I have scheduled this post to be published while I am traveling. So, there’s no deep content today; this is just a quick update on what is coming on this screen in the next few weeks. Now that I have a sabbatical, I am finally working through many writing projects I had postponed. I realized that while I enjoy writing, I wouldn't say I like two things: how long it takes from draft to reader and how much posing there is in academic writing. We too often put too perfect texts out there, even if they are pre-prints. This does not reflect how messy writing is, how much I go back and forth in presenting ideas, how much I backtrack and change my mind and only manage to nail an idea through constant layers of terrible writing. As a junior scholar, I envied many authors who apparently could churn the cleverest, most engaging text with apparent effortless cadence.
But that’s because we all hide the process. Sometimes, we hide it to ourselves; sometimes, we are good and share it with our friends and colleagues. But the process is always somewhat hidden. So now that I am writing a roguelike book, I will do something different. In the next three or four weeks, I will post the progress of the works for the chapters dedicated to Spelunky, Slay the Spire, and Hades. These will be broken chapters, half-baked ideas and intuitions, and proper works in progress. I will do this for three reasons: first, to get feedback and pushback on my ideas. Second, to show other (academic) writers what early work looks like. And third, to force myself to write them. The texts will be edited for grammar but will not have the classic academic apparatus nor the full content of the final chapter. I commit to publishing the first draft that I finish, not a revised version. They will not be pretty, and they will be wrong. But they will be progress, and that is enough for me. |