A Bit More DavidRM Backstory

NOTE: I've been busy working on The Journal the past few weeks, which has a tendency to make me clam up (unless you ask me about The Journal, then I'll talk you into the dirt). This post is Part 2 of an essay-like-thing that I wrote in February 2005. Hard to believe six years have passed. I've written a *lot* since then, novels and stories, but most of this is still the way things are (or were). This is me.
 
I wanted to write before I ever wanted to make games. That bit of RM History has been going through my head a lot in the past couple years.
 
It all started with The Lord of the Rings. I read that (the first time) in 7th grade. Actually…no…that's not true. I can remember being inspired to write as far back as 4th grade. I would read books, like Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, and would want the story to just keep going. So I would think up…well…I didn't call them "sequels" at the time.
 
(Side Note: I first read Star Wars in 4th grade too. Oddly enough, as much as I loved the story, it didn't inspire me to write. At all. Odd. I wonder what makes some stories write-spirational and some not.)
 
The Lord of the Rings, though, was a turning point. That's when I shifted toward fantasy. A shift that was hammered home the first time I read The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. I was caught up in the creation of my own worlds. I even made a couple of languages. I created multiple cosmologies, various ways that magic worked (or didn't work). I created "chapter outlines" for a series of books about 2 brothers brought by magic into a fantasy world where they become warriors and leaders in an epic battle against a very Mordor-like evil. I drew pictures of the important characters. I created maps that fit the stories I could see unfolding.
 
I seldom finished anything, though. I dreamed big. Too big.
 
As I moved into high school I actually started work on a novel that was set in a post-apocalyptic world. I was heavily influenced by Tunnel in the Sky and its story of teenagers stranded on a strange planet. I kept the kids on earth, and used a nuclear war to isolate them in a valley. I wrote my first story in that "timeline" in 8th or 9th grade. Then I projected into the future, thought about the civilization that would result, and wrote about that civilization moving past the boundaries of its small valley out into the world of the post-nuclear war Southwest USA. The first "draft" of the book was probably too short to be called even a novella: 50-ish handwritten pages. When I went back to type it, though, it grew. And then I had an inspiration for how to make the story better, and it expanded again. And became more complex and more interesting. I still think that the story line I had plotted out would be a viable book. [2011 Note: Maybe not so much anymore.] I used an "outline" to plot that story. I would use a pencil and ruler to create indentation lines on pages of a spiral notebook so I could have a neat-and-tidy outline. I probably worked on that novel off and on over 2-3 years. I still have the 200+ typed pages of the manuscript. [2011 Note: Odds of them ever being seen by anyone? Very slim.]
 
In college, most of the writing I did was class reports. Also, by that time, I had caught the bug to design and build video games. That sucked up most of my fictive inspiration, I think. And then came the role-playing games (RPGs). For the years from 1989-1993, I thought that I could use both RPG's and games as a substitute for writing fiction.
 
My frequent stops and starts with fiction writing in the decade before had shaken me. And I got scared that I wouldn't be able to finish a story, much less a book. But video games and RPG adventures: those I could do. Plus, those I could do with other people contributing in various ways. Took some of the burden off me.
 
I remember in 1992 I found an old notebook page with 3-4 handwritten paragraphs. I read them, and it was the first time in my adult life when I read fiction I wrote and thought, "OK. That's not bad at all." I sat down and expanded those few paragraphs of character description into what I consider my first real short story, with a beginning, middle and end. And it didn't suck. (It's painful to read now, but it still "doesn't suck.")
 
Unfortunately, after that, I got stuck again. When I wasn't working on expanding my RPG rules (250 single-spaced manuscript pages by the time I abandoned it), I tried to work on fiction…or said I was trying…but all I was doing was going back to that one story and editing it, over and over. Sometimes I might even have made it better.
 
In the late 1990′s, I started writing non-fiction articles for GDNet [www.gamedev.net]. I couldn't do fiction, it seemed, so I wrote what I knew: game development. I would still have the occasional story idea, but most of what I was "writing" then was week-by-week RPG adventures. The GDNet writing grew over time, and eventually resulted in me writing a chapter in one book and then writing my own book about indie game development. [2011 Note: And then another book about so-called "serious games".]
 
Non-fiction writing always seemed like "cheating" to me. Sure, I was writing, but it wasn't the type of writing I had longed to do all those years ago. (I don't think I ever got past that "non-fiction is cheating" mentality until last year [2004]. I still struggle with it some.) The writing for RPG's also seemed like a kind of cheating. At least it was fiction, made-up stuff, but it wasn't stories. I wanted to tell stories.
 
When I got the contract for the indie book, that gave me the confidence, for the first time in a long time, to tackle a novel. I started the planning in September 2002, as I wrote the first chapters of the indie book. It took me until June 2003 to muster the guts to actually write the novel. I didn't want to fail. Again. It's taken about 15-18 months longer than I thought it would, but that novel is almost finished. And I think it's pretty good. Or will be. [2011 Note: I finished that novel, Threads, in late 2005.]
 
I didn't plan to write an autobiography, but it seemed cathartic while it was happening, so I kept it up.
 
-David
 
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