The Wind Waker Book
Nov. 10th, 2022 07:49 amMy proposal for a book about The Wind Waker is good. I mean, it's really good. Not only is it well-written and well-organized, but it's clear that I'm 100% prepared to write about this game and 100% onboard with the format of the Boss Fight Books series. I'm active Twitter mutuals with a few of the people involved with the press, and I've published professional reviews of both individual books in the series and the series as a whole. I have been preparing to write a book about The Wind Waker for this specific press for years, and I think it shows.
At the same time, I need to accept that my proposal probably won't be picked up. The press has to make money, and I'm just... not famous. Not famous on Twitter, not famous on the internet, and not famous in real life. I wish that a good idea and a solid background were all it takes to write a book, but I don't think anyone is going to get excited about opening the door for a quiet shut-in college professor who isn't particularly photogenic.
There's also a gender bias. I don't think it's overtly WE HATE WOMEN (or WE HATE NONBINARIES or whatever), but rather a more general attitude that the concerns of communities that aren't primarily men are not worth reading or writing about. To give an example, speedrunning fandom is absolutely worth multiple articles and even entire books, but something like the ongoing (mega ultra popular) Linked Universe fancomic will never even have an article written about it for Kotaku despite being a genuine subcultural phenomenon.
It was good to write the proposal, and it was good to submit it. But I need to move forward under the assumption that I'm not going to receive a positive response. Or any response at all, in all likelihood.
What I'd therefore like to do is write the book anyway. I'll write it a bit at a time while posting segments on Tumblr - they're really interesting and well-suited to social media, I think! Once I have all the words, I can then figure out what to do with them. There are so many good venues for writing about games these days that I think I can probably find a good home for a few essays. And then, if I'm feeling ambitious, maybe I can Kickstart my own modest publishing project.
At the same time, I need to accept that my proposal probably won't be picked up. The press has to make money, and I'm just... not famous. Not famous on Twitter, not famous on the internet, and not famous in real life. I wish that a good idea and a solid background were all it takes to write a book, but I don't think anyone is going to get excited about opening the door for a quiet shut-in college professor who isn't particularly photogenic.
There's also a gender bias. I don't think it's overtly WE HATE WOMEN (or WE HATE NONBINARIES or whatever), but rather a more general attitude that the concerns of communities that aren't primarily men are not worth reading or writing about. To give an example, speedrunning fandom is absolutely worth multiple articles and even entire books, but something like the ongoing (mega ultra popular) Linked Universe fancomic will never even have an article written about it for Kotaku despite being a genuine subcultural phenomenon.
It was good to write the proposal, and it was good to submit it. But I need to move forward under the assumption that I'm not going to receive a positive response. Or any response at all, in all likelihood.
What I'd therefore like to do is write the book anyway. I'll write it a bit at a time while posting segments on Tumblr - they're really interesting and well-suited to social media, I think! Once I have all the words, I can then figure out what to do with them. There are so many good venues for writing about games these days that I think I can probably find a good home for a few essays. And then, if I'm feeling ambitious, maybe I can Kickstart my own modest publishing project.