This is a companion piece to Josh’s blog about curating ideas. My method of curation is slightly different to his; but I wanted to talk first about my process getting from a game idea to a first draft.
Full disclosure… I am an incorrigible consumer of productivity systems and books about ‘getting creative work done’. I love reading about how other people ‘get shit done’ so I can constantly refine my own methods. If there is a book about creative productivity, then the chances are, I’ve got it. Not all systems work for me (not all systems work at all!) but there are two things that I use pretty much constantly to support me in getting from idea to first draft.
Firstly, I keep a bullet journal. I’ve been doing it for a couple of years now and it is really valuable to me. I don’t have one of those pretty artful bullet journals that look adorable and perfect. I have a boring A5 notebook and a couple of pens that are comfortable to write with and I scribble in it. But I use it every single day. And I put everything in it: I log my goals, lists of the games I want to write, plans for my kids birthday parties or the vegetable garden, design notes, daily gratitudes, I sketch out rough weekly diary spreads, long lists of things to do and notes on my life. I put it all in one book where I can regularly reflect on it. I mix up all my game notes, with everything else and I organise it using the bullet journal method.
This means that I have one physical book that is with me all the time; a book I’m checking and reviewing several times a day. Games and ideas don’t get shoved in a folder and forgotten about – as I leaf through my book they are there reminding me and poking at me to get them written. Those ideas sit in the middle of the sprawl of my life allowing me to make connections I would never have otherwise seen. The bullet journal system gives me confidence that nothing will be forgotten, and that in turn allows my brain precious breathing space.
If you’ve been put off bullet journalling because you can’t or don’t want to spend hours drawing instagram-worthy spreads then do not fear! That isn’t the core of bullet journalling and ignore all that stuff and just write in a scrappy ballpoint pen.
Why not use something like Evernote or some app? On a personal level I love the tactile nature of a physical book. I love that it is dog-eared, covered in scribbles and notes and stickers and that it looks used. I enjoy having a tangible artifact of my life in that way.
But there are advantages to me outside this much more personal preference. The main one is that there are no distractions. It is just me and the paper. There are no email alerts, no temptations to check social media and no getting sucked into a rabbit hole of TV tropes or and then forgetting why I’m here. It is a clean room for me to sketch out ideas and log the little pieces of insight as they strike me.
But that is only half the story.
Getting from that book to a first draft is a different beast entirely, it is something that requires time and time is hard for many of us. This is where I will give my one and only recommendation for a creative, productivity book – ‘Growing Gills by Jessica Abel’. This book has lots of really good insights and support but one killer technique was life changing for me.
The technique is this: for 2 weeks you write down everything you do in a day in 15 min increments. It sounds nightmarish, I know. But I honestly did that. I have a job, two kids and various other commitments and I did my two weeks of logging every 15 mins. This process forced me to confront a couple of things. First, I ended up with hard data on where I spent your time and when it was being spent. I knew roughly how much much tv watching and internet surfing I was doing but after two weeks I knew precisely. No hiding. But I also knew that the 10 mins I spent standing at a bus stop checking my phone on a Thursday morning couldn’t really have been used any other way. But the clear block of 2 hours I spent surfing the internet on a Friday evening could have been spent writing.
This gets you to the second thing.
Where do I really want to spend the precious time I have?
As I said before, I have a job, two kids, hobbies and a vegetable garden. Up until about 6 months ago I had precious little writing time. So, I got really clear on my priorities. Sometimes I really did need do nothing but watch You Tube and surf Pinterest for an evening. Maybe I was exhausted, maybe my mental health wasn’t that great and I needed to check out for a bit. But other times I decided that I wanted to write more than I needed to check out. I could see from the data where I had timeslots that I could spend on writing and then I wrote a date and a time in my diary (which is in my bullet journal) and treated it like any other appointment.
So that is what I do. I put time aside for writing and make it a priority – but I make it a priority based on having a really deep understanding of my habits, my schedule, my needs and desires. In the early days that time slot was only 1 or 2 hours a week (remember I have young kids!) but that 1 hour a week was a lot better than the 8 potential hours a week that never happened for me.
I guess this is a pretty boring blog post. It is like when people ask ‘how did you get fit’ and the answer is – I exercised a bit and ate more vegetables.
How I turn an idea into a game is really boring – I write down all my ideas in my journal (the same one I write everything else in), I organise my journal so it is easy to find information again. Then I’m ruthlessly honest with myself about what time I can put aside for writing and I diarise it as an appointment in my journal. Then I turn up with my journal and my laptop and I do the writing. I do it even if I’d rather knit and watch Netflix. I do it whether or not I feel inspired.
And then I end up with a first draft ready for lots of shredding and rewriting.
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