I won't finish "Ori", my new gamebook. It comes in
the most ironic of situations. You see, I had been
struggling to write it for the last month. I thought
it to be a case of common procrastination combined
with tiredness for the sports I'm doing lately.

The thing is I had "fallen off the wagon", as they
say in the USA. It's easier to write on, as long
as you keep writing every day. The more regular
you are with your text, the easier is it to keep
on. But leave it for a month or two and, suddenly
you don't know how to continue.

My standard medicine for this ailment is to
re-write the whole incomplete draft, and continue
from there. That allows me to get back into the
novel and reimagine it again. It turns out that
a few dozen pages plus notes are great cues for
the imagination.

And so I did, and I could, again savage "Ori"
from its impending disaster and get it to
completion. BUT I WON'T.

And I have my reasons. This is a type of story
I have attempted too many times, never achieving
what I wanted to do: to explore slavery and
its consequences both in the enslaved and in
the enslavers, and society at large. I had
chosen fantasy as a medium to both detach myself
from the particulars of this or that historic
realities (and narratives).

But I really cannot do a good service to that.
I, always, tend to sugar coat that evil
monster. I cannot do otherwise, I don't really
want to explore really deeply into that. Not in
a children-friendly fantasy gamebook, at any rate.

Besides, I really want to do something else. The
good part is that, as a result of this attempt,
I have developed a few tools and strategies to
write and design a gamebook; a system if you will.

I hope to find inspiration for a theme soon,
even if it's a dungeon crawler or something.

Wish me luck, thanks for reading this sad piece.

2025-04-22 11:12:57
Reach me at bosque@sdf.org