Adventure writing

[DungeonKeeperUK]

By juggling 2-3 projects at a time, and writing full-time (averaging 6-8 hours a day, 5 days a week), I'm able to pull down a living wage. However, budgeting becomes an issue, because as a freelancer, you're most likely getting your money in payments that arrive 2 months or so between checks.

Speaking as a freelancer with a "day job" and seems to be writing every hour the gods send, do you limit yourself to a "normal" sworking week, as the 7 hours a say, 5 days a week, or find yourself more often than not working more than this???

So, given all of this, I'm sure you can see how we react when people tell us how great it must be to "play games for a living."

hehehe, know what you mean, its a lot harder tehna it may seem to write for something you love, but still great to be able to to dit..

 

[Fiery James]

Mearls does rock. On toast, even..... but actually, there are several full-time freelancers in the industry: Matt Forbeck, myself, a few others.

Sorry GMS - didn't mean to suggest that there aren't others making a living - although I think we could all name the ones that are. For some reason, I was thinking strictly d20 - and though Mearls has done work for other systems, he's pretty much exclusively d20 right now.

You and Matt and a few others have done so much other stuff that I couldn't see you with my blinders on!

- James

 

[mearls]

By the way, I think that in your case, Mike, you're at a point where your by-line has value.

Thanks, I appreciate the sentiment. I've only been writing for about 18 months now, and it's good to see that my name is getting out there. My interview in Dungeon was a big step forward for me, and I'm starting to see it pay off in increased work rates.

Honestly, I feel weird describing RPG design as a "job." When you get to do something you love for a livable wage, it doesn't feel like work at all. How many other people get to take miniatures painting breaks at work? =)

 

[mearls]

As far as I know, Mearls is probably the only freelancer in the d20 market who could even attempt to turn it into a full-time job. That's 'cause he rocks!

It's worth pointing out that without the guys at FDP, I wouldn't ever had the chance to make my first big step from dabbler to full-time game engineer. They stepped right in and gave me plenty of work early on in my career, a big leap of faith on their part. You can be the best designer in the world, but if you don't find a good publisher to work with, you'll never find an audience.

Thanks, guys!

 

[mearls]

Speaking as a freelancer with a "day job" and seems to be writing every hour the gods send, do you limit yourself to a "normal" sworking week, as the 7 hours a say, 5 days a week, or find yourself more often than not working more than this???

I keep it very flexible schedule. It's one of the advantages of working freelance. My typical day might look like this:

9 AM: Wake up, breakfast, shower.
10 AM - 11 AM: Surf web, try to keep up with email, generally failing to.
12 PM - 1 PM: Write 1000 words.
1 PM - 3 PM: Go out for a drive, shopping at the local gamestore, bookstore, or play videogames, paint miniatures.
3 PM: Lunch.
4 - 6 PM: Write 1000 words, watch Sportscenter.
7 - 8 PM: Seinfeld and Simpsons break.
8 PM - midnight: Write 2000 - 3000 words, usually while watching basketball.

If I'm gaming that night (Sundays and Thursdays) I skip my 1 - 3 break to write more.

I work weekends, too, if I have enough projects to work on. Generally, I take 1 day off for each 3 days of work.

During all this time, too, I take notes on future projects, makes plans for proposals, and juggle other minutia.

 

[DungeonKeeperUK]

9 AM: Wake up, breakfast, shower.
10 AM - 11 AM: Surf web, try to keep up with email, generally failing to.
12 PM - 1 PM: Write 1000 words.
1 PM - 3 PM: Go out for a drive, shopping at the local gamestore, bookstore, or play videogames, paint miniatures.
3 PM: Lunch.
4 - 6 PM: Write 1000 words, watch Sportscenter.
7 - 8 PM: Seinfeld and Simpsons break.
8 PM - midnight: Write 2000 - 3000 words, usually while watching basketball.

Nice working day then..
Mine tends to be...
7:30AM Wake up, shower
8:30AM-5:30pm Into work, slog my guts out for big corporate company for not an ounce of gratitude... (But also get a chacne to check the boards.. ) with half hour lunchbreak
6:30pm Get home, get changed, get food
7:00pm Check mails and web out
7:45pm-1amish Write 1000-5000 words dependent on research etc for the writing....
1am collapse.. go to bed..
lol

Once I get my debts paid off and hopefully more name out a bit more I hope to leave my day job, but I'll probably be retired by then anyway..

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

That's not bad, Mike... by all your estimates you're making over $20 an hour.

And working from home doing it.

I could live with that.


Wulf

 

[mearls]

That's not bad, Mike... by all your estimates you're making over $20 an hour.

And working from home doing it.

I could live with that.

Well, I really only covered the *good* parts. =)

The tricky stuff has nothing to do with the actual writing or design, or even the daily routine. That's the good stuff. The parts of RPG writing that I don't like (and that pretty much kill it as a career choice for me) are all things that occur outside of or tangentially to the writing:

* There's only so much I want to write before it's time to move on. I have plenty of ideas for books, but there's going to come a time when I feel that I have nothing more of substance to contribute to the game. At that point, it'll be time to hang it up. I reached that point with a couple games I used to work on. This is pretty much the big issue for me. I don't want to design games because I have to; I want to do it because I want to. Since d20 is so new, there's plenty of space to explore with the system. But that won't last forever.

* Politics are very, very important in freelance writing for long-term success. You need to have "ins" to get more work. I'm lucky in that there's 3 or 4 companies that turn to me a lot to do writing, but almost all of them are relatively new on the publishing scene. There's a lot of cliques and politics in the industry. I've received emails from people threatening to derail my "career". You know the saying, "campus politics are vicious because the stakes are so low"? That applies to gaming.

* Companies can be a bitch to handle. If you're small fry, they don't have any problems taking your proposals and having other people write them. Oh, and payment is *always* late, which makes it hard to have a stable financial situation. There's continuous pressure to fill the writing schedule in order to keep busy. I'm lucky in that I have a pretty hefty nest egg from my programming days.

Ideally, I'd be in graduate school for computer science right now, doing RPGs as a hobby. Unfortunately, the entire "Hey, the Internet is just a ball of profit-less hype!" thing killed off my old job, so I'm sort of stuck doing this full-time. To be honest, the daily life is great and I love the work, but I don't see it as a viable long-term situation.

 

[Dave G]

*sob* I wanna be you guys!!! *sob*

It's not about the money. It can eventually become that way if the planets line up and the gods accept the sacrifices, but props to all of you who are getting paid to work on something you love (even if it isn't a ton of money!)

 

[DungeonKeeperUK]

*sob* I wanna be you guys!!! *sob*

It's not about the money. It can eventually become that way if the planets line up and the gods accept the sacrifices, but props to all of you who are getting paid to work on something you love (even if it isn't a ton of money!)

Its been a dream of mine for a good 2 decades adn when it happened it was kinda by chance.. (thanks Hal. ) Now that I'm in, I'm hopeing to get my feet under the proverbial gameing table a bit more in future once I can get the balance of real life and writing life sorted out,...