Category: blog

pages upon pages

Posted on By Wil

We begin production on Monday, and I’m in the final lap of the writing marathon this week.

Yesterday, I wrote a whole bunch of stuff, until I got to a point where I just had to walk away, because I wasn’t getting anything useful out of my brains. This was really difficult for me to do, because I feel like I need another two weeks of work time between today and Monday.

Today, I went back to the stuff I wrote yesterday, knowing that I had to make lots of cuts for both time and budget. I honestly wasn’t sure where I was going to make those cuts, until I went through and just murdered some things that I liked, but thought didn’t need to be there.

Like magic, the whole piece came together and became something I love. That stuff I cut? I don’t miss it, and I can’t imagine that it was ever there…

…except I can imagine that it was there, because it needed to be there so I could write the stuff that I ended up keeping. It’s sort of like building a scaffolding in Minecraft, to make it possible to build the thing you really want to build, then tearing it down (or burning it down, if you make it out of wood around a stone structure, which is really neat).

So this is another thing that goes into my writer’s toolbox: permission to write and write and just keep writing, and not judge or edit along the way until the draft is finished. Because I may think that something is crap and needs to go, and maybe it is and does, but it needs to be there at this moment so I can find the good stuff.

so i throw the windows wide

Posted on By Wil

I’ve been beating myself up a little bit for not putting something new here every day, and for missing my self-imposed-but-flexible Monday deadline for Radio Free Burrito. I have a pretty great life! Why can’t I just do these simple things?

Well, if those were the only things I was doing, I would be justified in beating myself up. But those aren’t the only things I’m doing. I’m working my face off to get the RPG show up and running as production draws terrifyingly close (we have our actors coming in on Monday to create their characters! Already! I’m not in a panic! YOU’RE in a panic!)

But it’s not just the RPG show (which is about to be titled, officially) that’s making demands on me, creatively and emotionally. I’ve had to travel — well, that’s not right. I’ve had the privilege of traveling to some neat places to do some really neat things with some really neat people (fun fact: Sir Baldy hated it when we said “neat” in the old days. He never explained why. I said it a lot to troll him. It worked). I’ve had a bunch of meetings with really fancy people for some really fancy gigs. I’ve been doing a ton of work that I can’t talk about because of NDA.

I started to get anxiety just writing all of that. Sheesh.

So I give myself permission to accept that my creative output isn’t going to be writing stories and telling stories and adding something new to my blog every day. I give myself permission to miss a deadline on a podcast, because I’m making it for my own entertainment and hopefully some people come along for the ride. I mean, it’s free and everything.

One of the reasons I can give myself a little bit of a break was the realization, this morning while I was waiting for my coffee to brew, that I have told tons of stories and written hundreds of thousands of words here in my blog for over ten years, almost every day. That’s a really long time, on a really aggressive schedule, to create stuff. So if my creative energy is pointed away from my blog for a little bit, that’s okay. This isn’t a job. This is … well, it’s a lot of things, but it isn’t a job.

Help me out, here, Internet: what is this, again?

we have fun

Posted on By Wil

I’m working, I swear. I’m not goofing off and doing dumb things with my friends on Twitter…

Screen Shot 2015-03-16 at 17.10.58

… well, except for when I am.

UPDATE: It’s good to be easily amused.

Screen Shot 2015-03-16 at 17.24.47 Screen Shot 2015-03-16 at 17.25.00

It turns out that there’s a lot happening today.

Posted on By Wil

First up, this is happening:

Wil Wheaton Big Bang Theory Season 8

We also have a new episode of Tabletop out today, and it’s one of my favorites of the season.

And after waiting almost a year to be able to talk about it, Nintendo of America has announced that I play the voice of Abraham Lincoln in their insanely awesome 3DS title, Code Name STEAM.

I am extremely proud of this game, and I can’t wait to play it. It’s got a great balance of humor and strategy, and there may be some awesomely weird stuff in it, too … you can confirm it for yourself with the trailer:

on technology and nephews…

Posted on By Wil

My godson, Shane, is pretty good at technology — especially for a 2 year-old.

He’s very good, for example, at picking up my sister’s phone, finding my picture, and tapping it to call me. A typical call goes like this:

Me: Hello?

Shane: giggling

Me: Shane? Is that you?

Shane: Blah blah squeal BLAH!

Me: That’s really interesting. Well, let me tell you about my day…

Shane: maniacal laughter hangs up

On longer calls, he’ll babble on and on about stuff, and then my sister will pick up the phone to tell me how he’s been walking around the house and the yard, pointing at things and telling me about them. I guess he is really into this tree in their backyard, and he talks to me about it all the time. (If I’m being honest, from my end of the line he’s about as excited about the tree as he is about their cat, or his toy cars, or this Batman mask he likes to wear.)

So he’s recently learned how to use Skype to talk to me, and this weekend, he introduced me to a new game that he likes to play. I don’t think he named it, but I call it “Run Around The House With Uncle Wil On Mom’s iPad, Put Him On The Floor In The Hallway, Then Run Away Laughing.”

Witness:Skyping _with_ShaneIt’s a pretty fun game for him, and I’m not sure what the rules are, but I think he’s winning.

Also? It’s a little bit of a mindfuck that he’s growing up in a world where being able to see me on a thing he holds in his hands while we talk to each other is so normal and pedestrian, he can literally put it/me on the ground and RUN AWAY from it.