Okay. This is all a little difficult.

For years you’ve kind of thought you’re one thing, and then you discover you’re another. You’ve got to understand, it’s a fundamental change of identity. When someone says that they are a writer, or someone else says they think you should be a writer you tend to think of that as an endorsement of the role of novelist.

I mean, you just do. Journalist is a writer but it’s specific, writer just means writer, of stuff. If you’re a scriptwriter, a playwright or whatever you’re a writer but you’ve been qualified.

I think all writers have a bit of a footprint in regards to this. I can write scripts, they seem to flow out of me quite easily, more easily than novel-esque prose anyhow. If you were to read Hidden Predators, Dangerous Prey (one of my novels available in the shop, yadda, yadda… incidentally I think it’s a bit of a ropey effort, it’s like a stopgap if you are jonesing for a novel hit, I happen not to have written anything new and at last you turn to that darkest part of the cupboard…) then you would probably be able to see how much it was written as a long and ungainly screenplay before being turned into a novel.

See?

I can do scripts.

I’ve written about seven or eight novels, so I guess that makes me a capable novelist.

I have four games in draft.

I have written reviews and I am pretty good as a reviewer apparently, I used to get good ratings as a zoetrope reviewer anyway.

I don’t like short stories (although fairy tales are something else).

I have never written a piece of news reporting, or any other sort of reportage. Well, not since school anyhow.

The only non-fiction pieces I have ever written are my writing tips.

The thing about this whole game designer revelation I had is that being a designer of games is a complex business. It involves fiction generation skills and a passion for the essentially tedious business of ruleset design. Since becoming a systems developer I have learned a lot about algorithmic thinking. Since becoming a gamer I have learned a great deal about balance issues, atmosphere, things that contribute to a good game.

I like reading. I like sci-fi. I like movies. I like comics. I like stories. I love games.

I think that’s what I wasn’t seeing. My favourite form of passive entertainment bar none is the well written point and click adventure (actually these tend to be authored by programmers with writing as a hobby, I don’t think I’ve ever actually played a well written point and click adventure in the structural sense). I like these interactive experiences. I would rather play a new game than atch a new movie. I find it very difficult to sit down and read because my brain goes off half-cocked whilst trying to plough through the prose, unless it really draws me in, which it does less as I get older.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not going to stop writing novels. I enjoy that process, it’s awesome. But I might have to close the reviewer’s doors forever. The only place I can really sit down and read is the bus (or train, or plane) and until I can get a PDF reader in my hand for an affordable amount of money that isn’t going to happen.

Besides, as my moribund and recently deleted Shelfari account can attest I just don’t read enough novels to be an active participant in a novelist’s world. I write novels, but I’m not a novelist.

Sit me down with someone to discuss game mechanics however and watch me go.

In the spirit of acknowledging this change in thinking the default category on posts shall hence forth be gaming. I know there’s about, er, 20 ish of you out there who check up on the site from time to time (Analytics just told me that I have had visitors from the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent this month… anyone care to explain? Spammers? Or genuine visitors?). Those regular readers among you may be wondering if this change is going to make the blog irrelevant to you.

I have genuinely no idea why anyone reads this thing you know. No idea. It’s not a popularity contest it’s a record I write so people can, er…

Erm… you know something, I don’t really know why I write this thing. If it was intended as a publicity tool for my novels it’s failed miserably. 2009 is going to be a huge year for my output. Maybe I’ll have a better idea why this is here by the end of next year. If I don’t then it might be time to retire the site.

I would like to encourage people to talk to me via the site so I have tweaked the comment leaving apparatus. You still need my approval to have a comment posted but this is merely because so much spam monster stuff would get through otherwise. As it is my little Captcha device coupled with the huge waste of time posting spam is on a blog where the admin kills it before it sees light of day seems to put spammers and bots off comprehensively enough.

So, now I am throwing the floodgates open. What ARE you doing here? What possesses you to breeze by and look me up? If it is my patchy and unreliable former services as a POD reviewer then you should move along.

I should mention. And I would love to go into this in more depth but I now know time is simply not going to allow, that the follow up to the book I reviewed by the wonderful writer and cymruphile GR Grove is just as gripping and well written as ever, when I get reading time I am faithfully plodding through this PDF. I am up to about page 180 or somewhere abouts. I had already decided to give it a rave but I like to finish things before I review and that puts me at about one review every three months at present.

To anyone who has subsequently submitted something to me for review I will try to read your pieces as time allows, but you’re probably all sick of waiting for me by now.

This is a shame because unless something is truly horrible I enjoy reading it. But I am a content producer not a content reviewer and there are never enough hours in the day. I have to regularly make a choice between reviewing content or producing it and producing it always wins.

If you are here for another reason however, stick around. I intend to continue my new tips series, then combine the two series into a single volume on how the Monkey thinks someone should set about writing a novel, if that’s the kind of thing you’re into.

Also my gaming posts are liable to drop in narrative, contextual and other pieces of sourcebook advice for other types of writers. A lot of this post has been about which box a writer sees themselves fitting into. But I also talked about writers having a footprint. The latter point means that any writer should, at some point, find something in another writer’s journal that is of interest or inspiration.

Personally I think some of my most interesting posts have been about storytelling through games. It’s quite a new topic, seeing as you either need a computer or a group of role players who don’t just want to stab and bludgeon their way through dungeons to take part in it. For the novelists among you, however, I would have thought that all my more controversial thoughts about plot structure and so on came in that handful of posts. Like the one about stories in games where I asserted that novels set up their entire worlds around their protagonist to make the events happen. I thought that was a dodgy call but no one disagreed (or supported) the statement.

I’d like to try in the magic 2009 to get some comments going on here. I hope my new role as a game writer helps that happen.

For now… time to wash up, then I have to tidy a fairy story before cooking dinner. Have a nice Saturday everyone.