Nick Cummings

I.

Once upon a time, I made a book.

That book was called Silicon Sasquatch: The First Year or So. And other than the fact that it’s printed on paper, wedged between a cover and bound by glue on one side, it’s not really a book in the traditional sense. It’s primarily just a collection of the best/worst/most significant articles we posted over on the blog I edit accompanied by short running commentary and a few brief essays highlighting our few successes and many failures along the road to becoming self-published independent writers without even a modicum of planning.

So it’s not exactly a page-turner. And I knew it at the time – I knew this wasn’t the kind of book you’d shop around to potential publishers in the hopes of catching someone’s attention. So we went with a small initial run – 50 copies, paid out of pocket by three unemployed writers – and sold the majority at-cost to friends and family. A few of my friends even read it and gave me feedback, which is a courtesy I’m still deeply grateful for.

There were about eight copies from that initial run intentionally left unsold. We’d originally planned to send copies out to games writers we were inspired by – folks like Jeff Green (former EIC of Computer Gaming World/Games for Windows), Leigh Alexander (Gamasutra, Kotaku and lots more) and Christopher Grant (founder of Joystiq). Aaron, Doug and I signed the copies and began drafting personalized letters to each of the intended recipients to try to explain with ample humility what, exactly, we’d just sent them.

I was paralyzed. I never sent out the copies.

I was afraid of being seen as a me-too writer, and I feared this book would be the final nail in the coffin for a misguided and inconsistent blogger with a bachelor’s degree in a dying medium. I couldn’t deal with the possibility of being rejected or worse – ignored.

So that’s why there’s a cardboard box in my living room I don’t open anymore.

II.

This post you’re reading right now came about because I was combing through some abandoned article drafts on this blog and came across an untitled draft from December 2010. It began like this:

In hindsight, maybe it was stupid of me to spend my free time working on a book for an incredibly niche audience for the last couple months when I could have focused my efforts on moving out or finding work or, you know, not going broke.

After the book was printed and the copies had been distributed, I wasn’t sure what to do next. I’d spent two months knee-deep in the project, spending hours each day on layout, writing, editing and coordination with the rest of the blog staff. After years of dull work experience and more than a few false starts on my way to adulthood, I’d finally had a project where I could give it everything I had. And when that was gone, I began to worry.

Months passed. I was no closer to a job and the relatively minimal income needed to move out of my mom’s house than I was before I began working on the book. So I started looking for the next big thing I could take on.

Life intervened. I found a job I love and I moved to Austin. The rest is history.

Fall has arrived all around the country, but Austin’s leaving its scorching summer behind kicking and screaming. I was optimistic that we’d be leaving these triple-digit temperatures behind sooner rather than later, but these things can’t last forever. I know how our solar system works, after all!

I’ve been incredibly busy with all manner of work and diversion, which is unsurprising for a dude in his mid-twenties. Last week was f8, the big Facebook developer conference, and watching it left me feeling humbled in a really profound way. A huge part of why I love working at Facebook is that I believe in the product we’re making – its value, its significance, its ability to affect our lives for the better – and I’d never seen those ideals demonstrated so wholeheartedly as they were during Zuck’s presentation.

I try to avoid talking about work on my personal blog for a lot of reasons, many of which are probably obvious, but I do want to make clear just how proud I am of the work we’re doing and how glad I am that I get to be a part of it. Above all else in life, I want to know that the work I’m doing is having a real, measurable and profound positive impact on people. I’m grateful to work for a company where people care about those things.

Last weekend was also the Austin City Limits music festival, which was an intense and draining way to spend 72 hours. It was also an absolute blast. I mentioned this to a few friends, but seeing live music performed always reminds me just how much I miss playing music with friends. Band was an instrumental (sorry) part of my childhood and teenage years, and I really miss the thrill of being on stage and collaborating with people to make music. It’s something you have to feel to understand, maybe.

This weekend is Fantastic Fest at the Alamo Drafthouse and Highball Lounge on South Lamar in Austin. I didn’t get tickets to any of the showings at the Drafthouse theater, but I did wander over to the Highball Lounge for the indie games festival taking place there. I’m hoping to go back today and put together some more thoughts on the games I played, but I saw some really inspiring creativity on display.

I always toy with the idea of making games for a career. It’s probably silly, given that I haven’t been into programming in about a decade and only know a little bit about game design from the books I’ve read, but I think I’m interested in making games for the same reason that working for Facebook is so important to me. Games give people an interactive and shared experience with an interactive narrative that everyone can experience differently. By putting people in control of the experience, playing a game is also an intensely personal experience. Whether the reward is just mental stimulation (like rotating blocks in Tetris) or serious considerations about personal choice (BioShock’s “a man chooses; a slave obeys” scene), there’s just nothing else like it.

Anyway. My point is that games are a budding and brilliant new medium (new as compared to any other major medium, that is) and I’m thrilled by the prospect of being involved in shaping the course of that medium. That, and the opportunity to express myself creatively and work through countless problem-solving exercises and trial-and-error routines in designing and polishing a game experience sounds like some seriously gratifying work — the sort of tasks where I can really get into a flow state.

So yeah. Someday.

Austin has a pretty active gaming community, it seems. I know a number of great developers are here, including Twisted Pixel, makers of some of the most hysterically funny games in years. I’d love to get involved with that scene and meet some of them, but I’m not sure how to go about it. Maybe I can just mention my game-blogging past? That might help.

Speaking of game blogging, and especially of it being in the past:

I’m not sure what’s going on with Silicon Sasquatch, but I’m pretty sure the answer is “nothing.” I haven’t been able to track everyone down to talk about next steps, but I’m gonna have to consider the site on indefinite hiatus at this point. I think the blame can be placed on each of us having significantly busier personal and professional lives and a site with stagnating design and, honestly, WordPress is starting to feel a little too bulky and antiquated to enjoy working with.

I wonder if Tumblr might be worth revisiting?

Long story short, I love writing about games because I love writing and I love games. I don’t think I’m done writing about them forever and ever, but when I’m working as much as I am and I barely have any time to even play the games I love, it becomes a challenge to fit in the time to publish, too.

But it’s something to think about.

Good news: It sounds like Aaron and I are going to fire up our blog again.

Well, maybe.

It’s actually kinda difficult to predict exactly what we’ll be doing, to be honest, because we’re not sure if Silicon Sasquatch deserves an extension of its life support. By now I’ve made my peace with its banal name and goofy mascot, but I wonder if we might want to consider starting up something new.

I’ve written a lot lately about how much Silicon Sasquatch meant to us and how invaluable it was in getting us through the doldrums (I’ve been told that’s a more polite word than “shitshow”) that was life post-graduation, but now that we’ve all got full-time jobs in different corners of the globe, it’s little wonder why things came to a halt.

But Aaron and I did something pretty significant when we started Silicon Sasquatch. We built something out of nothing. And now that I’m imagining what we’d be capable of now, starting fresh, with so many years of experience and thousands of hours of work behind us…it’s inspiring.

Before I moved to Austin I had dreamed about saving up money and renting out a cheap office space somewhere in Portland and working 12-hour days to transform Silicon Sasquatch into a profitable business. I know, I know: blogging doesn’t generate income unless you can demonstrate rare expertise, like Merlin Mann, or you’re a leech on the hard work of legitimate journalists, like Nick Denton. But I’ve always wanted to do my own thing, ultimately, and that’s something I didn’t discover until post-college life left me with a blank slate.

In a way, not having an internship or job lined up out of school might have been one of the best outcomes I could have ever hoped for. It forced me to confront the challenges of adult life head-on and to think hard — really hard — about what matters to me. Some other ideas I’d considered include:

• Starting a tiny, two- to four-person game studio in Portland or Seattle
• Finding the cheapest room to rent in a house full of equally directionless twenty-somethings and working full-time to become a freelance writer
• Going back to school to get a masters degree in literary nonfiction or creative writing or, you know, something like that

Back to the Silicon-Sasquatch-as-a-business notion: I doubt it would have succeeded, but the experience would have been invaluable. Failure is better than not having tried.

In the last week I’ve rediscovered just how important and gratifying taking the time to write is. It’s necessary to my mental well-being — seriously. I’m one of those people who just has so much shit they need to share with the world and this is the best way I know how.

So that — and the fact that we’ve done it before, and we’re totally eager to do it again — is why I’m confident we’re going to get something going before you know it.

I’ve recently picked up Jane McGonigal’s Reality is Broken after a month or so away from it. If you had to sum it up in one word, I guess it’s about gamification, but that’s such an ugly and misleading name. It’s more about what game systems can teach us about human needs and gratification and it’s full of great ideas about how to apply those lessons to real-world issues. It’s not the first or most original book on the subject, and it’s certainly not the best-written (McGonigal’s voice seems stifled out of some misinterpreted need to write with authority), but the ideas she puts forth are just so tantalizing to a lifelong believer in the value of games.

As with any new technology, I’m not sure how I feel about layering artificial game systems on top of real-world events. I’m fairly confident I don’t need a game that pits me against my roommate in a never-ending competition to see who can take the garbage out and do the dishes more often (although visitors to our apartment might disagree). But I am fascinated in social systems we create and what drives people to love or hate them. To look at World of Warcraft and to only see a fantasy role-playing game is missing the point; the effect it’s had on millions of people’s lives, both good and bad, is the real story there.

I’m currently in the midst of what might politely be called a quarter-life crisis. I say “politely” because I’m actually in a really great spot in my life right now, all things considered, and I don’t want to sound like I’m totally out of touch with the support and luck that brought me to where I am today. But on the other hand, I’m at a bit of a crossroads, and I can’t deny that there are a few big, ugly Truths — picture indistinct, feral creatures with matted hair, wicked claws and dripping fangs — that have cornered me and forced a confrontation. For instance:

• I’m closer to age 50 than to being a fetus

Not the best example? Fine. How about:

• I’m closer to age 30 — the age of real adulthood, I presume, because I sure as hell don’t feel like an adult yet — than I am to 20
• I still don’t really know what I want to do with my life (I’m beginning to think this is a trick question and we’re all doomed to struggle for meaning in a largely empty and unforgiving universe and the sooner I realize that and start settling for “good enough,” the better)
• I’m concerned I’m not making the best use of my time

These issues are nothing new to anybody who has ever had one of those moments where reality, armed with a battering ram of stop fucking around, bashes against the splintering defenses of your self-identity until you’re forced to admit that — oh wait — it might be time to reassess how things are going.

Returning to the previous list for a moment: That last point is a complex one, but if we break it up into its constituent pieces, it’s actually surprisingly easy to fix.

Right now, the component of my life most in need of improvement is how I manage my personal time. I want to start working out again in earnest (i.e., more than once every week or so) and to make sure I’m taking time to read and write often — things I enjoy doing but rarely make the time for. Why do some of my favorite activities feel like chores? Why would I dread taking the time to sit down and bang out a blog post?

I think it’s because I have no way to gauge success in either area. Working out feels great once I’m actually doing it, but it’s also unpleasant in a few not-insignificant ways. I mean, sweating is kinda gross. But more importantly, I don’t have any hard-and-fast way to track my progress. I might notice that I ran farther or faster than the week before, but I’m always wondering what external factors might be affecting my results. Maybe I just ate better this week, or maybe I was sleeping more soundly? Spontaneous gamma radiation stimulated my muscles and now I’m a marginally better athlete? Those variables just end up filling me with doubt.

I see some value in building game systems that ignore those nagging questions rather than solve them. Who cares why I ran faster today? What matters is that I have a comprehensive record of all my time spent working out and the statistics to measure success. Nike+ is a huge step in the right direction, but its biggest drawback for me is that I have to actively engage with the program to track my progress. It’d be so much better if the system could give me a nudge every now and then to remind me about how close I was to achieving one of my goals or to remind me how close I was to hitting, for example, a cumulative 100 miles run with the app.

Writing’s the same way. Word counts are obvious, as are blog posts, but that’s only scratching the surface. What about outlining, or personal journal entries, or editing projects for friends, or planning the next big feature for my website? Even if there’s no tangible reward, having those statistics feels almost like a necessity at this point. That’s not to say that writing isn’t its own reward, but adding some layer of game-like elements to these personal challenges starts to make a lot of sense when I think about the value it can provide.

I’m sketching out a few possible designs for what I have in mind. With any luck I’ll remember to upload them — it’s probably worth at least 5 points.

I’ve been battling writer’s block for some time, but I’m still writing a lot lately. It’s because I’m writing at work, though. I’m writing for work. And that justification excuses me from a lot of creative barriers that I’ve put up ever since moving to Austin.

The irony of writer’s block, as is so eloquently explained here, is that you can always manage to write about writer’s block. So in essence, it’s make-believe; if you can write, you can write. (Right?) So that’s what I’ve been doing on my other blog, and that’s what I’m doing here right now.

I’m still struggling to process the fact that my life right now bears almost no resemblance to where I was six months ago. It’s been a whirlwind year, to say the absolute minimum. So it only makes sense that my writing comes in fits and starts, is unfocused, and rarely has anything to say that isn’t purely self-referential.

Part of my hesitation comes from not knowing who my audience is. I don’t care if anyone’s reading, but it’s a little awkward. Putting your writing out there into the vacuum of the Web, I mean. Any form of expression is inherently personal, but the Web as it exists today is based on one-way connections. How do I know if anyone is reading? Should I care? At that point, you’re just circling the drain until you eventually reach the question you’ve been avoiding: Why am I writing?

It’s not that the question needs an answer so much as you need to be okay with not answering it. And that takes a lot of experience, a lot of stability, a lot of confidence, and a little faith.

So yeah. That’s why I haven’t been writing.

Every morning at 8:00 I receive an email from this guy named Buster. In each message, Buster tells me to write. I usually end up ignoring his advice. After all, I’ve never met him.

Buster is the Seattleite who runs 750words, a site for free-form, private writing on a daily basis. I’d highly recommend it for anyone who struggles to get their thoughts together before getting their day started. It’s inspired by Julia Cameron’s concept of morning pages, a first-thing-in-the-morning mental cleansing technique of sorts, from her apparently fantastic book The Artist’s Way, a book I fully intend to read but — like so many other great ideas — I just haven’t found the time for.

I guess that’s the big theme here: Time. None of us ever seems to have enough time, right? I have to wonder why that is, because time is actually pretty much the most abundant resource we have in life. There’s always more time coming our way, and we’ve got more than enough ways to quantify it.

And yet I feel like all I can do is barely hang on throughout the daily and weekly pace of life. Sleep yields to work, and work leads to socializing, and socializing eventually gives way to a quick hour or two to myself before I succumb to exhaustion and do it all over again. It’s in this way that entire weeks disappear on me without a trace.

Part of that probably can be blamed on the job I work. We move fast — like really, really fast — and days seem to fly by. But it’s a tradeoff, and in return I get to work in an engaging environment with great people.

Still, there’s no question that the things I love doing don’t always line up with the work that’s available. I took advantage of the abundant yet stressful free time that characterized my underemployed early twenties (oh my god, I’m no longer in my early twenties!) to discover what sort of work really engages me. As it turns out, I have pretty humble ambitions:

• I love to read and write (of course)
• When it comes to design of any kind, my flow be fresh, son
• Intellectual conversations totally make my day

And when it comes to values, I’m similarly grounded. In the long term, I think the only things that really matter to me are:

• Good friends and family within proximity
• A comfortable personal space within a larger creative community
• A culture that values and produces great food, coffee and beer

So what does that mean for me in the meantime? Nothing, really. I’m pretty thrilled to be where I am in life right now — it’s fresh, exciting and has me looking forward to seeing what each new day brings. And I think I’m finally in a position to start building a path from where I am now to where I want to be in the future — what I want to accomplish, what I want to prove to myself and how I want to get there.

For the first time ever, I understand what adults mean when they say they’re not getting any younger. Every day counts, and the choices we make in the moment are probably the most important.

Frankly, I’m grateful to have a pretty good idea of where I want to be in ten years. It doesn’t feel constraining like I feared it might. In practice, it gives me a good sense of what I want to do in the intervening years, and it gives me plenty of room for flexibility in how I get there.

But I’ve gradually come to realize over the last few months is how easy it is to lose sight of the things that are most important. There are so many extraneous distractions in life, and remembering to take the time to focus on oneself is pretty damn difficult most of the time. Maybe it’s the introvert in me, but the time I spend making lists, playing music, reading books and writing my fool heart out is probably the most valuable. I think it would be a terrible mistake to forget that.

Consider this post a reaffirmation of my commitment to writing every day, no matter how painful it is to come up with a meager 750 words of shitty prose. A writer has to write, and honestly, I haven’t been much of a writer lately. But nothing feels more natural or more fulfilling than when I’ve written, rewritten and published something worth reading. This post clearly doesn’t come close to meeting those standards, but you get the point.

I don’t need to make everything I write public — believe me, less than 5% makes it onto this blog — and honestly, every time I write here I consider making my blog private or preventing it from updating my Facebook and Twitter feeds. I worry that most people think it’s weird when someone writes publicly about what’s on their mind. But I write because I have something to say, and the thought of dumping this stuff into a Microsoft Word document to be hermetically sealed in a My Documents sarcophagus until the end of time is just depressing.

So in summary: I’m going to write a lot because it’s important. Most of it is going to suck. And I’m not particularly sorry.

Man, I’ve totally dropped the ball on writing lately. I don’t do new year’s resolutions, but I kind of assumed I’d be writing something every day this year — it just seemed like a good thing for a writer to do. And now it’s April, and I haven’t posted on my own blog in more than two months.

Whoops.

There are a few factors at play here, and if I may be so audacious, a lot of the blame for this dry spell can be put on circumstance.

Basically, I got a job at Facebook and moved to Austin. Considering I’d spent the last couple years navigating the dismal Oregon job market and had grown used to moving back and forth between Portland and Eugene, I wouldn’t say this was something I was planning on, exactly.

I was contacted in February about an application I’d submitted and promptly forgotten about back in December of 2010. I don’t mean to sound dismissive; I really figured I didn’t have a chance of standing out in Facebook’s applicant pool, and so I shoved it to the back of my mind as a momentary flight of fancy before I settled back into the monotony of filling out countless identical bookstore and coffee shop applications.

Things moved fast. Almost exactly one month after Facebook contacted me about my application, I was riding the bus from my new apartment to start my first day of work in Austin. And yesterday marked the conclusion of my fourth week at the company.

I can’t begin to tell you how lucky I am to be here. My job is challenging, my coworkers are awesome, and Austin is a fun and surprisingly nuanced city. Of course I miss the Northwest like hell — I probably always will until I find my way back someday — but I needed this kind of a change, even if I didn’t know it. I’d always wanted to move somewhere I’d never been where I didn’t know anybody; it sounded terrifying and thrilling at the same time. And fortunately, it was totally worth taking the plunge.

I know how depressing it can get when you’re fresh (or, as I was, stale) out of college and feeling like the opportunities you’d been promised by your teachers and mentors are nonexistent. I think the problem is especially pronounced in Oregon, what with its nation-leading unemployment numbers and dearth of new business opportunities. So here’s my advice to everyone back at home:

1. Be open to anything new
2. Remember your strengths
3. It never hurts to apply to your dream job, even if you’re convinced you’ll never stand out

Oregon has always been my home, and I’m all but certain I’ll end up living there again someday. But now is the time to branch out, pick up, and do something completely different. You won’t regret it.

Like many people, all my really great ideas come to me in inconvenient places. Like the shower.

There I stand, dutifully scrubbing away my smelliness and unconsciously singing the chorus to an embarrassing song under my breath, when suddenly it’ll strike me:

You should write a novel about modern politics and values, but, like, in space.

Okay, fine: That’s a terrible idea. But what did you expect? I’m not in the shower.  For now, let’s just pretend it was some sort of earth-shattering, Ulysses-caliber stroke of genius.

So this great notion popped into your head out of the ether, which is great, except when you consider that inspiration is fleeting. And when you’re standing wet and naked with your not-tested-on-animals shampoo just centimeters away from burning the hell out of your eyes¹, your options are decidedly limited.

As a male in my early-to-mid twenties, my mind retains a good idea about as well as a wet napkin carries dog feces.² By the time I’m clothed and ready to write, I’ll have forgotten the idea completely. Best-case scenario, I’ll remember the concept but there’ll be some key component missing that gave it its necessary spark.

So what can you do?

Not a lot, as it turns out. You can try repeating the idea in your head or out loud like a mantra, but it’ll lose its meaning and you’ll look like a crazy person. You can also try shouting for your roommate/significant other to come in and write your great concept down for you, but let’s be honest: There are some boundaries that nobody should have to cross.

No. The only way to retain that brilliant idea is to run. Run out of the shower, dripping wet, and get to the nearest computer or notepad and write everything down before it slips away – or your roommates evict you.

It’s not glamorous, and it’s not perfect, but nobody ever said living the creative life would be pleasant.

At least you have a good excuse to take the occasional long shower.

——————–

1. It’s a good thing they didn’t test it on animals, but Jesus, did they test it on anything?

2. Speaking from experience, unfortunately.

In Stephen King’s On Writing (Amazon), which I was long overdue to read, a newspaper editor teaches him more about writing in a short burst of blunt editing than years of English classes. Watching as the words of his first newspaper assignment are crossed out, King recalls:

I took my fair share of English Lit classes at my two remaining years at Lisbon, and my fair share of composition, fiction, and poetry classes in college, but [newspaper editor] John Gould taught me more than any of them, and in no more than ten minutes.

I still remember the elation I felt in my introductory journalism classes when I saw half my words crossed out. It was revelatory for me. I was angry at first, but after reading the edits I got it. How did I never notice all the extraneous shit I always threw into my writing?

‘When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,’ [Gould] said. ‘When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.’

Moral: If you want to be a better writer, nothing helps like a stern editor. Even better if you can be one yourself.

I guess this kind of ties in to this notion of where creativity comes from, like in that Elizabeth Gilbert TED Talk I posted yesterday. It’s been bouncing around in my mind pretty frequently as I sit down each day and attempt to write for a broad range of outlets. I write to share my knowledge and insight about games, because I know them damn well. I write to be seen and heard. I write obsessively in the vain hope that I’ll have the best cover letter and edge closer to the top of any given job application heap. I write for nobody at all pretty often, too, which is more useful than I remembered.

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right—as right as you can, anyway—it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it.

I’m always editing myself as I go, separating the wheat from the chaff — or the message from the bullshit, if you prefer the terms I was offered in college. Always working to be more concise, more clear, more agile on the page; as it turns out, it’s a never-ending battle. But I think I prefer it that way.

It’s about my other blog. It’s called Silicon Sasquatch: The First Year or So. It took a lot of work.

You can take a look at a preview of the entire book and/or buy a copy here. We’ve decided to donate the profits to Child’s Play, a charity that provides hospitalized kids with video games. It’s a good charity.

I’ll be honest: This book started out as not much more than a personal scrapbook I was preparing so I’d have something to remember the site by after it died. Somehow, we’re still going. As the mood among us changed, so did the shape of the book. Now it’s more of a personal reflection on the challenges we’ve faced over the last couple years as aspiring writers who have been struggling to make a name for ourselves — and, ideally, to be paid to do what we love.

Given that we’re not making any money off of the book, I think it’s safe to say we failed on the latter. But still — and I know how vain this sounds — I hope you’ll find something that resonates with or inspires you.