I couldn’t help my wife carry heavy groceries or luggage. I couldn’t pick up my baby boy without throwing out my back. I remained in constant pain, despite the advantages of my standing desk. The harder part was putting myself back together. Putting my work together was easy enough, though. I now prefer to tell up-and-coming writers that the secret to writing is habitually applying words to blank pages, in whichever position works for you. It felt unnatural at first, but I adapted.
I had no paid time off as a freelancer, so my only option was to write while standing up. I couldn’t sit, drive, or do much of anything comfortably for months.
Then I found myself on the floor, immobile and in worse pain than I’ve ever known.Īn MRI confirmed the culprits: two herniated discs in my lumbar spine. The pain shot down through my toes and swept my legs out from under me. A fiery lightning bolt pierced my lower back. I was alone at home, standing in my kitchen, waiting for a tea kettle to boil, when I coughed. Even sitting became painful, which caused me to order a standing desk and finally see a doctor, but it was too late. I needed to be more active, but I was capable of doing less and less. The trouble was that the more I exercised, the more pain I felt in my lower back, which zapped me with searing bolts of lightning whenever I jumped, ran, climbed, or swam. I tried changing my eating habits, but dieting alone wouldn’t take the fat off. I gained about 20 pounds in those two years, and I wasn’t happy with myself. Every day I woke up, put my ass in the chair, worked in my chair, ate in my chair and, for all intents and purposes, lived in my chair.Ī picture of my office from 2014, complete with baby. I spent 10 to 16 hours a day with my ass in a chair, writing - or often trying and failing to write - comic books and video games from 2014 through 2016. But it can weaken and destroy your body in practice, which is exactly what happened to your humble narrator. It was passed down to me by my Aunt Nene, updated for the contemporary generation as “the secret of writing is ass in chair.”Īss-in-chair produces results, as a method.
#The climb vr pirate professional
“The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”Īsk any professional writer for the secret of their success, and there’s a good chance they’ll respond with some variation of the above advice. Then I’m going to tell you how I fought back. And how it rapidly went downhill from there.
It’s about how my sedentary, workaholic writing habits made me overweight, and slower and weaker than I should have been. This story isn’t about writing fighting games, though. I’m not a famous writer.īut I have worked on some famous games, such as Injustice 2 and Mortal Kombat 11.