Time to Edit me a Book

July 6th, 2011

Having only continued writing about Wario Land 4 for roughly 6 weeks after my last break, I feel a bit guilty, but I really shouldn’t do because this part is inevitable…it’s time to edit.

I’ve spent the past 5-6 months writing up what should constitute the majority of content for this project. As I’ve stated before, I hope to turn my analysis into a self-published book and to get the material up to a level that I’m satisfied with I need to edit and edit thoroughly. What this means is that I won’t be posting any new Wario Land 4 material here on the blog. At least not until I’m ready to share a few samples from the final draft as I hope to do.

There are still numerous gaps in my understanding of Wario Land 4. I’m hoping that the editing process will allow me to consolidate what I’ve learnt and help prepare me to fill in these blanks.

Writing is a process of constant pain. You know that you’ve got something worthwhile in your head and only the fragments of that are getting put up on the page in some form. Its hardly glorious. Writing is just the hashing out of something great in the making. Editing, though, is the process of refinement. Editing is where you rattle the chains of your words to become the master of your ideas. In honesty, it’s the one part of the story where you actually don’t feel overwhelmingly impotent.

With the writing so far, I think that I’ve got the right structure and content. With the editing, I hope make it persuasive and wholesome. Keenly, my goal is clarify the analysis while making it readable, perhaps even to the point of genuinely interesting. I’m not going to deny that this type of writing isn’t exactly full of sex appeal—it’s frankly dry, maybe too technical and arguably taken to an absurd extreme—but it’s important. It’s important because, as we are reminded by people who like to sit around and discuss inaction, “we need a language in which to understand video games”. The language is here for those willing to work with it. What we need is an example. I think that’s sort of what this project is, an extreme example of how to use “new” language to deeply discuss a video game.

I honestly have no idea how long its going to take me to edit this thing. I’ve given myself until this December (when I go home for Christmas) to finish which I think should be a generous time frame. Unlike the past 6 months, I’ll be having an extra day off from September too. So that ought to help as well. To be honest, I’m thinking of slowing down a bit and separating myself from the project a bit so as to get a better perspective for editing. I still want to write other stuff, on other games, so look forward to that.

Speaking of which, I downloaded Harvest Moon for the Wii’s Virtual Console last night to celebrate me making it so far. You know, even though it was expensive at around 12 Aussie dollars, it’s just the kinda chill out game that I want to play this summer. So, I’m jazzed for reliving some of my childhood. I load up the game and can’t play it because I don’t have a classic controller or a Gamecube pad. Argh. I’m going to try and get a new Gamecube pad from Japan through Play-Asia. Turns out they have free shipping in mainland China too which is pretty rad. Anyways, thanks for bearing with me during this beat down of Wario-related posts. Anyone wanna talk about Harvest Moon?

BTW, I’m still looking for user submissions if you’re interested.