This is the now -famous last frame from Randall Munroe's comic XKCD, in which one character dreams the coordinates of a particular place and time, goes to the spot, and finds nothing there. What propelled this particular strip into fame was the fact that the date/time mentioned in the strip hadn't happened yet -- and so around a thousand people showed up in a park in Cambridge, MA, at the appointed date and time, and Randall Munroe appeared and said "Maybe wanting something DOES make it real."
It's a sweet and inspiring story, but of course, to make it real, Randall needed an audience. He's built one over the last three years of publishing XKCD, and since he lives in that bastion of geekdom, Cambridge, home of Harvard and MIT, he's got a pretty big local audience (though I understand people traveled from geek meccas far and wide to attend the event). So really the conclusion should be "Maybe having enough people want the same thing makes it real."
Randall Munroe's comic strip shuttles back and forth frequently between loneliness and optimism. He's tapped into some universal paradox of the human condition with this idea, and this particular strip embodied both ends of the spectrum.
So what does this have to do with me, and with NaNoWriMo? My question of the day is, "What does it take to convince people to want the same thing as you?" This can be a tricky proposition, whether it's convincing your boyfriend that you need time to work on your novel (mine's been very good about this) or convincing investors that your game ideas are going to make money some day (I haven't done quite as well in this area).
I spent most of last week in California at a conference of informal science educators, showing off my work on Geckoman. It was a good group of folks, and I got some support for the project, but it ate up all of my time, so other than outlining the rest of my YA novel, nothing really got done. Came back and went to NYC for the weekend, which was supposed to be my relaxation time, when I had decided I would not write, but of course, that put me even further behind. Now I'm back, but work has been so stressful that I can't find the mental space I found last year during NaNoWriMo, where I'd spend 1 to 4 hours a day working on the project, with very few skipped days!
Now I just stare at the screen and noodle around with the ideas. I feel like this novel idea that came to me in a single blast of inspiration was a great gift, but it's like getting a "some assembly required" toy with no instructions. Last night I actually had another bizarre inspiration and indulged myself in writing another outline that was completely the OPPOSITE of what I wanted to do with the YA novel -- pessimistic, paranoid, and very "adult" themed. But then the cold I've been fighting for weeks got the best of me, and I had to give up at about 1:00am.
I want to finish NaNoWriMo again, but it may not happen, in the face of all the other stuff I have to worry about right now. When I started Metaversal Studios nearly four years ago, I felt like I was setting up the conditions for something wonderful to happen -- like Randall Munroe's lonely-optimistic comic. And I've been very lucky to be surrounded by an incredibly talented group of students and professionals who have made some amazing things happen. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to sustain such efforts on no money -- so we end up taking on non-game-related client projects to make ends meet and we move further and further away from our original goals of creating something wonderful and unique.
There's still a lot of promise, and a lot of hope, but even with our little band of creatives here working together in one big group hug, it still sometimes feels pretty lonely.
Come on, world. We really want this. Maybe if you want it, too, we can make it real.
