Colin Wright's Blog, page 35

Watching the Periphery

I’m in publishing, but I’m watching the video game world closely.

There’s some really interesting stuff going on in that industry. Valve has innovated along multiple fronts. Amazon is a barbarian at the gate. Even the big players — Microsoft and Sony and Nintendo — are making moves like rookies with something to prove. It’s been an interesting couple of years in video games, and the next few years should be even more so.

I’m also watching the film and TV industries. Both are very different crea...

Set the Goal, Enjoy the Journey

When I write, I start with a framework. A skeleton of what I’m doing, to establish the rough shape, size, and purpose of what I’ll eventually end up with.

With a blog post, that means I figure out what point I want to make, and establish how best to express it. With a book, I determine who the characters are, what kind of world they live in, and what important things happen in each chapter.

In between these milestones — these pre-determined landmarks in my work — anything could happen. The stor...

The Authority of Experience

There are a whole lot of blogs and articles and even books written by folks who don’t know what they’re talking about.

Or rather, they know some aspect of what they’re talking about, but lack the authority of experience. They’ve read a lot about a particular subject and have re-spun the information into something new. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this — it’s what we’re taught to do in school, year after year — but it can be detrimental if the positive feedback received for remixing bo...

Good People

As a kid, I was convinced that I would always be a gamer. I liked games for the challenge they provided, and the immense sense of satisfaction I gained by learning the rules, methodically increasing my skill, and eventually teaching others to enjoy a game’s complexities on the same level I did.

That feeling hasn’t gone away, it’s just expanded in scope. Rather than attempting to teach everyone the strategic complexity of chess, I promote literacy and encourage folks to self-educate about anyth...

Tasks and Work

There’s a big difference between the work you do, and the tasks you perform.

The two often blend together, at least in how we perceive our work and how our time is spent. But recognizing the difference can be quite impactful.

Consider an accountant, working for a clothing company that cuts out the marketing and manufacturing middle-men so they can pay local workers an excellent wage. The accountant performs the normal accounting tasks — tallying, multiplying, filling in spreadsheets — but what...

Who They’re For

Throughout my life, I’ve worked primarily within industries in which my work is put on public display. As a columnist, a painter, a designer, a web develop, a blogger, and an author, everything I’ve done is out in the world with my name on it. Like a street-level billboard with a face on it attracts Sharpie-drawn Hitler mustaches, my work, by its nature, has always attracted critique.

This is both boon and bane. It’s a good thing, sometimes, because the right critique at the right time can lea...

Telling Stories

The first words I published were on entrepreneurship and branding and other things I knew more about than most people, and that means of communication worked well. I could convey information damn quickly: this works, do this, here’s some information on how to do such things better.

Narrative nonfiction was the next step.

I thought, at first, that it was incredibly pretentious to tell stories about myself and my life. I thought, “Who cares? These are tales about me and my experiences. They can’t...

Bridges

Writing, to me, is like building a bridge.

I’m here, on this bank, and you’re over there, somewhere off in space. There may be fog between us, or we may have been aware for each other for some time, waving across the water from shore to shore, looking forward to eventual contact.

I have specific resources, traditions, ideas, and perspectives, and you have the same. By building a bridge, I’m able to share with you these resources of mine. I’m able to present what makes up ‘The Island of Colin’ t...

Let’s Say

When I was a kid, a lot of the games my friends and I would play started with the phrase, “Let’s say…”

Let’s say the X-Men have to save Barbie from the Ninja Turtles.

Let’s say you’re a wizard and I’m a thief and we have to find the dragon.

Let’s say we can both fly, and the UFOs are trying to hunt us down.

These were exploratory statements. They set the stage for the adventure we were about to have; contextualized and established a framework in which to explore. It gave us anchors so that we mig...

Defining a Name

I was born with a name that lacks meaning.

Not absolute meaning, of course. The name ‘Wright’ means ‘builder,’ and the name ‘Colin,’ depending on whether you’re talking to a Celt or a Norseman, means ‘cub’ or ‘a person living on property with disputable ownership.’

But I wasn’t born in a country where an urgency is placed on names, like in some cultures. I didn’t grow up feeling like I had to carry a burden handed down from my father’s father’s father, or risk tarnishing something immensely mea...