Sandy's Soapbox

"Hey, let's write a book!" "Want to be a co-author?" Everyone wants their name up in lights. Everyone wants to be a famous published author. Few want to actually write non-fiction, though. Non-fiction has to be rooted in facts, has to make a story interesting and accessible, and has to be correct. It lacks the cocktail party charm of being a novelist or fiction writer, and often gets confused with technical writing or creating documentation. Yet is is essential for conveying both game and real world concepts and ideas.

In both my game writer hat and my science writing hat, I run into the same problem. Someone who hasn't published has a cool topic they wish to write about. They have the idea, the design, the notes, often pretty pictures. They aren't just "an idea guy" but the real thing, the fully created vision.

But the creator is not guaranteed to be a writer. Creators are builders-- a game designer, a game engineer. They create awesome games then run them successfully. Similarly, in science writing, they are an engineer or scientists, who did a really cool build/experiment and documented it. They wish to have their work reach the masses.

In essence, they are a Subject Matter Expert (SME). If anything comes of their work, they should and must be cited, acknowledged, referenced. It is indeed their work. But the actual writing is its own entity. Often, they are not a co-writer, even if they are the creator. SMEs get to provide facts then go back to building cool stuff, co-authorship is a PITA with lots of work.

This is independent of quality. I am not assessing whether someone is a good or bad writer. I am stating that the act of writing for dissemination to others is a skill set and time sink that is completely separate from the skill set requires to (a) create and (b) document the creation. A blueprint or schematic won't tell an outsider what is going on. Only a disseminator, a writer, a populist, an interviewer-- in short, a media person-- can handle that. While anyone can be a media person, taking up that role (multiclassing, in effect) has to be a conscious choice. Like any choice, it has its tradeoffs.

When a person decides to write or publish, they are taking on a new job, past that of creation. It's a job just like any other, and requires you decide if that's what you want to spend your time on. Time spent writing is unfortunately time away from building or creating. Time is the one resource we haven't yet figured out how to generate extra. I'm weird and I like writing, but it's not a taste for everyone. One has to be crazy, for example, to write every month, for no money, for eighteen years on rpg.net.

If you want to write, by all means do so. If you want to be published, consider whether you want to actually write, or if you want to merely find a writer to translate your great project into a more palatable form. If life is a game, choose the role you want, and only choose the Writer class if it gets you to your treasured goal.