Strategic Writing
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My name is Kevin Mazurimm. I’m a second-year student at Algonquin College in the Professional Writing program. Today I’m going to talk to you about two of my favourite things: writing and gaming, and how doing both have helped me. I’ve spent years writing little things here and there, just for something to do. At times, however, I’ve been unable to just sit down and write.
So, something I tend to do is when I’m trying to write, I’ll spend time gaming in the background. I’ve been told before that obviously I don’t care as much about writing if I’m focused on a video game in the background, and today I’m going to tell you why that’s not true. Gaming is a love of mine and has been since I was a little kid with my Windows 95 and a copy of Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness.
Image © GOG sp. z o.o. and ©1995 Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.
I started my hobby of gaming as just that; a hobby. As I grew older, it became more an escape for me and soon that translated into writing. I grew up imagining what I could change to make a great game outstanding. I used to go around imagining, “What if this game went from a first-person shooter (FPS) to RTS?” or something similar. Then I began to imagine what would happen if I wrote a game based on a game I had played. I began to realize as I got older this would be a lot harder than it sounded in my head, but I never gave up.
When I began trying to write “my own thing,” I found I couldn’t focus on it as well as I had before. I found myself more interested in gaming than in the actual writing, which kind of scared me a bit as I had always been told making money as a gamer is something that just isn’t possible (I learned later in life that this is not the case, looking at all the e-sports, let’s players, etc.).
So, one day, I was playing a game that was turn-based, and found myself waiting for an overly long time between turns. So, I minimized my game while the AI was taking its sweet time deciding what to do, and I started to write something. As I got into it more and more, I found myself tabbing back into the game less and less, and writing a lot more between turns.
I had stumbled upon something great, or at least it was to me. Doing both of the things I love, at the same time. Writing the novel that had been stumping me for months, while also playing a game I have a lot of fun playing. It allowed me to distract myself if I got stuck on how to continue a particular paragraph, and it gave me something to do in-between the long turns that the AI takes in certain games. One series of games is what helped me do this; the Total War franchise by Creative Assembly.
The game is a lot of fun for people like me who like to strategize and move massive armies across battlefields to clash with your opponents. It also gave me ideas for things I could potentially do with my own book, as there are so many variations of the game, from ones that take place in Ancient Rome to ones that follow the famous Games Workshop Warhammer Fantasy series. If you find yourself suffering from writer’s block, and love games as much as I do, I recommend this strategy, as it could help you get over that wall.
Screenshot I took in game. © SEGA, © COPYRIGHT GAMES WORKSHOP LIMITED 2017.
Kevin Mazurimm
Kevin Mazurimm is a second year student at Algonquin College in the Professional Writing Program. He is an avid lover of video games, owning over 400 on Steam alone, and is an up-and-coming fiction writer.
