These are the jobs I've had:

Painter and decorator
Handy man
Computer repair technician
Stage Crew (various roles)
Bartender
Solicitor’s courier
Data entry technician
Micro fiche imager (feeding bits of celluloid into a machine, all day, every day)
Pharmacy associate (paid retail ~~thief~~ worker)
Market stacker (setting up market stalls on Brick Lane)
Milkman (1/2 a morning, didn’t get paid)
Stage Manager (all the roles)
Company Manager
Script Development (still no idea what that job was)
Technical Director
Construction
ADA Compliance Sales and Installation
Theatre Set Builder
Theatre Set Designer
Video Game Designer (world builder, scripter)
Video Game writer

and always,

Writer (generalist)

I was awful at many of them, but I have consistently made other people better at their job, and I have been fun to work with. I’ll save stories of some of those calamities for another post, today I want to talk about the job that really got me writing again:

Game Development.

As a game developer, I was never a particularly talented designer. I had moments, but nothing that stood out. I was fine. I started as a world builder (basically, an artist who could work quickly in the engine) I was pretty good, but I was in the middle of the pack. I became a lead because

1) I went in and asked for the job.

2) I had led teams before, and it never occurred to me that I shouldn’t be a lead.

I got the feeling my promotion irritated a few of the other developers because I hadn’t been there long, hadn’t done anything to really deserve it, and well, if they were honest with themselves, they hadn’t gone and asked for it themselves.

I felt the pressure to get going quickly in game development because I started so late. I was well into my 30’s when I started and had no training. I was just making game maps for fun and someone from Infinity Ward saw one of my maps and thought I had moxie. That lit a flame for me, and I pursued it hard. By the time I landed a job, I wanted to move up quickly because I wanted to make money (I was flat broke and had been for quite a while) and I had flitted about from job to job without ever really committing to anything (see: the list). The only career I was passionate about was Stage Management and somewhere along the line I lost that passion and started wandering. Making games focused me again, so I wanted to get stuck in.

Game development is hard in every respect. Firstly, it’s filled with very smart people. Not just smart - educated, and intellectual. People who know their subject. There’s a lot of experts. It’s daunting for someone who dropped out of school before they hit 15. Secondly, they work hard. Stage Managers work hard too, but it was nothing like Game Development. We regularly worked 16-hour days all week, usually came in at least one day on the weekends, often two, and when we were releasing one game per year, we were in this “crunch” for 6 months of the year. We’d get about 3 months of relaxed work after the game released, then we’d ramp up, then it would be chaos again. Marriages failed, people burned out, minds were destroyed, remarkable things were achieved, lawsuits were filed. I loved it and hated it. As exhausting as it was, it made us all dig deep and rewarded us well. Those first few years lasted a lifetime.

After becoming a lead, I got a chance to write for games, and that was where I really started to enjoy myself. I had always written. I’d had a few plays produced, written a few short stories, a few TV pilots, and several screenplays - but writing for games felt right. I love narrative and unlike design, I’m good at it. I could see where there were problems in the narrative (even if we couldn’t fix them, I knew they were there). Often in design, I couldn’t understand why something wasn’t playing well - so I’d just iterate again and again until it “hit”. With writing, I knew where to go. I didn’t always make it, but I saw the path.

Eventually, I decided I wanted to go to the best games company for narrative - the place that I thought of as Mecca - Naughty Dog. I got the interview and passed the design test. They warned me that the role was just game designer and not as a lead - but I didn’t care. I didn’t really enjoy being a lead and I wanted to work where they made Uncharted - the pinnacle of narrative games at the time.

I got the job. It was tough from day one. I am not a scripter, but I had to learn. I worked even harder there. I was surrounded by programmers and coders with talent far beyond my ability. I started coming in earlier and earlier to try and get a head start on the day. I never quite fit in, because I was just too nervous. My mother had also just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s so that my mind was always wandering, but I realized the dream job was not for me. I had gone there hoping to maybe get a chance to write a little. I tried several times to work my way into the right rooms to show myself as a writer, but the doors were always closed. I was there to be a game designer, not a writer - and I just wasn’t inspired enough to excel at it. I also had a deep respect for their writer, Amy Hennig, before I went to naughty dog - but by the time I got there she was either wanting to leave or they were ready to let her go; either way, she wasn’t as approachable as I had hoped. I wasn’t going to learn anything from her. As I mentioned in another post, it’s only recently that I have managed to set my ego aside and actually learn from those better than me, so that may well have been the problem there. I wish I could have that time back with my new brain. The first 3 Uncharted stories were magnificent.

I ended up leaving Naughty Dog. They asked if I wanted to go on compassionate leave (unpaid) to deal with my mother, but I didn’t know how long my mother’s condition would last, and I really was struggling. It was a competitive place and although I think I was just about getting by, that isn’t where I wanted to be in my 40’s. I wanted to be flying, especially when every Sunday with my mother reminded me of the precious commodity of time.

So I became a freelance writer and consultant. I picked up contracts and design jobs. I worked on a few bigger games (like Doom), a few smaller games, a few Chinese games, a few Australian games, a VR game that never shipped, and then for several years with a Swedish company that I adored.

Then I wondered what I wanted to do next. I looked at the games market and saw my peers floundering. On linked in, I saw people I knew #OpenToWork. I saw projects getting cancelled and big studios closing. I saw an industry in disarray. I saw myself looking for work at jobs that I really didn’t want, at companies that were producing games I wasn’t interested in. I sent in my resume, only to receive nothing back - not even a courtesy rejection letter. I realized that it wasn’t just me rejecting the games industry. It’s rejecting me.

I went down. I questioned my ability. My imposter syndrome kicked in. I started looking to see which writers were being hired and wondered why my work wasn’t good enough. I started to believe that the only reason I’ve managed to work on multi-billion-dollar game after multi-billion-dollar game is because I’m lucky and I just haven’t been found out yet. I figured my run of fortune was at an end, and now those college kids who were actually trained all-proper-like and knew where to put their Oxford commas were not only getting the jobs, but they were also demanding way less money than me and delivering better results.

After a few weeks… months… of this self-pity, I went back and read some of my work. I read my game writing. I read my plays. I read my scenes, my short stories, my screenplays, my essays, my poetry. I looked back through all the work I hadn’t thrown away in a fit of creative despair to see if this is really something I should be pursuing, because it’s getting later and the belt is getting longer and as you would know if you subscribed, A Clock Is Ticking.

The answer is yes. Despite some very poorly written work that continues to this day, the answer is yes. This is what I am supposed to be doing.

“Writer” is correctly posted under my name on LinkedIn.

“Writer” is write-fully the final line on my Curriculum Vitae.