Preemptive Retaliation

So I’ve recently completed Elden Ring which is ringing the bell on a curious obsession I’ve had over the last three months. I’ve talked about Dark Souls here before and how it made me feel, so I wasn’t too keen on Elden Ring when it first came out. In fact, I was a bit snobbish about it. I turned my nose up at the high scores and accolades, quite confident that the game ‘wasn’t for me’ and reveling in that. Oh, you like the multi-award winning Elden Ring? Oh that’s good for you. No, no, it’s not for me.

One sale and ninety five hours later – oh. Oh I guess it is for me.

But this isn’t a post about Elden Ring and its well crafted combat. It isn’t about it’s lush and rewarding open world, or its cryptic yet fascinating lore. Or about me enjoying it. This post is about writing – or the lack thereof.

Quite a few things have happened in the past two years. Since Jack was born I’ve finished a novel, moved jobs, moved house, flirted with a nervous breakdown… and now that I’ve written all that out I realise it doesn’t sound like a lot, but by god it was quite a lot at the various times they were all happening, with occasional overlaps. Still, with all this happening, it’s been a good excuse to let a lot of other things not happen. Namely writing.

I got some feedback from my beta-readers. Two of them in particular – the rest had their own lives get in the way. They both had problems with the title which makes a lot of sense. I mean, it was called Sausage Factory, and didn’t include any factories or sausages, and no homosexual production lines which is what my beta readers expected from such a title. So the title’s been changed to something a bit more fitting; The Making Of which just feels so nice I don’t know why I didn’t think about it before. There were more comments here and there – they didn’t understand why this happened, it was strange when that happened – but mostly, all in all, they liked it. They told me they liked my novel.

Since then I’ve been trying my best to accept that. My friends liked the novel I wrote. They aren’t just being nice to me. They aren’t trying to trick me. My friends liked the novel I wrote. My friends liked the novel I wrote.

So I took to the draft once more. I ran through it with a pen and keyboard and hammered out what I consider to be the almost-final draft. I say almost because I haven’t done anything with it yet. I edited it, refined it, and then… left it. It’s in a drawer. If I’m being kind to myself I’ll say it’s percolating, maturing. If I’m being honest, it’s stagnating. It’s cowering in the darkness, afraid of real criticism (say it again Joe – your friends liked the novel you wrote).

I’ve had the idea for a new novel since then. Hell, I’ve even written some of it. It’s a novel spurned by a conversation I had with a friend about sixteen years ago – standing in the hallway of a busy, sticky house party, spilling our drink over the floor as we espoused the Eternal Truths that only eighteen year olds knew. I told this friend that we saw each other so infrequently, paths crossing at parties mostly, that all we saw were snapshots. We saw a photograph of each other, and each time was a new photograph. The more photos you had of a person the bigger the album you created, the more you knew about the person. And for some reason, for years and years, that thoughy has always stuck with me. So I’m thinking about a novel around that idea.

But I haven’t written on it in about six months. Because of a house move, and a job move, and a nervous breakdown which I’m not going to talk about.

But I did play Elden Ring. I played ninety-five hours of it. It has super satisfying combat. When you explore the world there’s a mixture of danger and discovery which is incredibly addicting. I found myself delving into dungeons and areas that I had no business being in only to find a weapon or piece of armor that I didn’t even need, just because I really enjoyed seeing that world and exploring it. There was enough story breadcrumbed all over the place that I could pick up what I needed to know, but I delved right into the lore with videos and articles, and it made me appreciate it all the more. I worked in that game, honing my skill and strategy to the point where I beat every major boss in the game. I had so much fun with it. So many interesting times.

But I didn’t write in those times. Which means it was automatically a waste. Of course.