This question came up for me recently while playing Magic: the Gathering on their online client, Arena. The short version of this is that, because of the meta environment of what decks are most powerful and get played most often, it causes the meta game to have very little room for innovation. This leads to a lot of frustration for me and even to me questioning if I even enjoy playing the game anymore.
It’s a feeling I’ve struggled with in regards to writing. This mostly relates to how I thought about–or really, fantasized–what would happen when I published a book.
Writing was supposed to be my way out of the 9-5. I was going to publish a book and be able to quit my job and write full time. It didn’t matter that I knew, intellectually, that it doesn’t work like that 99.99% of the time. I’m Sean Motherfucking Davis*. It was going to happen for me.
Well, it didn’t. And I got all depressed about it.
That’s an oversimplification, of course. But the detailed version is kind of boring and more than a bit maudlin.
When I came back to writing again last year after a roughly ten year hiatus, I knew I needed to clarify my intention. I had been trying so many angles to get myself motivated to write again and nothing had worked. So I asked myself a question that I hadn’t asked myself before:
Why?
I’ve built a comfortable life for myself, one that doesn’t include writing, for the most part. And the world has pretty conclusively proven that it can get along without me or my stories.
So, why?
And after a lot of introspection, I decided that it was because I still like stories. And I think that I can tell a good story.
So that’s all I want to do now: tell a good story.
And it’s that clarification of intention that has allowed me to (mostly) silence my inner critic while I am writing, which has been the biggest barrier for the last ten years.
-/-
*yes, this is what the M stands for.
The Chimerical Dark 