Fraud Police
Dec. 10th, 2014 12:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lhskarkaPosting here, because hey, it's mostly private these days. I can't stop crying today.
Six years ago, my husband acquired a fantastic license to do a role-playing game based in a friend's award winning fictional world. A world that I LOVE. A writer that I really admire, both as an author and a person.
Because he had other projects that he was working on that needed his attention first, my husband asked me to do the research, and write up the world descriptions, i.e. the bulk of the game book. Character and race types, regional descriptions, various in-world organizations. He had a strong concept for it that played exactly to my strengths, involving historical research, in-world knowledge, and strong descriptive writing skills.
That's me. Those are my skills. Supposedly.
I did the reading, made my notes. Slowly. There was nothing to stop me to from writing it all up. But other projects got pushed back, and we weren't going to publish any time soon, so I let the actual writing stall out. I thought about it all the time, but I didn't do it. Except for an embarrassingly tiny amount of sample pages. For six years. Just yesterday, as I posted here about cleaning my office and getting my writing desk cleared up, the FIRST thing I had on my agenda to write was this game. I was feeling excited about it, looking forward to the new year, when I was sure we would finally publish. I was looking forward to finally feeling like I had contributed something to the business. Something well done. Something that would help us financially. Something I had actually, finally created.
Then this morning, as if the universe had felt me thinking about it and decided to squash me like a bug, I got a call from my husband. The author is taking his license back. Because we've had it for six years, and he knows another game designer who is ready to do a game right away. They were even willing to give credit, and pay, for anything I had already done.
Except. Nothing. Sample pages and a book of handwritten notes. That's it. For six years. And now I've lost my chance. It's gone, and I'm the one who wasted it.
I have never felt more like a creative fraud than I do today.
Six years ago, my husband acquired a fantastic license to do a role-playing game based in a friend's award winning fictional world. A world that I LOVE. A writer that I really admire, both as an author and a person.
Because he had other projects that he was working on that needed his attention first, my husband asked me to do the research, and write up the world descriptions, i.e. the bulk of the game book. Character and race types, regional descriptions, various in-world organizations. He had a strong concept for it that played exactly to my strengths, involving historical research, in-world knowledge, and strong descriptive writing skills.
That's me. Those are my skills. Supposedly.
I did the reading, made my notes. Slowly. There was nothing to stop me to from writing it all up. But other projects got pushed back, and we weren't going to publish any time soon, so I let the actual writing stall out. I thought about it all the time, but I didn't do it. Except for an embarrassingly tiny amount of sample pages. For six years. Just yesterday, as I posted here about cleaning my office and getting my writing desk cleared up, the FIRST thing I had on my agenda to write was this game. I was feeling excited about it, looking forward to the new year, when I was sure we would finally publish. I was looking forward to finally feeling like I had contributed something to the business. Something well done. Something that would help us financially. Something I had actually, finally created.
Then this morning, as if the universe had felt me thinking about it and decided to squash me like a bug, I got a call from my husband. The author is taking his license back. Because we've had it for six years, and he knows another game designer who is ready to do a game right away. They were even willing to give credit, and pay, for anything I had already done.
Except. Nothing. Sample pages and a book of handwritten notes. That's it. For six years. And now I've lost my chance. It's gone, and I'm the one who wasted it.
I have never felt more like a creative fraud than I do today.
