Serializing STAY AWHILE AND LISTEN: The Why
In case you haven't heard, allow me to sound the trumpets and sing some praises: the first book of Stay Awhile and Listen ("SAAL") has a date. As of October 31, you'll be able to buy Stay Awhile and Listen: How Two Blizzards Unleashed Diablo and Forged a Video-Game Empire for Kindle, iBooks, and Nook. (SAAL 1 also has a cover; check out my new user icon. I'll be uploading a larger version of the cover later this week.)
Yes, I know. FINALLY, right? Well, stay with me for a sec. You probably noticed that I slipped in "first book" up there. After months of deliberation, I made the decision to split SAAL into three books. It wasn't an easy decision to make. If you have some time to (here it comes) stay awhile and read, I'd like to tell you more about how I arrived at the decision, and why I think you'll agree that it's for the best.
For easier reading, I've split this lengthy blog into two parts: The Why, and The How. I cover 'the why' in this blog post; return tomorrow to read about 'the how'. I know, I know. I'm serializing everything these days!
---
After wrapping up the first draft of SAAL in early spring 2012, I took a month off, gathered my notes, and tucked in on the second draft. The process was slow going. Revising a nonfiction story entails so much more than crossing out average words and replacing them with awesome ones. Re-reading a draft also shines light down pits where information should reside. "Oh, I wrote about this event but didn't ask anyone about this minor detail!" So I'd send emails, line up phone calls, and plug up holes as I found them.
I interviewed all my subjects extensively, but people can only recall so much. What they couldn't remember, I filled in as best I could by cross-referencing anecdotes and digging through brains until I finally hit on what I needed. But people can only recall so much. We're talking about events that played out 10, 15, even 20-some years ago.
Much to my dismay, I'm not a full-time author. Full-time writer, yes. Author, no. That means I had to keep pitching freelance assignments to keep money coming in. That was easy to do in the Bay Area. In Ohio... not so much. The well from which I drew most of my work dried up right around the holidays in 2011. My wife and I had just moved into a new apartment two months prior. That meant I needed to set aside Stay Awhile, which wasn't earning me a dime, and hustle up work that earned me as many dimes as possible.
August rolled around. A couple of months earlier, John Keefer from Shacknews had caught wind of SAAL and wanted to work with me to provide some coverage of the book. He suggested releasing an excerpt on the website, perhaps a full chapter. I decided to release a full chapter, for two reasons.
First, because I felt I should say something publicly about the book. I'd announced its existence in style on October 31, 2011. I didn't want to become known as one of those creative types who announced something and then failed to follow up on it for years, or ever. (No, the irony of taking forever to release a book about companies notorious for taking forever to release their products was not lost on me.)
The second reason was more selfish. I had to face reality: SAAL would not be ready in 2012. I wanted it to be. I intended for it to be. But things don't always happen in the way we want. I was feeling bummed. "Down in the dumps" would be a better way to put it. I'd started working on SAAL in 2008. By the time Halloween rolled around, I'd have worked on the book for four years--four years of research, making contacts from Blizzard and Blizzard North, driving around California to meet those people for interviews, hours and hours spent talking over the phone and Skype to those who couldn't meet in person, writing, editing, rewriting, editing, more rewriting...
Most writers break out in a sweat at the idea of anyone reading their work. Creating something, anything, is so personal. You pour everything--heart, soul, dreams, desires, blood, sweat, tears, EVERYTHING--into your work. The thought of people consuming it and possibly tearing it to shreds instead of smacking their lips and asking for seconds is terrifying. And yet I had reached a point where I had worked so long and so hard, and talked people's ears off about "the Diablo book" and how it was going to be awesome, that I wasn't scared anymore. I just wanted to show something. I needed some validation, and maybe a few shoulder pats and 'atta boys.
So I worked with John to showcase a chapter on Shacknews, and it went over well. Fantastically, amazingly well. Feedback was tremendous. Some of that feedback came in the form of a request I knew was coming but did my best to ignore.
During the extensive coverage on Shacknews, a number of readers from various strands of the Web asked if I planned to discuss Diablo 3. In my excitement over the positive response to the free chapter, I said, "Sure! Of course! Yes!" Then I came down from Cloud 9 and thought about what I'd just agreed to. Draft 1 of SAAL ended with the closure of Blizzard North in 2005. High on excitement as I was, I'd brazenly agreed to add another 6 years of history to SAAL.
Around January 2013, I complained about how long the book was taking to my wife, as I did every few weeks or days or hours. Remember, I wasn't able to work on SAAL full-time. In her infinite patience and wisdom, my wife made a suggestion: "Why not split the book?" She'd made this suggestion before and my reaction was always to bite her head off, the poor thing. "SAAL isn't some fantasy series," I would argue. "I promised one book. I'm going to release one book. That's it."
I was standing firm! I would not budge! Why? I don't know. It just didn't seem appropriate. Had David Kushner split up Masters of Doom? Had Steve Kent or Tristan Donovan broken up their respective archives that recounted the history of video games? No! Then why should I?
But the more I mulled over Amie's suggestion, the more I decided that serialization made sense for my book. SAAL is many things all rolled into one. It's the story of two talented groups of people who succeeded in their lifelong dream of making games. It's an account of how some of the most influential games of all time came together in a perfect storm of personality, creative drive, and chaos. And it's an analysis of how video game culture changed over three diverse eras.
That last point about three eras was the most exciting upside of serialization. Each of the Diablo games was made in a vastly different era than the one before it. By splitting the book into three, I could explore each era in-depth--not only in service to the two Blizzards and their games, but also to side topics relevant to each era. Kali, a program that let PC gamers take their network-only games online in the mid-90s, influenced the creation of Battle.net, Blizzard's free online gaming service. I was able to interview Scott Coleman and Jay Cotton, the minds behind Kali into book 1.
The first draft of SAAL weighed in at just over 900 pages. Those pages included no bonus material. It began at the origins of the two Blizzards, ended at the closure of Blizzard North in 2005, and crammed in lots of stuff in the middle. There was no way I could have included an interview about Kali or any of the other did-you-know history and anecdotes I wanted to document.
Thanks to my decision to serialize SAAL, book 1 includes over 120 pages of extra material--all focused on one particular golden era in video game history. There's no way I could have justified packing in that much extra content specific to a few years of history in a single book.
Lastly, I took to heart an important lesson I learned over hundreds of hours talking to the teams responsible for some of my favorite games ever: sometimes you just need to stop tinkering and release a product. Nothing will ever be perfect. At some point, the birdies need to leave the nest and go get a job. Between having to hit the pause button on SAAL to scrounge up "pay the bills" work and all the extra content I wanted to add, SAAL would not have seen the light of day as a single volume until around 2025.
That covers the why of serializing SAAL. Come the 31st of next month, I think you'll agree that divvying up the story among three volumes was for the best. Make sure to check back tomorrow for a look at HOW I carved the book into third, which includes information on the book's treasure trove of bonus content and a look at the table of contents.
~DLC
Yes, I know. FINALLY, right? Well, stay with me for a sec. You probably noticed that I slipped in "first book" up there. After months of deliberation, I made the decision to split SAAL into three books. It wasn't an easy decision to make. If you have some time to (here it comes) stay awhile and read, I'd like to tell you more about how I arrived at the decision, and why I think you'll agree that it's for the best.
For easier reading, I've split this lengthy blog into two parts: The Why, and The How. I cover 'the why' in this blog post; return tomorrow to read about 'the how'. I know, I know. I'm serializing everything these days!
---
After wrapping up the first draft of SAAL in early spring 2012, I took a month off, gathered my notes, and tucked in on the second draft. The process was slow going. Revising a nonfiction story entails so much more than crossing out average words and replacing them with awesome ones. Re-reading a draft also shines light down pits where information should reside. "Oh, I wrote about this event but didn't ask anyone about this minor detail!" So I'd send emails, line up phone calls, and plug up holes as I found them.
I interviewed all my subjects extensively, but people can only recall so much. What they couldn't remember, I filled in as best I could by cross-referencing anecdotes and digging through brains until I finally hit on what I needed. But people can only recall so much. We're talking about events that played out 10, 15, even 20-some years ago.
Much to my dismay, I'm not a full-time author. Full-time writer, yes. Author, no. That means I had to keep pitching freelance assignments to keep money coming in. That was easy to do in the Bay Area. In Ohio... not so much. The well from which I drew most of my work dried up right around the holidays in 2011. My wife and I had just moved into a new apartment two months prior. That meant I needed to set aside Stay Awhile, which wasn't earning me a dime, and hustle up work that earned me as many dimes as possible.
August rolled around. A couple of months earlier, John Keefer from Shacknews had caught wind of SAAL and wanted to work with me to provide some coverage of the book. He suggested releasing an excerpt on the website, perhaps a full chapter. I decided to release a full chapter, for two reasons.
First, because I felt I should say something publicly about the book. I'd announced its existence in style on October 31, 2011. I didn't want to become known as one of those creative types who announced something and then failed to follow up on it for years, or ever. (No, the irony of taking forever to release a book about companies notorious for taking forever to release their products was not lost on me.)
The second reason was more selfish. I had to face reality: SAAL would not be ready in 2012. I wanted it to be. I intended for it to be. But things don't always happen in the way we want. I was feeling bummed. "Down in the dumps" would be a better way to put it. I'd started working on SAAL in 2008. By the time Halloween rolled around, I'd have worked on the book for four years--four years of research, making contacts from Blizzard and Blizzard North, driving around California to meet those people for interviews, hours and hours spent talking over the phone and Skype to those who couldn't meet in person, writing, editing, rewriting, editing, more rewriting...
Most writers break out in a sweat at the idea of anyone reading their work. Creating something, anything, is so personal. You pour everything--heart, soul, dreams, desires, blood, sweat, tears, EVERYTHING--into your work. The thought of people consuming it and possibly tearing it to shreds instead of smacking their lips and asking for seconds is terrifying. And yet I had reached a point where I had worked so long and so hard, and talked people's ears off about "the Diablo book" and how it was going to be awesome, that I wasn't scared anymore. I just wanted to show something. I needed some validation, and maybe a few shoulder pats and 'atta boys.
So I worked with John to showcase a chapter on Shacknews, and it went over well. Fantastically, amazingly well. Feedback was tremendous. Some of that feedback came in the form of a request I knew was coming but did my best to ignore.
During the extensive coverage on Shacknews, a number of readers from various strands of the Web asked if I planned to discuss Diablo 3. In my excitement over the positive response to the free chapter, I said, "Sure! Of course! Yes!" Then I came down from Cloud 9 and thought about what I'd just agreed to. Draft 1 of SAAL ended with the closure of Blizzard North in 2005. High on excitement as I was, I'd brazenly agreed to add another 6 years of history to SAAL.
Around January 2013, I complained about how long the book was taking to my wife, as I did every few weeks or days or hours. Remember, I wasn't able to work on SAAL full-time. In her infinite patience and wisdom, my wife made a suggestion: "Why not split the book?" She'd made this suggestion before and my reaction was always to bite her head off, the poor thing. "SAAL isn't some fantasy series," I would argue. "I promised one book. I'm going to release one book. That's it."
I was standing firm! I would not budge! Why? I don't know. It just didn't seem appropriate. Had David Kushner split up Masters of Doom? Had Steve Kent or Tristan Donovan broken up their respective archives that recounted the history of video games? No! Then why should I?
But the more I mulled over Amie's suggestion, the more I decided that serialization made sense for my book. SAAL is many things all rolled into one. It's the story of two talented groups of people who succeeded in their lifelong dream of making games. It's an account of how some of the most influential games of all time came together in a perfect storm of personality, creative drive, and chaos. And it's an analysis of how video game culture changed over three diverse eras.
That last point about three eras was the most exciting upside of serialization. Each of the Diablo games was made in a vastly different era than the one before it. By splitting the book into three, I could explore each era in-depth--not only in service to the two Blizzards and their games, but also to side topics relevant to each era. Kali, a program that let PC gamers take their network-only games online in the mid-90s, influenced the creation of Battle.net, Blizzard's free online gaming service. I was able to interview Scott Coleman and Jay Cotton, the minds behind Kali into book 1.
The first draft of SAAL weighed in at just over 900 pages. Those pages included no bonus material. It began at the origins of the two Blizzards, ended at the closure of Blizzard North in 2005, and crammed in lots of stuff in the middle. There was no way I could have included an interview about Kali or any of the other did-you-know history and anecdotes I wanted to document.
Thanks to my decision to serialize SAAL, book 1 includes over 120 pages of extra material--all focused on one particular golden era in video game history. There's no way I could have justified packing in that much extra content specific to a few years of history in a single book.
Lastly, I took to heart an important lesson I learned over hundreds of hours talking to the teams responsible for some of my favorite games ever: sometimes you just need to stop tinkering and release a product. Nothing will ever be perfect. At some point, the birdies need to leave the nest and go get a job. Between having to hit the pause button on SAAL to scrounge up "pay the bills" work and all the extra content I wanted to add, SAAL would not have seen the light of day as a single volume until around 2025.
That covers the why of serializing SAAL. Come the 31st of next month, I think you'll agree that divvying up the story among three volumes was for the best. Make sure to check back tomorrow for a look at HOW I carved the book into third, which includes information on the book's treasure trove of bonus content and a look at the table of contents.
~DLC