{"id":31440,"date":"2017-09-21T07:57:44","date_gmt":"2017-09-21T11:57:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=31440"},"modified":"2017-09-21T07:57:44","modified_gmt":"2017-09-21T11:57:44","slug":"walt-williams-five-things-i-learned-writing-my-memoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2017\/09\/21\/walt-williams-five-things-i-learned-writing-my-memoir\/","title":{"rendered":"Walt Williams: Five Things I Learned Writing My Memoir"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Making a video game is like working for a blood-thirsty dictator \u2013 you spend a lot of time validating the player, who just wants to shoot people in the face. And if there\u2019s one thing Walt Williams has learned from working in the blockbuster game industry, it\u2019s that nothing good comes of validating people who aren\u2019t him.<\/em><\/p>\n

After his misguided attempts to become an air force chaplain, Williams made the bold choice to move from Louisiana to New York City to try his hand at becoming a writer. All it took were a few dead-end writing gigs and a depleted bank account for him to take an entry-level position at a top video-game publisher, opening his eyes to a brave new digital world.<\/em><\/p>\n

In his revealing memoir, Williams pulls back the curtain on life inside the astonishingly profitable yet compulsively secretive game industry. Informative and comically irreverent, Walt exposes a world abundant in brainpower and outsized egos struggling to find the next great innovation.<\/em><\/p>\n

ALL THE WORDS WERE MINE<\/h2>\n

This may seem like common sense, but somehow this came as a surprise to me. You see, I\u2019ve spent the last twelve years exclusively writing video games. Writing a game is like writing a screenplay, except that every page or so, I write, \u201cBad guys appear; player fights them,\u201d and then pick up writing ten to fifteen minutes later in the story. On top of that, the script is written while the game is still being developed. Characters, dialog, locations, set pieces, action beats \u2013 all can vanish or change at any moment. Writing games can be a dizzying, thankless endeavor. Sometimes it feels like speeding down a hill in a shopping cart while trying to disarm a bomb with a dull pencil. That\u2019s why I love it.<\/p>\n

Writing Significant Zero<\/em> was different. There was no player, artist, or level designer waiting to step in and take control. I didn\u2019t know what to do with that freedom. I\u2019d spent so many years putting words in the player\u2019s mouth, that I\u2019d forgotten what it was like to have a voice of my own. It took the entire writing process for me to grow comfortable with my own words. Even now, I worry that certain parts might not be relatable to every possible reader. That\u2019s the game writer in me. I shut him up by reminding myself that a book doesn\u2019t have to be everything to everyone. A player wants to experience a game on their own terms, but a reader wants to step into the author\u2019s mind and discover what joy and horror await them.<\/p>\n

\u201cHONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY\u201d ONLY APPLIES TO YOU<\/h2>\n

When I called my father to tell him I\u2019d sold my book, the first thing he said was, \u201cSon, I\u2019m proud of you.\u201d He then followed it up with, \u201cI hope they\u2019re paying you enough to make it worth pissing off all your friends.\u201d That was something I had not considered.<\/p>\n

When you write a memoir, you quickly realize that your stories are not yours alone. They also belong to your friends, family, and coworkers, none of whom asked to be in a book. So, I decided the only person who\u2019d get thrown under the bus was me. This doesn\u2019t mean I altered stories to make other people look better. I just went out of my way to use anecdotes that made me look worse. And do you know what happened when I did that? My book became more interesting and relatable. No one needs a book that makes my friends look bad. But a book about how I\u2019m an idiot who somehow turned out okay is a book that might actually be worth reading. Of course, pulling that off is harder than it seems\u2026<\/p>\n

I HAD TO BECOME A CHARACTER<\/h2>\n

Writing about the past is hard, because we\u2019re constantly changing who we are and how we feel. Whether we age like a fine wine, or devolve into some kind of primal, mutant jackass, we tend to view our past through the filter of our present. We judge ourselves, edit our memories to better fit our personal narrative, and even delude ourselves into believing things that never happened. It\u2019s natural. Everyone does it. When writing Past Walt, it would have been so easy to smooth out his rough edges, make him seem cooler or more competent. Believe me, it was tempting. No one ever would have known, except for me and anyone who\u2019d talked to me for longer than fifteen minutes.\u00a0 But \u2013 and this is important \u2013 you\u2019re not allowed to do that if you\u2019re writing a memoir. When telling a true story, you can\u2019t make shit up, even if it\u2019s funnier. Non-fiction is tricky that way. To stop myself from falling into that trap, I had to mentally disconnect myself from Past Walt, and write him like he was a character, rather than a reflection of who I am today. His actions had to exist without my commentary or hindsight, leaving you to decide whether he\u2019s charming, insufferable, or just kind of a dope.<\/p>\n

FEAR WAS MY FRIEND<\/h2>\n

The further I got into the book, the more vulnerable I felt. I was scared of what people would think, not of the book, but of me as a person. My flight instinct would kick in, and I\u2019d have to stop myself from erasing or reworking whole sections just to save myself from scrutiny. Eventually, I began to recognize my fear as a sign that I was on the right track. If I felt nothing that meant my writing was safe or inconsequential. However, if I was afraid\u2026 if I suddenly felt the need to fake my own death and run away to the wilds of Montana\u2026 then I knew I was writing something true. My fear became my compass. Every time I sat down to write I had to find it, feel it, and then dive in as deep as I could go.<\/p>\n

YOU\u2019VE DONE MORE THAN YOU KNOW<\/h2>\n

I once believed there were only four types of people who should write memoirs: rock stars, presidents, people who almost died, and those who were about to die. Everyone else lacked the experience necessary to write a memoir. Sadly, I am not America\u2019s first rock star president who famously cheated death, buffed up, and then died again, all so I could kick the Grim Reaper\u2019s ass. And that\u2019s not for lack of trying. Still, what have I done that\u2019s worth writing about? Everything, really. Same goes for you. Life can seem rote, but living through it is rarely boring. When writing about the past, describing an event is sometimes less important than how it felt. The feeling is what left an impression. That shared language of emotion is the one thing you and the reader will always have in common. When spoken properly, even the smallest actions can seem grand.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Walt Williams lives in Louisiana with his wife and daughter, where he splits his time between writing and failing to keep his flowerbeds alive. He\u2019s known mostly for writing video games, in particular SPEC OPS: THE LINE and the upcoming STAR WARS: BATTLEFRONT II.<\/p>\n

Walt Williams: Twitter<\/span><\/a> | Instagram<\/span><\/a> | Website<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Significant Zero: Indiebound<\/span><\/a> | Amazon<\/span><\/a> | B&N<\/span><\/a> | iBooks<\/span><\/a> | Audible<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Making a video game is like working for a blood-thirsty dictator \u2013 you spend a lot of time validating the player, who just wants to shoot people in the face. And if there\u2019s one thing Walt Williams has learned from working in the blockbuster game industry, it\u2019s that nothing good comes of validating people who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-31440","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-8b6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31440"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31442,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31440\/revisions\/31442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}