Tom Nicholas
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Changing-Up My Writing Process | The Friday Update
🕑 Added 2023-05-26 10:43:57 +0000 UTCWelcome to this week’s edition of the Friday Update, in which I give a little insight into what I’ve been up to for the past seven days.
What have I been up to this week?
The past seven days have really seen my next video (about YouTube audiences’ recent obsession with grifts) begin to take shape. (As you can see above, I also managed to get some very early sections of it filmed!).
This time around, I’m trying something a little bit different when it comes to my writing. As I’ve mentioned a few times in various posts and chats, I suffer from some pretty severe perfectionism when it comes to my writing. When putting my scripts together, I often find myself drafting and redrafting each section of my video as I go along.
This often means I waste a lot of time focussing on the details of early sections before I’ve got a proper sense of the structure of the whole video.
My upcoming video is a little bit longer than my usual releases. This has allowed us to experiment with the editing process a little and for me to have a little more time to write further ahead into the video before any individual sections need to be completely perfected. As such, I’ve been trying to forge ahead by writing incredibly sloppy, imperfect drafts of each section.
The plan is that this will give me a terrible first draft of the whole video. Whilst this means I’ll have to do a bunch of redrafting later, it means I’ll be able to do so with a much greater idea of the overall structure of the video and with the broad argument already sketched out.
I’m really enjoying this way of working and, if I can get a little further ahead of myself with writing my scripts, hopefully it’s a process I can take forward into future projects!
I also managed to get a couple of upcoming episodes of Induction recorded, so keep an eye out for those!
And outside of work?
It has been gorgeously sunny in my part of the world lately. The temperature has been tipping over the 20 degree mark (that’s Celsius for any Americans reading) and it’s been wonderfully bright.
My mood tends to be moulded quite acutely by the weather. I often struggle a bit with the gloomier days in the depths of winter. So, it’s been such a boost for things to be so beautiful.
On the weekend, I managed to cram-in a day on the beach with some friends (and managed to pick up a little bit of sunburn) and, prior to filming yesterday evening, I managed to find some time to chill in a beer garden near us with a nice beer.
What have I been reading/watching/listening to?
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has still been absorbing most of my free time. I usually try and avoid using the fast travel capabilities in these games as much as possible. I find that I quite enjoy exploring the weird little corners of the map and, if I fast travel, it takes away from that a bit. Nevertheless, this does mean I keep getting a little lost or trapped down craters and the like!
I’ve also been cracking the spine on a new book for the video I’m working on. But, I’ll let you know more about that in the future!
That brings us to the end of this week’s edition of the Friday Update. I hope you’ve found it mildly insightful.
Thanks as ever for your generous support and I’ll look forward to updating you more next week!!
Comments
Tom Nicholas
A quick note on Director's Commentaries (which I'll follow up with a proper post to supporters on the relevant tiers in the next few days)... I think I'm going to discontinue making Director's Commentaries for my videos. Basically, the last few have only got single digit viewing figures. My feeling, then, is that, rather than spend time making something which folks aren't super into, I should look for something which is more appealing! Let me know if you've got any thoughts! Or, if you would particularly miss them, feel free to argue that I should continue!
