I’ve written previously about the importance, as I’ve been reminding myself, of finishing creative projects I start.
There are times that it’s easy. (Hello, handful of haiku about some inspiring or topical experiences.) And there are times when it just isn’t going to happen, at least not in that form not now. (Hello, first novel I was shooting to finish that didn’t pan out.)
Some of the latter category can’t be helped. But more often than not I kind of wind up screwing myself on it.
I’ve been working on a number of tabletop game ideas for years. They’re in various stages of completion, from the “Hey, this is an interesting idea” stage to the “I should start outlining some general themes and gameplay ideas and point of the game” stage to the “this feels really close to being ready to start pitching to publishers” stage. Way more are in the earlier stages, of course, because like story ideas, game ideas can just roll in at any time.
Ah, but there’s the rub: With so many ideas in a range of stages, I keep letting myself get distracted with newer ones. It’s the same issue trap I let myself fall into again and again for ages with stories: This one is dragging a bit, so maybe I’ll give that one a rest for now and pursue this sparkly new idea instead. And as I work on that one, of course, it may start to drag a bit as well, but hey, there’s this other idea I like… rinse and repeat. For decades.
I passed along this tidbit of parental wisdom to my daughter not too long ago, underscoring the importance of finishing what you start, as a whole but in creative pursuits as well.
And so it came back to bite me–albeit in a good way–when for the last couple of days I’ve been hunting around the house for a hex punch I’ve been using for years to cut out hexagons from paper for game ideas, and when my daughter asked what I needed it for, I explained that I had a new game idea in mind (this one less than a week old) and needed the exact measurement of the hexes the punch cranked out in order to do some calculations for it.
She got right in my face and literally took me by the shoulders and shook them, telling me, “So many new game ideas! Finish what you start, man!” She’s nine going on 40.
And it didn’t hit me like a ton of bricks, or like a slap in the face (that was perhaps her next move), but it did mentally snap me out of letting myself fall into the same ol’ trap of starting a project and not seeing it through before starting another one.
So, yes. I have a new idea for a game that’s really got my attention recently. But I’ll duly take notes for it and then go back and finish up other ideas before I proceed any farther with this one.
Here’s hoping that by the time I get a few of them to a beta testing stage, the pandemic isolation measures will be relaxed enough that I can get some friends together to try them out.
There could be plenty of time between now and then, though.
But hey, all the better to finish more of what I’ve started.