Write When You Can
On consistency, sustainability, and making the game… the game
As you may or may not have known from the last post… I took a break over spring break with the fam. And surprisingly at times felt guilty about it, but also felt lighter for it. Both things were true at the same time. I needed balance to recharge. Inspiration to feed creativity. And sleep so my body wouldn’t yell at me anymore.
You set expectations for yourself to stick to the schedule. Be consistent, post regularly, and you’ll find your audience and your niche of people who value what you’re doing. And then you miss a week and the whole thing goes to $h1t.
Waiting... it’s in your head
The guilt is real because the people who read this are real. People subscribed to this newsletter. They might actually be waiting for the next post. That’s not some made-up pressure... someone’s there on the other end.
But I’m not sure how true that really is. I think about my own reading habits on here. There are so many writers on here that I want to read, and I don’t get to most of them until days later, sometimes weeks. Two or three posts might go by before I actually open one up. So is it really the same feeling as an unanswered email sitting in your inbox? There’s pressure on you to reply because someone’s waiting. But even though someone is on the other end, are they clicking refresh, refresh, refresh until they see your response? That’s how I imagine it anyway in my head.
I keep coming back to this thing about deleting side projects. About scoping things down so you can focus on what actually matters. Turns out the hardest thing to scope down is your own expectations for yourself. Seems cutting a project off a list is easy compared to giving yourself permission to just... not post this week. There’s so much more pressure…
why?
I broke the streak right after break. I felt good scheduling posts and letting it do its thing. But then when I got back there was that pressure again. So I let that get to me. Losing that streak of consistency doesn’t feel good, especially when you’ve set yourself a goal. But after some thought, focus and clarity, I won’t let that snowball into quitting.
Write when you can.
That’s the mantra I’m trying to sit with. Not as a way to dismiss the people reading this. But as a way to keep the guilt from running the show.
The Slow Burn
Building an audience takes a long time. Finding your crew, your niche, the people who actually care about what you’re making... there’s no shortcut for that. It’s a slow burn. And if you’re trying to do it while also making a game, teaching, staying healthy, and being present for your family, something has to give sometimes. The trick is making sure it’s the right something.
Having a plan helps. Getting clear on your priorities is what lets you make those calls... what to cut, what to push down for later, what to protect. Without that clarity, everything feels equally urgent and you just spin. But also think far ahead. Not just what next week looks like, but next month, next year. And if you can bring clarity into what it looks like years from now... that’s the ultimate motivation to keep doing what you’re doing.
It Doesn’t Have to Be Suffering
I recently rewatched Surviving Indie, the documentary about the brutal side of indie game development. Sleeping on couches. Living with parents. Going broke. Asking friends for help. All the stuff we tend to gloss over when we romanticize the indie life.
Those stories are real. I don’t want to minimize them. But my takeaway isn’t that suffering is the price of admission.
I think gamedev can be sustainable. Even enjoyable. It just takes work to get there... building the discipline, establishing the practice, making deliberate choices about what you take on and what you don’t. That foundation doesn’t appear overnight.
What I do know is that every turning point in my career came out of discomfort. Not suffering, exactly, but that uneasy feeling where you’re not sure if you’re onto something or just lost. Every time though, it led to something better. You get a moment to pause, re-evaluate where your priorities actually are. And from there the path gets clearer.
So where does that leave me right now? The game1. That’s the priority. Everything else... this newsletter, YouTube, all of it... funnels toward making this game real.. Yes. Is it too much… Yes. Does it take more time away from building… probably yes. So maybe it just has to wait a bit while you take care of the important stuff. Make making the game the game. I have to read and write that one more time… Make making the game the game…
Write when you can.
Focus on the thing that moves you forward.
Let the others wait…
no pretty pictures in this post, but much to show… soon.
Thank you. totally with you on the notes. My drafts are a brain dump throughout the week and I have many random drafts floating around. Mostly yo get thoughts down on paper. Who knows if they'll ever become actual posts or not.
We are working on a sort of survival crafting exploration game. More to come in the weeks. Thanks for the sub.
On the YouTube. That was an experiment for sure. Kept up with it for 5 mo but like many got burned from posting and editing. It was meant to be a low entry YT channel with sketching first then transition into dev logs. I learned a lot from it but also learned it takes a lot of time. I sketch for fun since I spend most of my time on the computer and 3D, I try to sketch when i can to practice some of that 2D muscles.
Well said or... well written. 🙂 The standards we set for our selves are much more harsher than we would set for others.
On substack, I found that writing good notes still help a lot for the times and days when you cannot invest the time into a full article.
Also, on what type of game are you working with? Checking (subbed :P) your youtube... is it something with those painterly aesthetics? 😃