Sucking in the Seventies Sunday, May 01, 2005

Big steps today.

Last night, I sent the final--barring any editorial freakiness--draft of Damnation Decade to my editor and good buddy. To give you a sense of the relief I'm feeling: I pitched this game about two years ago. I spent the first year writing it as a futuristic sci-fi game with some gritty 1970s underpinnings and came up with about 260 pages of material. In late December, my editor kicked that draft back to me, saying (constructively) that the thing didn't work and needed a complete overhaul. (The rules editor, who I've just met through this process, had similar, again constructive, reservations.) Four months later, Damnation Decade is now a gritty 1970s game with some futuristic sci-fi underpinnings, clocking in at 220 pages. Almost all of the material is new.

I think it's a vast improvement over the first draft. If my editor had accepted the first version, somewhere down the line one of us would've woken up in the middle of the night realizing the game should've been done this way--and we'd be kicking ourselves forever. At least I would.

Forgive me if I crow a little; it's been a rough couple of years and probably the most work-intensive four months of my life. New baby + harried Mrs. WTJ + 220 pages to write from scratch - sufficient time does not give you One Happy Papa. The end result, though, is one of the better things I've ever written. As usual I have Mrs. WTJ and Baby WTJ to thank for their patience, my friends for their advice and general kibbitzing, and my editor and good buddy, who once again took the camel through the needle's eye. Pax and amor to all.

And now it's on to Secret Thing #2, which I've been putting off for three years now. To my collaborator, who knows who he is: Put on that ripped undershirt, and get yourself a pail and a radish--it's go time.


@ 6:40:00 AM,

1 Comments:

At 1:32 PM, Anonymous Wailing Death said...

Game, or book? I hope it's a game, so that I can snipe certain l33ts while maintaining my disco cool.

 

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