I'm going through a bit of a slump at the moment. One of those "all my ideas are terrible, and I'll never be able to implement them, and even if I do, it'll be *boring*" slumps. They happen regularly, and I've learned to wait them out, resisting the urge to, say, chuck all my code and start from scratch, or chuck all my code and design a new game, or chuck all my code and give up game design FOREVER in despair.
Most of the slumps go away relatively quickly, so I'm taking the opportunity to step back a little. (Fixing bugs is making my fingers itch to chuck all my code, or at least major parts of it, and that's never a decision to make during a slump.) So I'm spending my spare time reading, and occasionally doing something radical like going outside.
The nice thing is that these slumps are almost always followed by periods of drive and innovation, so I'm hoping that happens this time, too.
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Well, you could see yourself as lucky if you get that as cycles. I've more or less accepted that it's where I'm at permanently. Luckily, there are other ways to be creative, so it's not that bad after all.
ReplyDeleteI work pretty hard on keeping the internal editor locked in a closet most of the day. If I don't, it's really easy to get into the perfectionist sweet spot - where you can't do anything because it will suck, and you can't improve because you can't practice.
ReplyDeleteIf I'm not feeling up to fresh code or writing, there's almost always make-work to do: data to collect, data to enter, typos to double-check, tests to run, bizarre spacing bugs to fix. But there's definitely a low point, where I just can't keep the editors locked away. I guess if I were a professional writer, I'd try to push through it, but generally I think it's better to wait it out.