Hiya Sana. I am saddened to hear you got laid off.
To answer your question, I take everything writing related day-by-day and just try to move forward however I may.
At times like you are experiencing now, I view writing as one of my refuges, a place I can shape and form, and a place I can go to still my racing thoughts or raging feelings.
It is during these times I like to focus on my character arcs because often I can express their feelings, emotions and thoughts easier.
Hopefully, the support thread will be a good place for you to vent or whatever as well.
I’m so sorry to hear it. Sending lots of warm wishes and luck in finding something else. I’ve been there and know how hard it is. Try to be kind to yourself about it and the writing - it’s very understandable to find it hard to focus on creative things when going through a tough time. As tricky as that can be, I find that dealing with the immediate needs - food, sleep, moving in a way that makes my body feel better, talking with friends/family, getting out of the house a little bit - is helpful initially, as it nourishes my brain and improves my health. I can then build on that when it feels right to write again. Doing small, manageable writing such as a short character exploration that isn’t intended for anyone else to see can be a lower-stakes way of stretching my brain and slowly getting back into the zone.
I can’t properly do anything that requires focus if my stress levels are too high, so first order of business is to lower that, but after it’s done, writing actually improves my mood. Well, as long as it’s something I want to write and not just something I have to. And as long as by writing it I’m not procrastinating doing something more urgent too much.
When I first entered the forum as a newbie, there was no group I could join with the cliques already well-established. I went to the writer support thread and Eiwynn let me participate in the monthly previews, so I was indeed fortunate that I found an inclusive enough group that I could join. Then some time after Their Majesties’ Pleasure came out, you joined as well, and so here we are.
Brian “Mathbrush” Rushton has kindly given us some tips on what to do and not to do when writing Choicescript games: What I learned from playing every Choicescript game (patterns in good/bad games). This being a writer support thread, I thought I would bring this up again, since Mathbrush is so active on the intfiction forum.
Wonderful words from someone like you, Mara!
Someone has really good taste- Max Fog will be proud of you.
Very good idea!
Welcome to the support thread. Here be useful tips.
Turns out that I’m not trying to be like you. Or Hannah. It really feels that I’m stagnating- I’m more concerned about trying to be the best than letting my actual writing out. In fact Welcome to Hellwaters was supposed to be the next step after what ground Emily Short broke. Coming from a moderator, I’m worried that the above may not be true.
Also, that stat screen of yours looks surreal!
It’s really nice to hear what experiments you did before that big thing of yours took off, Hannah! And thank you for that Honor Bound update!
Given the option to pet that dog, well, if Honor Bound is any indication, everyone will click it! I hope we can finally see the expanded version of your Ectocomp entries Raishall and Phantasmagoria out into the world!
Passerines’ free bird won last year’s IF Short Games Showcase, by the way! It’s an escape room, but you’re a bird, like Jacic’s Cage Break, and both games were in last year’s Seedcomp. Speaking of Seedcomp…
I also reviewed all games in the Seedcomp. They were fantastic, and that’s an understatement. I feel that my best strength is perhaps reviewing stuff, though I’ll need a bigger sample size to actually comfirm that. Disclaimer: I beta-tested one entry, Mathbrush’s parser one called Faery:Swapped. I haven’t even beta-tested any Choicescript ones yet!
There is always a place for conversation.
Me too. At least it’s not a Chance of Meatballs.
Well done- and your game is on IFDB to boot!
Yay for visual novel publicity!
One man’s meat is another woman’s poison.
That’s really hilarious! It just got me thinking…
This is short and succinct. Perfect for someone like you Havenstone.
This is a problem that definitely I got hit with too.
This certainly would not work for me, since this is preventing me from solving my real-life problems. Especially those character arcs.
A nice thank you for that advice Hannah!
I probably function that way as well, but there’s a catch: writing helps me to relieve stress, but takes away my attention to the problem currently at hand.
I probably would spend more time with real world stuff than on writing Welcome to Hellwaters, but that’s really necessary. Anyway, thank you all for the encouragement!
Right, but not all problems are something you can do anything about (if you’re, say, spending two weeks waiting for a response from somewhere, or are just generally worried about someone, whether or not you just sit there waiting and worrying makes no difference) or require your full attention 24/7 (even if you do actually need to do something, in most cases you’ll still have free time).
I dont know if this will encourage you, but I am in far worse place. I have no group here, 80% people believe I am a toxic crap and the other 20% that I am a clown.
Most people want me out and a bunch of them had at least participated in one active campaign to kicked me out.
My betas were all a total failure and most people directly skip everything all I do.
And I am still here. It is bonkers and makes no sense for most people.
But I promise and gave my word to my grandma before pasing that I will publish here. And I will. I will.
Sometimes in life it doesnt matter the odds. It is a cojones thing.
You have to find in you if you have that pasion and if you really wanted it. If yoy do, you just have to focus your will. Whatever times it takes
Heh, yeah. I ran into a weird error the other day. Ended up deleting the line of code and rewriting it (exactly as it was) and then QT was like, “This is fine.” As long as it works in the end, right?
Quick update: I haven’t done much writing in the last few days, but I’ve been cooking lots of good food and spending quality time with my family. We also hooked up rainwater collection on most of our house, which has been a goal for years. So. Big things happening. I’m hoping to get back to my WIP soon, but first I must make banana bread.
Thanks @Gilbert_Gallo! I’m guessing you’re just using the *if (random_test) to end the game? (No looping on the test?)
Thanks @RockmanX Hopefully I’ll manage to get Raishall debugged and then I can go back to working through Phantas and the edit I’m doing on my released game (Wizardry). (And all this talk of dogs in games is making me want to go back and work on Sea Maiden but I really need to keep focused on getting one game at a time finished! Still, there can never be enough goodest boy and pet-able dogs in games IMO :D)
That’s great to hear. I haven’t had a chance to look at any of them yet but I absolutely love the concept of writing games based on someone else’s prompt you get to choose from. It’s really cool to see how different the games can end up even using the same seeds in the game. Thank you for reviewing them! Reviews mean a lot to people putting free games up for these jams
I don’t believe that Mara. I also wouldn’t take not getting many people for your beta a sign that people are deliberately skipping your work. It’s really hard to get people to beta test games in many cases these days as a lot of the attention gets funneled into the big popular ones. Keep chipping away at your games and you’ll get there
I will proudly agree with @Jacic. I will subtract 10% and make that all the people on this thread. Because I believe everyone is that delighted you’re here.
All the jams that you’ve made helped others write, even your small comments have made my day.
I hope that you find your goal to successfully publish in COG.
It’s been a couple of years and I know it was fan fiction, but I really enjoyed Zombie Exodus: Poisoning Tears. So while the thread may have closed before the story’s end, please know that because of it I’ve been looking forward to your next work to experience your writing once more.
@Jacic I used @ if_randomtest guide the randomtest directly to the path that avoided all possible loops. That solved all my problems. I hope it helps you too.
February bashed my head onto harsh reality, I used to say that I wanna make a farming sim gamebook using harvest moon as its main reference, but turned out making a story with conflicts and obstacles on that specific genre was pretty hard
The main reference itself doesn’t have any notable storytelling either, it’s mostly open-end micromanagement with few events here and there, you’re even allowed to do nothing for the entire year in harvest moon and I don’t think gamebook which is story-reliant is a good medium for that kind of game, so I scrapped the idea, for now…
This month I don’t have any measurable goal in mind, I’m totally open to any suggestions
@poison_mara Yeah, tbf, I had a really good time with the halloween jam as well. It put into perspective the amount of work it would take to create the concept I was trying to go for, and gave way to what I like to believe is an entire new way to play CoG games because of it.
Don’t undersell yourself or the game jams, I think they’re a great opportunity for people to kind of put their foot through the door.
Somehow I wrote 4,000 words today. It took me the better part of the literal entire day and required me to get super energised to add something in and be incredibly good about not getting distracted. I have no idea how the heck anyone sustains this kind of pace consistently.
As long as it works in the end, right? 
So. Big things happening. I’m hoping to get back to my WIP soon, but first I must make banana bread.
