Reborn
Here is what I did:
I demoted myself from a full-time salaried employee to a part-time employee.
Now, here's the thing. I realize that this upsets people, instinctually. Every person I've talked to has said, at some point, "Oh, Zach. Don't do that." There's pity in their voice, or worry, or fear. But that's not what this post is about; this isn't about my friends and family, nor about my own struggle with confidence, nervousness. I'm not here to tell you about what I did, but what I'm about to do.
There are five main projects on my plate. These are all personal and important to me; when I spend time on them I feel satisfied with my work, I feel happy and engaged. They are roughly, as follows:
Palm Pre Development
I've been discussing on-and-off with Andrew about working with him on a project; until we have something concrete to do, though, I've been working on this myself. There are two projects that I am personally working on and will continue to do solo; luckily, WebOS development with Mojo is so painfully simple I can juggle multiple projects easily.
The one I will tell you about is called Dungeon Tools. It's a niche market inside a niche market so I don't expect it to make much money, but I will -- eventually -- sell it. It's basically a simple app to manage players in a role-playing game. As I've outlined it, you've got a list of characters and tools. The user of the program keeps track of various stats of the characters -- initiative, saving throws, armor class, perception, that sort of thing. The user will be able to roll against specific stats (or using specific stats as a bonus) to see who saves versus an attack, for example.
The first use -- what got me thinking about this -- is initiative. Keeping track of initiative order is always always ALWAYS a pain in the ass. With Dungeon Tools, you can just press a single button and get an interactive list of everyone, their initiative rolls (done dynamically, of course), their speed mods -- all the information a gamer could want.
The tools will be basic stuff - dice rolls, coin flips. I'm going to sell this separately for less money, or give it away for free. Those of you following me on twitter saw a very rudimentary screenshot and gave some good advice. But it only took me a matter of hours to get everything up and functioning; it was easy, fun, enjoyable.
The other project has the potential to make a lot more money, even if it's still modest, but I'm going to keep that one secret for now.
Writing
I know other people groan when they hear this, but I want to be a novelist. This is my dream job, and I think it's stupid to have a dream you won't even make steps towards. I'm going to be revising my 2007 NaNoWriMo novel into something worth publishing, then I'm going to get it published.
There's no point in telling me that it's difficult, or nigh-impossible, that it relies mostly on luck and knowing people. I'm not stupid. I read about what I care about, I follow the writer's blogs and twitters and I've got my 2009 Writer's Market sitting on the desk next to me as I write this. I know it's almost impossibly hard to get published, and that the publishing market is itself going down the tube fast.
I have faith in my work. I believe that what I'm writing -- what I have written, what I have in my head -- is worthy of other people's attention. I read through my stuff and I genuinely enjoy a lot of it. I cringe a lot, too, and wince and bite my lip at how awful some of it is. But I don't worry about this because it's the one thing I'm really, truly confident in my ability. So I'm going to write, and I'm going to try to go to more book signings and speeches and I'm going to do NaNoWriMo again, and when it's over I will have a novel and it will be published. If a traditional publisher won't talk to me then I will find alternate routes. In-between, I will rework my short stories -- the ones I have completed -- and I will get published in magazines. This is my goal, and my dream, and this is why I originally was going to quit, what I was going to dedicate myself to. I still am, but I'm tempering that optimism and certainty with time; time spent doing things more likely to make money, time spent broadening my horizons.
But you will see my name on the cover of a book. One day, and hopefully soon.
Dead Pixel Construction
When I first told my friend Billy that I had an idea for a game, I didn't really watch my tongue very closely. I told him exactly what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it, and how I figured I would market it and so on and so forth. What Billy did while I went back to work was gather a team of some 11 or so people -- developers and artists, but mostly artists -- to work on my design. He's talking with his dad about drafting up a legal contract. We've started divvying up the workload and working on the Developer Bible.
I've spent the least amount of time with this so far relative to my other endeavors, but this looks like it's going somewhere, too. There's too many people for it to outright fail, although I do think I'm going to have to bring in some of my own talent and that of my friends. This is still in the planning stages, but the plan is good. I've actually done revisions on what we want, talked about who's capable of what, and it looks like we're doing it, whether I actually want to or not.
An X-Box Live Arcade game. A shooter, to be specific, that incorporates resource management at a pretty rudimentary level to add variance to the levels and challenge. It all ties in to a story, of course, although we're being pretty silly with it.
Actually, I would say, of all the things I'm working on, this is the one I'm worried about the most. First off, it's the one with the greatest potential for some serious cash flow, and also the one that will likely have the highest cost in terms of both time and money. Second, although I'm confident in the design, in Billy's management skills, and in some of the artists, a lot of our team is basically uneducated -- this will be their first foray into C# development for nearly all of them. However -- to ward off the naysayers directly -- there is a decent amount of skill from other places, from Shader development to 3D math in C++. I do think that if anyone is willing to donate some of their time to this project that knows C# or game development, though, to talk to me.
I really like the design I've come up with, and feel that if this one makes it, it will make it big.
Web Development
I remain, as always, a devotee of the internet. I grew up here! This place is like my second home. To that end, I've been writing webpages for, geeze, 4, 5 years now? Each one has been better than the last, and I've learned more and more each iteration. So I plan on starting up contract work for building web pages.
Truth be told, this one relies on my ability to get the word out, and finding demand. I'm not so certain I can do that. I know friends that need pages and I'll gladly help them for cheap or free, but I don't want to develop pages for cheap or free -- I'd like to get paid for my effort.
Aegis
First off, if you don't know what this is, go here. There aren't too many pages right now so it won't take you so long.
Back? Good. Really, Aegis is a combination of a lot of things that I like and that I work on: a little bit of web page design, a little bit of programming, a little bit of writing. It's been hitting some bumps and it's not always easy to work with another person, but it's been illuminating, and I always feel like we're getting better, like we're finding our place. This webcomic was the start of my decision to get the fuck out of my miserable hate-filled job; when we first launched, even with only one page and a much more awful design and no forums and a broken shoutbox and lord knows how many other problems, I felt like I'd accomplished something daunting and serious and big.
Even though I'm not the artist, I am working very hard on my skills as a writer in terms of how a comic operates. Panel layouts, what fits in a page, what you WANT to do in a page; a webcomic is a very different beast from a short story or long fiction in terms of what you should be doing, what's good. I've made more than a few obvious mistakes so far (and thank you to Adam for pointing a lot of them out -- constructive criticism is my best friend), but it's also a skill that I can parlay into other writing gigs later.
Aegis is my foot into the door of webpage development, it's my foot into the door of comic writing, and it's something I genuinely enjoy working on, too. I don't know if it will ever have a really huge audience, because growth has been slow, but even if we keep our few readers I'll be pleased, because it's something creative that I did for others.
You will note that nearly all the things I've mentioned have at least a weak fiduciary component. This is intentional, this is by design. I am not a fool; I am not reducing my hours so I can play video games and fuck around, although I'm sure I'll do that. I'm reducing my hours because I believe, in the long run, I can make more money AND be happier developing for myself. My goal is to wean myself off of the traditional job mill and just throw myself bodily into anything and everything that I enjoy, and finding ways for others to enjoy it, and for those people to pay me. It's a strange mix of cutthroat and gregarious logic, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
I will be using this blog mostly to remain honest, to keep myself on track. I plan on updating at LEAST once a week with my updates regarding those five things I mentioned above. Because I'm a paranoid sumbitch I will most likely leave out details, and in the case of my fiction writing I will probably not post anything at all (except to say "finished this", "started this", "got accepted to that").
So that's where I am now. That's what I'm doing. This is where I'm going. I hope you all understand a little better now. I realize that what I'm doing has the serious potential for failure. What I hope you understand, though, is that I'm willing to risk everything for this. I hope that, instead of being fearful for my financial safety, you are looking forward to my creative growth.
To be honest? Right now, I'm a lot of both.
I demoted myself from a full-time salaried employee to a part-time employee.
Now, here's the thing. I realize that this upsets people, instinctually. Every person I've talked to has said, at some point, "Oh, Zach. Don't do that." There's pity in their voice, or worry, or fear. But that's not what this post is about; this isn't about my friends and family, nor about my own struggle with confidence, nervousness. I'm not here to tell you about what I did, but what I'm about to do.
There are five main projects on my plate. These are all personal and important to me; when I spend time on them I feel satisfied with my work, I feel happy and engaged. They are roughly, as follows:
Palm Pre Development
I've been discussing on-and-off with Andrew about working with him on a project; until we have something concrete to do, though, I've been working on this myself. There are two projects that I am personally working on and will continue to do solo; luckily, WebOS development with Mojo is so painfully simple I can juggle multiple projects easily.
The one I will tell you about is called Dungeon Tools. It's a niche market inside a niche market so I don't expect it to make much money, but I will -- eventually -- sell it. It's basically a simple app to manage players in a role-playing game. As I've outlined it, you've got a list of characters and tools. The user of the program keeps track of various stats of the characters -- initiative, saving throws, armor class, perception, that sort of thing. The user will be able to roll against specific stats (or using specific stats as a bonus) to see who saves versus an attack, for example.
The first use -- what got me thinking about this -- is initiative. Keeping track of initiative order is always always ALWAYS a pain in the ass. With Dungeon Tools, you can just press a single button and get an interactive list of everyone, their initiative rolls (done dynamically, of course), their speed mods -- all the information a gamer could want.
The tools will be basic stuff - dice rolls, coin flips. I'm going to sell this separately for less money, or give it away for free. Those of you following me on twitter saw a very rudimentary screenshot and gave some good advice. But it only took me a matter of hours to get everything up and functioning; it was easy, fun, enjoyable.
The other project has the potential to make a lot more money, even if it's still modest, but I'm going to keep that one secret for now.
Writing
I know other people groan when they hear this, but I want to be a novelist. This is my dream job, and I think it's stupid to have a dream you won't even make steps towards. I'm going to be revising my 2007 NaNoWriMo novel into something worth publishing, then I'm going to get it published.
There's no point in telling me that it's difficult, or nigh-impossible, that it relies mostly on luck and knowing people. I'm not stupid. I read about what I care about, I follow the writer's blogs and twitters and I've got my 2009 Writer's Market sitting on the desk next to me as I write this. I know it's almost impossibly hard to get published, and that the publishing market is itself going down the tube fast.
I have faith in my work. I believe that what I'm writing -- what I have written, what I have in my head -- is worthy of other people's attention. I read through my stuff and I genuinely enjoy a lot of it. I cringe a lot, too, and wince and bite my lip at how awful some of it is. But I don't worry about this because it's the one thing I'm really, truly confident in my ability. So I'm going to write, and I'm going to try to go to more book signings and speeches and I'm going to do NaNoWriMo again, and when it's over I will have a novel and it will be published. If a traditional publisher won't talk to me then I will find alternate routes. In-between, I will rework my short stories -- the ones I have completed -- and I will get published in magazines. This is my goal, and my dream, and this is why I originally was going to quit, what I was going to dedicate myself to. I still am, but I'm tempering that optimism and certainty with time; time spent doing things more likely to make money, time spent broadening my horizons.
But you will see my name on the cover of a book. One day, and hopefully soon.
Dead Pixel Construction
When I first told my friend Billy that I had an idea for a game, I didn't really watch my tongue very closely. I told him exactly what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it, and how I figured I would market it and so on and so forth. What Billy did while I went back to work was gather a team of some 11 or so people -- developers and artists, but mostly artists -- to work on my design. He's talking with his dad about drafting up a legal contract. We've started divvying up the workload and working on the Developer Bible.
I've spent the least amount of time with this so far relative to my other endeavors, but this looks like it's going somewhere, too. There's too many people for it to outright fail, although I do think I'm going to have to bring in some of my own talent and that of my friends. This is still in the planning stages, but the plan is good. I've actually done revisions on what we want, talked about who's capable of what, and it looks like we're doing it, whether I actually want to or not.
An X-Box Live Arcade game. A shooter, to be specific, that incorporates resource management at a pretty rudimentary level to add variance to the levels and challenge. It all ties in to a story, of course, although we're being pretty silly with it.
Actually, I would say, of all the things I'm working on, this is the one I'm worried about the most. First off, it's the one with the greatest potential for some serious cash flow, and also the one that will likely have the highest cost in terms of both time and money. Second, although I'm confident in the design, in Billy's management skills, and in some of the artists, a lot of our team is basically uneducated -- this will be their first foray into C# development for nearly all of them. However -- to ward off the naysayers directly -- there is a decent amount of skill from other places, from Shader development to 3D math in C++. I do think that if anyone is willing to donate some of their time to this project that knows C# or game development, though, to talk to me.
I really like the design I've come up with, and feel that if this one makes it, it will make it big.
Web Development
I remain, as always, a devotee of the internet. I grew up here! This place is like my second home. To that end, I've been writing webpages for, geeze, 4, 5 years now? Each one has been better than the last, and I've learned more and more each iteration. So I plan on starting up contract work for building web pages.
Truth be told, this one relies on my ability to get the word out, and finding demand. I'm not so certain I can do that. I know friends that need pages and I'll gladly help them for cheap or free, but I don't want to develop pages for cheap or free -- I'd like to get paid for my effort.
Aegis
First off, if you don't know what this is, go here. There aren't too many pages right now so it won't take you so long.
Back? Good. Really, Aegis is a combination of a lot of things that I like and that I work on: a little bit of web page design, a little bit of programming, a little bit of writing. It's been hitting some bumps and it's not always easy to work with another person, but it's been illuminating, and I always feel like we're getting better, like we're finding our place. This webcomic was the start of my decision to get the fuck out of my miserable hate-filled job; when we first launched, even with only one page and a much more awful design and no forums and a broken shoutbox and lord knows how many other problems, I felt like I'd accomplished something daunting and serious and big.
Even though I'm not the artist, I am working very hard on my skills as a writer in terms of how a comic operates. Panel layouts, what fits in a page, what you WANT to do in a page; a webcomic is a very different beast from a short story or long fiction in terms of what you should be doing, what's good. I've made more than a few obvious mistakes so far (and thank you to Adam for pointing a lot of them out -- constructive criticism is my best friend), but it's also a skill that I can parlay into other writing gigs later.
Aegis is my foot into the door of webpage development, it's my foot into the door of comic writing, and it's something I genuinely enjoy working on, too. I don't know if it will ever have a really huge audience, because growth has been slow, but even if we keep our few readers I'll be pleased, because it's something creative that I did for others.
You will note that nearly all the things I've mentioned have at least a weak fiduciary component. This is intentional, this is by design. I am not a fool; I am not reducing my hours so I can play video games and fuck around, although I'm sure I'll do that. I'm reducing my hours because I believe, in the long run, I can make more money AND be happier developing for myself. My goal is to wean myself off of the traditional job mill and just throw myself bodily into anything and everything that I enjoy, and finding ways for others to enjoy it, and for those people to pay me. It's a strange mix of cutthroat and gregarious logic, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
I will be using this blog mostly to remain honest, to keep myself on track. I plan on updating at LEAST once a week with my updates regarding those five things I mentioned above. Because I'm a paranoid sumbitch I will most likely leave out details, and in the case of my fiction writing I will probably not post anything at all (except to say "finished this", "started this", "got accepted to that").
So that's where I am now. That's what I'm doing. This is where I'm going. I hope you all understand a little better now. I realize that what I'm doing has the serious potential for failure. What I hope you understand, though, is that I'm willing to risk everything for this. I hope that, instead of being fearful for my financial safety, you are looking forward to my creative growth.
To be honest? Right now, I'm a lot of both.