I tried to come up with something — a lie, even — that would sound like a great interview answer, but I didn’t want to lie to you. It’s a question that a working writer should have a ready answer for, something pithy and witty and quotable. Something that would line up nicely next to Gene Fowler’s great one about the nature of writing: “Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”

Stephen King said, in On Writing, that a good interview answer can be one that makes the question go away, and he’s right, but I didn’t want this question to simply go away. I wanted to know why it was here, standing on my doorstep, leering at me through my screen door. I wanted to know what it wanted to know.

I wondered if the question was actually being honest with me, or if it was one question dressed up as another question, a wolf dressed up like a different wolf with a better reputation. This question asks What, not Why, but I felt like it had a Why sitting there, baked inside the cake it brought. The Why, like an ulterior razor blade, floating inside a fluffy cake where I might bite down on it unless — unless! — I cut the cake in just the right place and felt the edge of the blade with my cake tool. If I answered just right, the blade wouldn’t cut.

It’s a question that I should have a ready answer for, so I don’t fumble and mumble and leave it hanging the way you might an inquisitive lover. “No,” you must say, no pause, “you look great.” But you must not add, “You always look great,” because that says that you are not really answering the question — just making it go away.

For all the worry I put into the answer, though, I couldn’t bring myself to look directly at it. I’d look at it sideways, or squinting one eye so it flattened out.

What was I supposed to say? That I didn’t know the truth? That the truth was different, from day to day. That some days I did not, simply did not, and I didn’t want anyone to know? That I thought I was good, but that sometimes good doesn’t come with love, with real love? That I only liked the feeling afterward, the rush and nervousness of the spotlight and the attention? That I just wanted to be liked so I was doing what I thought I was best at — what I’d been told would make people like me?

I wanted to give you an answer that was vulgar but serious, that made you laugh a fleck of your oatmeal onto your computer monitor, that would make you come back, make you comment, make you peel back the layer and the layer under that, make you wonder how much of the stuff under there I put in on purpose and how just fell in while I was stirring the paint.

Was I supposed to tell the truth, straight up, or could I mix a sort of truthy cocktail, an honest highball that, yeah, you know, had the truth in it but went down smooth and worked a lot faster?

The truth was that it was like play, and that sometimes it still is, but lots of the time it feels like the matinee that’s in my contract — the show that must go on.

The truth is, now, that I don’t know but I may know tomorrow. The truth is that I didn’t want to lie to you.

What was the question?

“What do you love most about writing?” — Chuck Wendig

Welcome to this week’s Lost meditation. Not a lot to say for such a tight episode — it answered more questions than it raised and, frankly, was just a well-woven trio of little stories: that of Jack the Believer, Ben the Killer, and Dr. Linus the Good Man. I’m eager to hear what you have to say, though. Did you like this episode as much as I did?

As always, be sure to check out the Lostpedia entry for this week’s episode, too.

Spoilers are what killed her friends, back at the Statue.

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I waffled for a while about this. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to blog much about Razed while it was still in development, because I didn’t want to promise things that might get dropped or altered during development, and because I didn’t want too much of your apocalypse getting into mine. (More about that later.)

What changed my mind? My in-house playtest campaign. In the past few weeks, the game has begun to take on an identity of its own — or at least this particular campaign has — and that makes me think it’s now ready to stand up to some scrutiny. Not too much, not yet. To write, I need batteries, and if I’m not careful I’ll drain those batteries here instead of in the actual manuscript. I don’t want to spoil the game for you, or for your players. Razed is, after all, a game with a built-in mystery, which I call the meta-mystery, and while it’d be difficult for me to spoil it outright, I remain wary. (More about that later.)

Anyway, the means by which I can avoid draining my batteries here is by not showing you things that are still “soft,” developmentally speaking. A lot of Razed fits the traditional GUMSHOE rules pretty tightly, because I so often believe in that famous principle: If It Ain’t Broke. Things like the Civility Meter, on the other hand, are still in active development. The mechanics for settlements and safe havens, too.

Instead, what I’ll be blogging about is the thought process that goes into my design — the inspirations, the fears and the caution, the hopes and the aims. I’ll write a bit about the Razed campaign I’m running, and the difference between individual instances of play and the game as a whole. For example, I think my campaign is going pretty well, with its social tensions and human drama starting to simmer as they are, but systematizing play can be tricky. Even lousy games can be run well, right? I’m after a good game that runs great, at the least.

While I’m still revving up Razed over here, have a look as Bill White blogs about New World, the RPG about colonization and clashing worlds that he’s also developing for Pelgrane Press. He’s cooking something fantastic over there, it looks like. Where he’s wrestling against the entrenched ludological notion of top-down play that comes when we think of the word civilization, I’m struggling with expectations of the apocalyptic sub-genre, which also relate to that word: civilization. Don’t get me wrong, Razed is about battling aliens and scrounging treasures from the ruins of the previous civilization, but it is also a game about the ways that humans work together (or die alone), the ways they organize and control themselves and each other, and the choices and sacrifices necessary to save or rebuild — wait for it — civilization.

But more about that later.

That Chuck Wendig, he of Terrible Minds fame, he is so meta. I put forward a call on Twitter, asking people to submit questions to me via the Tumblr Ask Me Anything feature, in the hopes that it would generate blog fodder, and here’s what Chuck asked:

What do you want people to ask you?

This reminds me of a seminal bit from Stephen King’s On Writing. King asked Amy Tan if there was one question that never got asked at her authorial Q&As — a question she never gets the chance to answer. Tan said, “Nobody ever asks about the language.” In a way, King wrote On Writing to answer those questions about the language.

Of course, On Writing isn’t just a book about writing; it’s a memoir. Questions about the language aren’t just about the language at all. They’re questions about the work and the worker. They’re evidence that the questioner sees the work as work, and not just a mystical bolt of luck that makes finished works fall from a writer’s mouth. They’re curious about the writer as a craftsperson, and as a person.

I love that question of King’s. I steal it for interviews all the time: What question is missing? What don’t people ask about? What is it that you want to get asked, but don’t?

Maybe it’s no surprise, then, that I don’t have an answer to the question myself. I don’t have a standout, singular question that I’m dying to be asked. Instead, what I want is to be provoked into writing something unexpected. Or, I’ll admit, I want to be consulted. I want to be asked a question that implies my experience or my opinion has value to someone. (Who doesn’t want that?) It’s selfish and, typed out in front of me like that, a little pathetic, but so what? That’s the way that goes.

I thought I’d write out a list of questions I wanted to be asked — about my history, work, future, tastes — as the ultimate literal response to Chuck’s question, but this is what happened instead.

The truth is, I tend to put forward that request for questions when I’m feeling trapped in my house, pining for human contact. I want to be asked the sort of questions that start conversations. I want to converse. I want some indication that you can see me, sitting here, even though you can’t. Not really.

But also, I want to be asked about the language.