

Back once again

After two months of relentless work-crazy, I'm finally getting a chance to relax, think and blog again. Oh, and write: an update of the New Thing is coming.

After that, some book reviews and my thoughts on the Peter Jackson review of the New Zealand Film Commission.

What have you been up to?

The New Thing: In Closing

When I started this series of New Thing posts I simply wanted to find out whether any of my ideas had an audience, but I very quickly realised that your questions (and my focus on answering them) was helping me get a feel for each project. At the same time as we were discussing each pitch, I explored each idea, and now I've got a good sense of what needs to happen next. There are 2.5 projects I want to dig into further(*), and 1.5 projects that I realise now are more for fun (and can slip a little down my to-do list).

(*) I'll go into details about those, below.

Another thing I didn't realise when I started was how much I'd appreciate people getting involved in and commenting on each project. Your comments continuously surprised me (people wanting a female bully, the positive reaction to Artificial, Matt disliking the narrator of my excerpt from Left Coast). My conclusion is that discussing your projects is good - enthusiasm is good and criticism is also good (and not as off-putting as I feared I might find it). So, thank you very much for all your thoughts and feedback.

The big lesson for next time - because I do think I'll do this again - is to handle the online conversation more carefully. I made an effort to answer everyone's comments and questions - which forced me to pay attention to what was really being said, and to think about each project in more detail. However, I failed to be as interactive as I wanted to be - due to some privacy concerns, I stopped auto-linking each post on Facebook, and I didn't follow twitter as much as I wanted to (... and I'm not exactly sure why I didn't). I also have to be careful to not suffer from blogger's syndrome - to not to let the buzz of getting really involved in answering questions (and discussing the ideas) to substitute for working on the idea


What's next

Workplace Bully is definitely one of the projects to dig into further (and I want to thank everyone for their enthusiastic and challenging comments about it). During the last month I've been researching and outlining it, specifically trying to get an idea of how the second half of the story might work. Turns out there's a danger that I could write it so that it's too plotty rather than about the characters (Billy's 'educational video' effect). The next step is to explore its ideas and develop its plot.

Artificial wasn't as easy to write as I'd hoped. I am going to have to sit down with it for a ... fortnight? a month? and investigate it further. This is an idea I like, but I could easily see myself abandoning it if I don't think it's worth working through the Dip on it.

As for The Orphans, I love the characters, I made good progress on outlining the story and I'm desperate to know how it all turns out. I'm just not sure if it's a movie, and I'm not sure if I will want to take it any further once I've finished outlining it. For the moment, I'm gunna consign it to PLAY!

Finally, Left Coast. Judging from the number of idea-bombs that exploded in my brain while I was thinking about this, I believe can be a good game. From what I can tell, the effort I need to put in to making it something that others can playtest is reasonably small. I think if I dedicated a couple of weeks to it, I could get it into shape.

So, from here I'm going to concentrate on getting outlines together for Workplace Bully, Artificial, and one other idea (which I'll hopefully confirm with the people involved in the next three weeks). In the downtime from doing that, I'll work on a rough-n-dirty playtestable draft of Left Coast for me and others to have fun with. The outlines, though, are definitely the main priority.

Left Coast: Why I write

I wanted to pull out a couple of comments from the previous post about Left Coast. A asked:

I think the question is what do you want to do? What are your priorities? Cash? The widest possible audience? Creative satisfaction? And what would be the opportunity cost of prioritizing this project? 

And then Karen asked:

If you do this, do you think you'd learn enough from the process to make it worthwhile anyway? (Whether it succeeds or fails in attracting a wider audience/making money/being an awesome creative endeavour or however you are measuring it... I reckon any experience you learn from is worthwhile in some sense) 

These are excellent questions. And complicated - Sean has a whole blog devoted to examining his answers to them. I had a discussion with J recently that helped me start to answer the first of A's questions, about my priorities. Two of the big reasons I write are 'to realise a project's potential' and 'for the sense of creative engagement'.

I love the satisfaction of taking a project to its conclusion and making it the best it can be. Oddly, as I've noted before, this sense of satisfaction seems to be completely independent of the size of the project. A script I've been working on for seven years gives me the same buzz as feeling like I've written a blog post that clearly articulates what I'm trying to say. The only difference is in the amount of complexity that the project has or the amount of layers it contains, which changes how satisfying it is to revisit something. So I write to finish things, but also to revisit them and see that they've lived up to their potential.

In this case, writing a game is interesting because the amount of times I can revisit it and experience it is probably higher than with a TV series or script.

I also value the sense of total mental engagement that I have when I'm creating something. A combination of puzzle-solving, intense visualisation, feeling deeply about characters who don't exist, and discovering the core of an idea (then figuring out how to express it). That sense of engagement is like crack for me ... in that I find it addictive and rewarding, rather than rendering me a non-viable member of society.

So, to flip to Karen's question: I do think I would learn enough from the process of writing Left Coast to justify doing it. I think it's an interesting game and one I want to play, and it contains a whole bunch of ideas (about who is actually telling the story) that I want to work out how to execute. It's also about characters I care about. Writing the game would be a chance to apply some experiences from writing Bad Family, as well.

... Yes. I would learn enough from writing (and especially from playtesting Left Coast) to make it worthwhile.

But it's A's question about opportunity cost that really hits home. I have something I want to work on now that has a hard deadline of October this year. That'll involve working up three projects for a Film Commission scholarship. Anything else I do will have to fit around that. For the meantime, then, Left Coast will probably fit into the category of things I play around with during the breaks between those three projects.

Hiatus

Just a quick note: I'll be taking a couple of days off blogging. Got quite a few things on, and my hands are a little strained.

Still keen to do posts answering a few of the comments: A and Karen's questions about why I write, and Simon's questions about what the characters 'do' in Left Coast.

In the meantime, consider this an open thread. Talk about anything, but here's something to get you started: what's the next project *you* want to do?

Left Coast: A day in the life of a writer

Here's a little something I wrote up for Left Coast, my game about drug-addled science fiction writers struggling to write their books.

A Left Coast Life

6 am. Can't sleep.

6.07 am. Baby wakes up screaming.

6.30 am. Wash baby poo off hands.

7.34 am. Score.

8.40am. Sit down to write.

8.43am. Breakfast.

9.04am. Sit down to write.

9.11am. Tidy room.

9.15 am. Blink.

Sometime. Sit down to write.

Afternoon. Blank.

2.14pm. Realise I’ve been staring at a wall for a long time.

2.15pm. Wash unidentified brown substance off own hands.

2.something. Blank.

4pm. Driving north.

4.23pm. Coffee with the gang.

5.05pm. Steal TV back from Eddie.

6.10pm. Pick up more nappies. For baby.

6.11pm. Score.

6.13pm. Phone dealer.

6.15pm. Phone dealer.

6.16pm. Phone dealer.

7.48pm. Party with dealer & the gang.

8.09pm. Replace smashed painting with vase of flowers picked from front lawn.

1am. Where am I?

1.02am. Call wife.

2am. Walk 5 miles back to home.

2.50am. Scribble short story idea on borrowed napkin from diner.

4am. Write on front porch while drinking beer and ignoring screams of baby.

New Thing: Left Coast

Five years ago I wrote a role-playing game called Left Coast, in which you play science fiction authors living in a dreamy, drug-addled version of 1960s and 1970s California. The game is about trying to help these authors balance their family obligations with writing a novel, and hopefully doing that before they go insane.


Not only was Left Coast a lot of fun to work on, it also won an award and still has people who like it today. As far as I'm concerned, that's success ... but it's a form of success that brings up two questions for me:

First, is something worth writing if its audience will probably be intensely passionate but small?

Because the thing is: there's an audience for Left Coast. Like I said, there are people who still bring it up in conversation five years later. There are people who've volunteered to playtest it. Let me restate: five years after I wrote it, people are volunteering to play my game, and encouraging me to finish it. That is amazing.

And shouldn't I capitalise on that?

I feel churlish making the following calculation (like I'm scanning a free iPad for spyware), but I find myself balancing that audience enthusiasm against the numbers of people likely to like, play, and buy the finished game and against the effort involved in finishing it.

In fact, this is the first project I've mentioned here where I think Seth Godin's 'viral idea' post really applies. Let's say I execute Left Coast perfectly - I create a game that's fun to play and lives up to its potential, and I publish it in either (a) an attractive format, or (b) for free. Let's say the game reaches a bunch of people through the enthusiasm and evangelism of the people who already like it, and through whatever marketing efforts I make to reach more people who are into the sorts of things that Left Coast is about.

How many people will that second generation of people tell? Will the number of people who know about the game expand exponentially or will it flatten off? I'm fascinated by and uncertain about this. I know Malc's told Joe, who's into it. Jesse talked about it at Story Games a little bit (with no prompting from me).

My gut says that a game about sci-fi authors trying to write novels while they deal with weird shit that's either the result of them going insane or might be an alien invasion from an alternate dimension is an idea that (by its very nature) will have a small but intensely enthusiastic group of supporters: it's not people who play games, ... it's people who play role-playing games, and who are interested in the lives of drug-addled science fiction authors.

But ...

... that logic apply to every single RPG ever written on every single subject ...

... my gut instinct could be completely wrong.

So, really, let's rephrase my first question and ask: Does this game sound interesting to you?

Second question is: Am I into it?

Let's say that I shouldn't be concerned with how wide-spread the appeal of Left Coast is. As a creator, surely the only thing that matters is whether I'm excited by it?

That question, that phrasing, is the whole point of the New Thing. Am I excited by it?

Well, I like Left Coast. Even though I'm wondering if it's the best use of my time, I do want to make it better because it's a game I want to play.

So let's figure out what 'make it better' entails.

I think Left Coast's got the potential to be a pretty weird and awesome game. At the moment, it has a good process for setting up a bunch of eccentric characters who are involved in difficult relationships with the authors and for creating some conspiracies for the authors to become involved with. But while the set-up's fine, the process of playing the game, of generating conflicts and stories, is not so much sorted out.

Talking with Joe Murphy (who's keen to playtest Left Coast) about this, he gave me an insight into what needs to happen next:

I don't know if it'd help, but don't worry about producing a finished game. Literally, don't concern yourself with that. Just produce something that works enough that we can poke at it at the table and see where the system doesn't work.

This is similar to the Pixar philosophy of sharing your unfinished work as soon as possible. Rather than be terrified that something doesn't work, playtest as soon as possible. Joe continues by saying:

Try to create something that allows you to at least paper over the cracks in the system with fun roleplaying. Left Coast [has] such a strong premise that I've no doubt charitable groups would give it a shot and paper over the cracks.

So, for Left Coast to take a step forward in the next three to six months, I'd need to create a version of the rules that other people could playtest. That'd involve:

• revising the game based on the notes I took and the feedback I received from the previous playtest
• running a one-off playtest specifically to test and break the new scene framing mechanisms (and to brainstorm new ones)
• starting a discussion about scene framing (perhaps on The Forge, or Google Wave)
• running a second playtest (either a one-off or a 'fresh start' using setting and characters from playtest one
• producing a draft of an unfinished game that "works enough" so that Joe, Malc, et al, can poke at it at the table and see where the system doesn't work.

Beyond that, success for Left Coast would involve publishing it in a format that evokes its subject matter, and it being a game that's not only fun but it also clearly explains how to play it. I'd also find out how to tell the audience for this game that it exists. ... And 'Wild Success' would be for Left Coast to be popular, to reach a dedicated audience, and for it to have decent word of mouth

I'm interested in your thoughts. What does this sound like to you: Interesting? Worthwhile? What's your assessment of the effort vs. the reward?

Games: March to June

Here's some game-related stuff that I've been into over the last couple of months:

ImmorTall is a lovely little Flash game with an simple interface (move left or right) that forces you into some tragic choices.

Air Pressure is a gentle, ever-so-slightly depressing Flash game about a break-up.

Mike gave me a copy of Sorceror and Sword, a supplement for Sorceror which focuses on the pulp fantasy Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Elric (among others). It's an inspiring book - in the sense that it inspires me to want to run games using it, and it provides a methodology for creating stories in a fantasy setting without getting bogged down in pre-planning an epic story for a seven-year campaign.

Continuity is my favourite Flash game in a long time - a combination of platformer and sliding puzzle. Have a go. The first level should only take you a few seconds to work through.

Shade was a nice little Twilight Zone styled piece of interactive fiction. When in doubt, consult your to-do list!

I gave a little bit of feedback on Love in the Time of Seid by Jason Morningstar and Matthjis Holter and Blowback by Elizabeth Shoemaker. Providing feedback on games I'm excited about is one of my favourite things about my game design hobby.

Love in the Time of Seid is a game set in a royal court that creates a situation filled will the potential for betrayal and love (of both the doomed and true varities). It relies on a few simple rules (and no dice) to draw out the players' creativity in creating scenes, and to make them challenge each other to go deeper into the scenes (in order to create a story that matters).

Blowback is a spy game to create stories much like you'd see in Burn Notice (highly competent spies trapped in suburbia). The basic ideas of mission planning and how to handle the big conspiracy are excellent, and I'm looking forward to reading the next draft.

Rock Band and Singstar continue to be the greatest games ever created. Pure fun encoded onto a disc. Singstar, in particular, constantly surprises me with its ability to keep me playing until midnight.

I've enjoyed this Minesweeper variant, which crosses Mindsweeper with a D&D-esque reward system of 'levelling up' in order to tackle tougher squares. I also enjoyed Warp Shot - it's like golf, with gravity wells and Portal-esque wormholes.

I also attended two sessions at Day of Games, a day-long convention where people rock up, choose a game they're interested in, and play for a couple of hours. I ran Poison'd, Vincent Baker's game about pirates for Malc, Donna and Karen (with Mark, who showed up about 15 minutes after we'd created characters). This is the second time I've run it with really fun results. The game is slightly internet-notorious for encouraging the players to make nasty, pervese, and sexually reprehensible dramatic choices. What I realised during this play of it is that players engage with (or veer away from) that sexual and violent content as they're comfortable with. In particular, the game has a few questions in its character creation section that I consider to be like the safety on a handgun. If you ask questions about whether the characters have committed particular sins, then you're taking the safety off, which in terms of this game means that you can expect those sexually violent behaviours to be part of the story of the game. But you can equally leave those particular sins off your list of questions, which - I think - creates a safer environment (useful, if you're not sure about the comfort levels of the group you're playing with).

Day of Games also gave me the opportunity to playtest two fantasy games by Simon Carryer. On Mighty Thews is pulp fantasy with a (as we played it) ironic, light-hearted attitude (think Fritz Lieber's Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories, ... with dashes of Elric and Conan thrown in there too). Simon's other game (which I shall not name here because I don't want the google hits) is fantastic - he describes it as D&D ... if it had been invented by David Cronenberg. Still very much in development and in need of rules that distinguish it from old-school D&D dungeon crawls, it's a great mix of a grim mood, character classes that examine gender roles in a primitive society, and biological horror (of which I want to see much much more). I expect this to be an unsettling hit once it's completed.

I've also played and finished a seven session game of Bliss Stage, which I think will have to be a separate post. Great fun, though. Creatively challenging, and also socially challenging as I got to know and respect the playstyles of some people I haven't played much with. I thoroughly recommend Bliss Stage, and I think I'll be taking some design lessons from it and applying them to my own games.

New Thing: The Orphans

So, when I was a kid I loved watching scary shows on TV ... and I had a nice give-and-take relationship with Mum and Dad about it:

Doctor Who: no problems; I could watch as much as I want
Sapphire and Steel: they let me stay up late, and then were pretty kind and low-key with the 'I told you so' after it had finished and I was in bed freaking out about plagues and men hiding in photographs
The Andromeda Strain: had to sneak into the living room at my grandparents' house and hide behind the couch watching it without anybody noticing.

For the last two years, I've been working on a ghost story for kids. A horror movie for kids, really. That's my goal: to create something that just slightly too scary for my target audience to handle, and thus begin the cycle again.

The Orphans is a little bit Sapphire and Steel and a little bit Silent Hill. A bunch of pre-teenagers live in with their parents in an old building that's been renovated into a bunch of apartments. One day the kids wake up and their parents are gone. As in missing, with no trace of them.

When the children try to leave the building they find that the doors won't open, the windows won't break and the walls can't be cut through. No-one outside can hear them or seems to notice them at all. The children are trapped.

And that's when the ghosts start showing up.

The Orphans mixes in a whole bunch of different influences: Lord of the Flies, my nightmares about Victorian orphanages, bodysnatchers, and a bit of survival horror.

For me the cool thing about it is that I have no idea how it's going to turn out. I've been outlining it, for fun, for about a year - coming back to it whenever I get some free time, and discovering what happens in the next bit of the story. At the moment, I'm trying to decide exactly how unhappily it's going to end; it's definitely not a safe movie.

As a feature film, I have a feeling that it'll look slightly animated - like Waking Life, or this trailer for Mars:


MARS - The Movie [HD Trailer] from Geoff Marslett on Vimeo.



The next step (in the next three to six months) would be to finish the outline and see if this is a story I want to take any further.

A reasonable success would be to write a draft of the script.

The wild and outrageous success would be to get enough funding to make the movie (and make it live up to its potential), so that it scares one 9-12 year old child hiding behind the couch and gets them in to horror movies.

Handwriting recognition

I've decided to try out some handwriting recognition software. In fact, this post has been constructed using it. I have borrowed a tablet, and downloaded a free trial of a package called 'ritepen'.

For the most part, it is good. It recognises nearly every word I enter. Correcting words is slower but not too painful. The biggest problem's adjusting toT. the interface: it is not entirely like like writing words on paper - it's, slower and ghtchiev(asthePc pauses to register what's happening. ) The fact that I'm concentrating on how to use the interface means the way I express myself i s ...stunted, and this simple post has taken 20 minutes to compose.


It's getting easier to use, but more practice is required.  The verdict so far: It's cool, but not fun.

New Thing: Artificial

Why hasn't anyone written a 'good' AI movie before? We've seen lots of films where creepy artificial intelligences stalk and kill people via food processors (and a few reasonably famous films about AIs using humans as batteries). But not so much with exploring the idea that humans creating another form of sentient life might be a good thing. It's all Frankenstein and dystopias and the dark future. Well, how about having a bright future?

So I want to write that story and I think I've got a way to do it.

Artificial is a low-budget science fiction film - and, in an attempt to not lose a quarter of my readers with that statement, it's got a modern-day, real-world setting and a strong focus on characters.


In fact it's a love story. I didn't realise this when I first came up with for Artificial; I thought it was going to be about the changes that happen to society once AIs are released into the wild, and about the philosophical clash between two computer programmers - one who's optimistic about the future vs. one who's pessimistic, suspicious, and vigilant about what will happen when their team creates an artificial intelligence. Both these women have strong relationships with the AI (one respectful; the other, darkly glowering and paranoid).

If I were a cleverer writer, I'd make the love story be between the AI and the paranoid pessimist. But I'm after something much simpler I'm afraid - and between the story of an optimistic programmer and her impossible yet deepening love for the million lines of code contained inside a metal box, the clash of the whole human race's hopes and fears playing out in microcosm between the optimistic and the pessimistic programmers, *and* a story (that feels mythic) about the creation of a race of artificial intelligences ... well, with all of that I'm feeling like this will be a fun script to write.

How does this sound to you? Is it something you've seen before? (I'm fairly sure there are novels about it, but not movies - as far as I'm aware). Express your thoughts!

(And if you're interested in more, I have heavily inspired by this article by David Brin.)

Workplace Bully: Wrapping Up

I think it's time to wrap up this first New Thing; tomorrow I'll post the pitch for the second New Thing. It's a love story.

Thank you for all your help and insights during this. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have. Thank you, in particular, for sharing your insights about when this has actually happened to you.

I've been doing more reading on bullying recently (John Clarke's 'Working with Monsters', an excellent book with a strong focus on the psychology of the bully). It's been a good source of inspiration for things that could happen in this story of the conflict between the bully and their target. It's also helped me start to take the 'step forward' that this project needs in order to convince me that it's worth doing - there's a sub-text running through it that I've identified, a sub-text that (for me) represents the true horror in this particular story of bullying:

The Bully is destroying the Target's reputation. The Bully is manipulating the situation so that the Target looks incompentent and angry. The Bully is creating an identity for the Target with is unfair, but which unfortunately is backed up by facts that the Bully has engineered ... and by changes in the Target's personality (which are totally the result of the Bully's behaviour).

I love this idea that the Bully is warping the reality of the workplace, creating an environment in which the Target is perceived as the bad guy. That will really inform my outlining work as I keep exploring this project.

All right! Time to do a little more wrap-up research on this. I'll post the next New Thing tomorrow morning.

Workplace Bully: Answering questions

I've finally had a chance to answer the outstanding questions from the previous post. Stephanie asked what kind of tone I want for this story; Sean asked a related question:

How do you want viewers to feel while watching this? Do you want them to really feel the experience of being bullied? If so, what does that feel like to you?

My feeling is that this whole project is going to be an exercise in tone. It’s got something going on that has no obvious reference points because I can’t think of anything that’s done it before. Here are a couple of things I’ve been thinking about while the Tone thread has been going on, though:

• To me, bullying feels like it happens incrementally. It starts as small-scale, isolated incidents. The Bully is testing whether they can get away with their bullshit on this particular person. Those isolated incidents slowly begin to make you feel stressed and terrible about yourself; they gradually form a pattern of dysfunctional behaviour where you’re accepting being bullied because it’s just normal and the way things are.
   
• You could think of Workplace Bully as a disaster movie – a social disaster movie, where the Bully is the iceberg and the Target is the Titanic, and we the audience can see the two of them moving slowly towards a collision.

The great thing about these thoughts on tone (slow, incremental) is that they feed into the way I want to present the story (bite-sized, episodic).

Related to this is Emma’s question about whether this will be hard to write, because I’ll inevitably be pushing something very personal out into the world. I’ve thought for a long time about how to answer this, and in the end my answer’s very simple: You’re totally right. I’m expecting there to be a lot of elements in this story that are highly personal to me. But I have no idea what they are, yet. Part of the fun of this is going to be discovering those truths while I’m in the process of writing it.

+++

Joe, thanks for your comment and questions. You said:

Storytelling is about simplification. There's also a tendency for people to define themselves in simple terms - a gamer, a nerd, a victim of abuse. How are you going to ensure that the victim isn't just a victim?

A couple of short answers to this. First, the character traits that make someone a good target for bullying will help flesh her out. Secondly, I really think that the second half of the story (where she fights back) will has the potential to demonstrate enormous character growth and put her under some really interesting new types of stress (which gives me the opportunity to demonstrate new facets of her character).

I guess I’m saying that I will have to write this in order to demonstrate to myself that she’s not just a caricature, but I feel the potential for a well-rounded character is there.

You also asked how are people around her affected by the tension or stress she's under. Excellent, excellent question. I’m very excited by this. I think there’s a lot of scope to show the pressures that the bullying puts on her partner and her workmates, and look at how her behaviour changes. I think I’ll leave it there, but I will say this: people who are bullied run the real risk of becoming bullies themselves.

There are a couple more questions to answer, but I’ll leave it there. I’m going to spend a bit of today researching and outlining. If you’ve got more questions or comments, feel free.

FYI: I’ve been stoked by the feedback you’ve been giving me. I suspect there will only be a few more days of Workplace Bully as the New Thing, but we’ll see how it goes. I’m playing this by ear, and figure I’ll present the next New Thing when it feels right (rather than on some arbitrary schedule).

Workplace Bully: Should the characters be male or female?

When over 25% of the people who are commenting on Workplace Bully bring up the same point, it's time to pay attention. In my pitch, I said that the Bully is male and the Target of his bullying is female. A lot of you have expressed surprise, curiousity or even concern about that, so this post is for you to share your thoughts and perhaps even discuss it among yourselves.

First off, here are my thoughts about why I pitched it the way I did:

1. I have some actors in mind for the roles.
2. My instincts are telling me that the second half of the story, where the Target fights back against the Bully, just plays better if the Target's a woman.
3. I know how to write this if it's a male Bully and a female Target. Not so sure about the other way round; I don't have an instinctive feel for what that female Bully would be like yet (more research required).

Against that, there's a couple of points that have come through strongly:

1. A couple of people have mentioned that they've been bullied by women (I certainly have), and there's an impression from that that middle-aged women bullies are quite common in the business world.
2. Making the Bully a woman removes the undertones of sexual predatoriness (?) and physical intimidation that a man would bring to the role.

So there's a starting point if you'd like to discuss it. If necessary, I'll moderate this - but I figure it should be really interesting to hear each other's ideas. Now! Off to answer some of the questions raised in previous comments, and do some research on this story.

Workplace Bully: What's the tone?

Here's a question for you while I'm busy working on answers from the comments thread and resting my hands: when you first heard the pitch for Workplace Bully, what did you imagine it would be like?

When you hear that it's a webseries of short one to two minute episodes about a bully victimising someone at work, what do you expect to see?

New Thing: Workplace Bully

In the last ten years, both at work and in my flats, I've had the misfortune of running into four enormous arseholes. One of them very nearly broke me.

Confronting and defeating bullies isn't something that comes naturally to me. Or to a lot of people, I suspect. But it's totally necessary for our survival. Bullying is high-stakes. It can drive a person to a nervous breakdown or to suicide. And a lot of people share this experienceaccording to this Stuff article, one in five New Zealanders may experience bullying.

In the process of learning a little bit of verbal self-defence, I realised there's a great story in here. I'm interested in watching a story about someone who's driven right down to the breaking point, and who fights their way back up.

Workplace Bully is a web-series.

There are two main characters - the bully and the woman he's bullying (a new arrival to the office).

There are two halves to the story - her slowly realising she's being bullied as her self-esteem gets driven down to breaking point, and then her learning how to fight back against the bully, which will require her to push herself, her workmates, the bully and her workplace as far as she possibly can.


I have a very clear vision for this show. It's funny (in the sense that watching a witty bully is entertaining), but the first half is mostly about tension and slowly-mounting disaster. There's no physical violence in it; the only violence in this story is verbal and bureaucratic.

In the second half, as she learns how to fight back, I'd hope that the story starts to feel archetypal - a hero's (sic)journey about a woman nearly destroyed by a monster. And then fighting back against him.

As a show, I think it's going for something very real. Plausible. Realistic. And, I think, really dramatically satisfying. But not a drama; it's almost like a constructed documentary

Episodes are very short - one or two minutes. In fact, each episode is basically a scene focusing on a single situation - a morning tea, a power-point presentation, a single moment of insight into the woman or the bully's personal life. And the episodes don't follow on directly from each other: this isn't a cliffhanger-type show; it's more a gentle observing of incidents from two peoples' lives that add up to a bigger story.


I have two actors in mind, and I'm keen to try and shoot it Lone Gun style. So far it's been an easy show to outline and come up with episodes for (and it has the added bonus that doing the research benefits me). I suspect that rather than scripts, Workplace Bully would semi-improvised from an outline.

What I'd like to do in the next three to six months is:

1. Outline and research a bunch of episodes, to make sure that there's enough material there.
2. Shoot a Season Zero: three to six easy to achieve episodes over one or two days, Lone Gun style.

The Big, Wild Success for this project would be that I film the whole arc and that there's an audience for it. It'd also be great if it helped people (but maybe that's just a little too sincere).

So, if you're interested in this project or you have some thoughts on it, let's have a conversation about it. Because I'd like to try and get the most out of this, I've implemented a few rules:

• Interview me (and each other). Ask questions, rather than posting monologues about what you think.
• Be nice. Make people feel safe to post, and try and critique constructively. Although, if you absolutely must tell me why this idea is not damn good, go for it ... but - you know - 'constructively', and we'll sort out how that works.
• I will try and engage heavily with this conversation, here, on Twitter and on Facebook. Let's see how that works.

The New Thing Part 2 is coming in 1 day

Tomorrow, I'm going to start posting the first of four pitches for projects that I'm thinking about working on, and I'm going to invite you to help me play a game with me to figure out which one of them I'll tackle next.

I'm doing this because I spent seven years developing The Limit in secrecy; at most 5 or 6 people knew about that script's details. That was tough: the amount of feedback I could get was extremely limited, and I couldn't tell if people would be interested in it when I finally got around to putting it on the market. This time I want to create a bit more openly, and I want to figure out which ideas might have an audience - which simply means figuring out if you're interested in a particular idea, and whether you'd want to tell other people about it.

So, over the next two weeks I'm going to publish these pitches and I'd like to talk with you about them. Now: I think it'd be boring for everyone and pretty much useless if this conversation turns into some serious, high-stakes thing where everybody (including myself) expresses their opinions, invests a lot of status in 'being right', and the whole thing ends up in a cluster-fck where we're judging each other's creative ability.

I think we can agree that that would suck. And therefore I would like to do the opposite.


Let's pretend to be interviewers

Inspired by Tim Brown's TED talk, I want to play a game. I would like you to pretend to be interviewers, interviewing me about each of these ideas (or, at least, the ones that interest you). Rather than opinions, let's have a conversation where I listen and answer your questions, and think about your points and engage with them.

Questions, not monologues. That's my goal. (I have reasons for this, which I can go into in Comments if you're curious.)

Inviting you to discuss stuff with me like this implies a few things:

• You're a guest here. Since I've invited you in, it's up to me to make sure people are playing nice and positive, and that these interviews are good. In fact, I'll adopt the Lurkers Rule from Mo Ryan's TV blog: the environment here should be so accepting, so calm and so non-screechy that most timid lurker should feel safe about commenting. Upshot: I'll be moderating these conversations, as well as participating in them.
  
• What does 'nice' mean? Simply that I'm expecting people to be courteous and empowering. I'm fine with disagreement - it's valuable! - but I'd like that disagreement to encourage creativity, rather than be a blunt 'No' that blocks all further conversation and discourages me (or anyone else from working on it).
  
• You can share what you'd do with the idea, but - you know - phrase it like an interviewer would.
  
• I'm looking forward to discussing this with you! And I'm interested in your opinion ... but I guess I'll have to decide on a case-by-case basis whether I care about it. In other words: I'm not asking for your permission to create something.

Hopefully, if this is successful, three things will have happened:

1. I will have learned something
2. I will be more likely to create something
3. I will have a guideline about which ideas have the potential to create an audience (As a rough guide, I'm going to base that on how vigourous the conversation is)

What would I like you to do?

My goals for this are pretty simple. I want to gauge if people are interested in any of these ideas - and if they are, then what are they interested in?


That means if you like one of these upcoming ideas, or if you feel you've got something to say about them, or even if you don't like them - I'd love you to comment. And if you don't like one, or aren't interested and don't comment, then that silence is helpful too.

(And if you've never commented before, please feel free to.)

So, comment. Ask questions. Be yourself, but pretend to interview me. Let's try to create something that's fun and positive. Will this work? I have no idea, but let's play the game and find out.

For the first time, I'm going to really use twitter and facebook to continue the conversation. I'm going to post and reply on these more than I normally would. If you're not on twitter, you can check the sidebar on my blog's main page to follow along.

So here we go. First up - tomorrow - an idea for a web-series about a nasty little situation that many of us will have seen in our everyday work and flatting lives ...

Let's get ready to start the conversation!

The New Thing Part 2 is coming in 2 days

Let's summarise where I'm at:

While working through my issues with writing last year, I realised that I wanted writing to fit into my life, rather than dominate it. And that led to me discovering something about the New Thing: By choosing to write less, I'm writing more.

The most obvious thing I've done is limit myself to working on two things at any one time.(*). That means I'm getting more done partially because I'm stopping myself from spreading my attention too thinly. If my life gets busy, then I drop down to one thing. And if my life gets super-stressful then I'm fine about simply spending between zero to 20 minutes a day just playing around with ideas.

* 'Thing' can mean a writing project, but it can also mean 

some big project to do with another aspect of my life.

 
Changing how I feel about writing has also been a big part of writing more. I've gone from freaking out to seeing writing as an opportunity to work on things that excite me. This means, for instance, I'll be doing something like cleaning the toilet or washing the shower curtains, and I'll suddenly (perhaps 'reasonably') get enthusiastic to write - right now.

Basically, the way I procrastinate has flipped polarities, and I like it.

The New Thing Part 2 is coming in 3 days

An essential part of the New Openness is letting people judge your work. I'm a little cautious about this, mostly because I'm acutely susceptible to negative feedback - it's not that I don't like it, it's that I've often found negative feedback demolishes my desire to create something.

There's been a recent bubble of articles about letting people judge your work, and asking who should judge your work. Seth Godin has been talking a lot about shipping (finishing a project and sending it out into the world); he says:

[S]ome people learn to ship, they learn to do work that matters and most of all, they learn to ignore the critics they can never possibly please. The ability to choose who judges your work--the people who will make it better, use it and reward you--is the key building block in becoming an artist in whatever you do.

Trent at the Simple Dollar also did a post of being careful about who judges you.

A lot of the people who judge you will never be pleased with you, no matter what you do. It will never, ever be enough. There will always be something with which they can bring you down and reassert their sense of superiority.

Guess what? Their opinions do not matter. Not one little bit. If you waste even one second of your life trying to please such people, that’s a second you’ll never get value from and never get back.

<snip>

In the end, the only opinions that really matter are your own opinions and the opinions of a very small and select group of people who know the full situation and whose opinions you’ve actually decided to care about. Everyone else? Not so much

After thinking about this, I've decided to take a different approach with Part 2 of the New Thing. I'm going to be interested in everyone's opinions and ideas, but I'm going to reserve the right to not care about them. I have no idea how that balancing act will work in practice, but I'm fascinated to find out.

The New Thing Part 2 is coming in 4 days

As a counter-point to the New Openness, Derek Sivers has a great post all about the dangers of sharing what you're planning to do.

Research shows that talking about your ideas makes you less likely to accomplish them (because announcing something gives your mind just enough of a sense of achievement that you don't actually need to do the thing).

I'm actually aware of this principle - and I've fallen victim to it many times. I'm hoping that clearly defining the next actions I'm wanting to take with each project will help minimise the threat from this effect a little.

The New Thing Part 2 is coming in 5 days

There is lots of anecdotal evidence that having a career as a writer in New Zealand is f--ing difficult. Like, there are somewhere around 20 screenwriters working in New Zealand who make a living from writing full-time. Like, our most successful novelists with an extensive back-catalogue are earning around $30,000 p.a. from their work.

Here's an excerpt from a Salient interview with Witi Ihimaera that illustrates this point:

Every time I look at Maurice Gee’s work, or Patricia Grace’s work, I’m always stunned at what they’ve achieved. If they were working overseas they would not be working, I would not be working. They would be supported, I would be supported. Let me fire you an example:

Sky Dancer has know sold out 4,000 copies at $34.95, of which I get 10 percent in royalties – $3.45 for every book. From 4,000 copies I will realise $14,000.

It’s not a lot of money, so we do it for love, we do it because we have this commitment. I remember Maurice Gee saying once on the radio, he won an award for about $12,000 and the interviewer was saying ‘what are you going to do with this money?’ And he said ‘oh well, there’s a thing called the mortgage, and this will help to pay it off.’

About six years ago, I was script-editing at Gibson Group (which, in my experience, involves trying to find the funny while infected with the flu and working till 2am). I hung out with the other editors, who'd been writing professionally for years. When I asked them about their careers, they kept emphasising that they had other jobs - part-time, sure, but steady incomes - and they wrote and created in multiple areas, just to make sure the money kept coming in.

I begin to suspect that my experience working on lovebites has ill-prepared for the realities of writing in a number of ways.

So, my starting position is this: I need to be writing and creating stuff because I love it ... and worry about the potential (or 'hypothetical' or 'tiny') monetary rewards later. So rather than money, I want to be mentally engaged and excited by building stuff, and I want to feel that it's adding to my life.

The New Thing (Part Four): The New Openness

OK. I know that I have enough space in my life that I can work on writing (at most) two things: one 'Big' project and one less important project (which I drop if life gets busy).

But what do I write? That's always been my problem ... and a leading contributor to me freaking out about writing: I stress about what's the right thing to dedicate myself to right now. Unpacking what feeds into that stress, I found a whole bunch of stuff:

• focusing on the opportunity cost (If I write this, I won't be able to work on all my other projects. And will this one even work out? Should I actually be working on something else?)
• fear of how long I'll be working on it (I ended up working on The Limit for seven years - I am prepared to commit to this for that long?)
• a tendency to judge the worthiness of a project before I start exploring its potential. 

 ... The result? Paralysis.



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So what should I do with this discovery that I feel good about writing but I'm still afraid to commit to writing something?

On the 652 kilometre drive back from the Pixies' Auckland gig, Sean and Helen and I had a wide-ranging conversation that - at one point - touched on the idea of writer's paranoia: the fear that if you actually talk about your awesome story idea, someone will steal it and write it before you get a chance to.

I've been this guy. I've suffered from this fear, this paranoia, this community-destroying suspicion of other writers. I've thought things like: I can't trust you because you might plagiarise me. I can't trust you because you might get inspired to write something similar - and you might do it first. Or you might get all the credit. Or getting your advice might taint my self-image as the 'solitary creator'.

Well the upshot of that Pixies roadtrip conversation was: I don't care.

First off, it's bullshit. Most writers are too busy trying to figure out how to execute their own ideas to worry about stealing yours. And the chances that they'll be inspired to work on something you've come up with and are passionate about, and work on it in a way that's good and meaningful and fun ... well the chances of that are low.

Second: how are you going to find the people who can help you work on your idea, who help you have fun with it and help it grow, unless you tell people? And the people who might be good supporters for this particular idea might not be who you expect.

Third: I'm going to be alive for another ... (consults life expectancy calculator) ... 53 years. ... Well, that's an unexpectedly awesome discovery, but the point I'm making is that at my current rate of progress, I'll probably create another 3 to 8 ideas in my life.

I came up with 20 ideas in the last two months (thanks to the new routine of 20 minutes free writing a day).

That math's relentless: I have more ideas than I'll ever be able to execute. For some of them, by the time I get round to doing them I won't be into them anymore. Or their time will have passed. What I'm getting to is that (from a certain point-of-view) if people do 'steal' an idea of mine, it saves me the trouble of doing it myself.

Couple those realisations with Seth Godin's post on the importance of:

a) creating ideas that spread
b) focusing on the ideas that spread the most

... and the answer to how do I get over my fear of committing to writing something is obvious.

I can't be afraid of sharing ideas.

I can't be afraid of talking about them and seeing what happens.

Of seeing what works, and what's interesting.

Of seeing what sticks with people.

I can't be afraid to find out which of my ideas are good.


So, a big part of the New Thing is the New Openness. I'm going to talk about the things I'm considering for my next projects, and (hopefully) get a discussion started with you about them. This is entering into Phase 2 of the New Thing: I'm going to write pitches for 8 projects I'm thinking about doing (which will apply lessons from Made to Stick, and maybe even look a little bit like a media release.)

That'll start next week.

A New Thing Bonus Feature: Thank you!

Only a couple more posts to go in this series about how I've changed the way I approach writing (and then we move on to Phase 2 of the New Thing). I just wanted to say thank you to all the people who've been discussing this with me - especially the people who've approached me or asked after me, concerned that I'm OK.

I'm fine.

Consider this series of posts about the New Thing to be something like a character arc. While they started off describing a low point (which really was about 6 to 8 months ago), they'll end up in a good place. I'm really enjoying writing at the moment, and a lot of other elements of my life are going well too.

So, thank you for your concern and good wishes.

Also: how freaking cool is Lost right now? Evil Good Desmond. Zombie Sayid. Off-handed answerings of enormous questions, and Jack? Jack is a compelling character again? I couldn't believe it when they did it with Sawyer, but making Jack awesome seemed almost impossible to me.

Three fantastic episodes in a row, really interesting situations having been set-up to explore, and absolutely no character is safe (except for maybe Hurley and Jack).

Loving it.

The New Thing (Part Three): Making writing fit

Two years. That's how long it took to mentally get to a point where just sitting down to write would freak me out.

Thirty minutes. That's how long it took (with the right tools) to completely flip my brain from that to seeing writing as an opportunity.


But while I was stoked that that had worked, I was becoming aware of another source of stress underneath that: stress from trying to fit writing into my work and personal life.

Some numbers: after a normal day of work, I have maybe two hours (max) where my brain is clear and active, before it starts shutting down and going to sleep. And before work, I probably have 20 to 30 minutes of free-ish time, which I often spend surfing the net. With about two-and-a-half hours of good brain time available to me, I realised I needed to create a routine for writing that I could fit into my life - a routine that would place as little pressure on me as possible.

A couple of years ago, I read a book called 'Margin', which talked about the idea of creating free time and breathing room in your life (much like the white margins that surround the words on a page). The way I had been writing - focusing on a big project, spending all my free time on it - had been filling up the page with words and leaving very little white space.

Two Things


After reflecting on it, what I realised is that when my life is going well, when I'm productive, feeling good, and not stressed at work ... then I can handle working on two extra projects. That's any big project that's going to take a lot of energy to move to the next stage (or finish!). And it's not just writing. It's anything from my '12 things to do in 2 years' list. It's blogging. It's two extra things in my life.

So here's my starting point: If I want to have margin in my life, I have to limit myself to two things. For instance:

• Finishing a draft of Bad Family to send to Simon and Malcolm for peer review is a thing.
• Spending six weeks going to ceroc, to learn to dance is a thing.
• Writing this series of blog posts about The New Thing? It's a thing.

What I didn't consider, for the longest time, was that the blog is a Thing. Writing this blog has been so important to me that I've felt like I've had to do it, even if I had lots of other stuff going on in my life. But what I realised was that blogging can't be an 'extra' thing that competes for my available writing time. It's better for me to think about blogging as just one way I can express myself through writing, and these book analyses and multi-part essays are just one of the possible 'things' I have the space in my life to write about. (That means there will probably be further changes to what I blog about, but I'll let Future Steve sort that out ...)

(Future Steve?)

This isn't perfect

Through figuring all this out and applying this '2 Things' principle I seem to have stumbled into a good new space for writing - a routine for writing that fits into my life. As long as I write for 10 minutes a day, usually before going on the net in the morning and - if I can - when I first get home from work, then I'm happy. And seem to be making a lot of progress.

I'm definitely not saying that this is something people should try, and I'm not saying this routine is some perfect, finished thing. In fact, one of the great things I took from the Pixar talk is that there's no such thing as a 'perfect' way to live your life; it's just good to keep adapting to your circumstances and energy. I actually expect to keep refining and changing how I run my life every three to six months, and that's totally cool.


All I'm saying is that I have a new routine. Next: what am I going to do with it?

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