Elliot reviews a review

I always find the blank canvas of a word document to be intimidating. Saying that first sentence out loud just sounds stupid. The blank canvas, as if this is some world-altering essay I’m trying to write here. You can fill it with anything, more likely crap than anything else. I always try to have a plan with my writing. I want to go somewhere. Sometimes, I’m successful. I feel like I’ve taken you somewhere, a journey to some destination. Often I find myself falling pretty short of that goal. Most of my writings are reviews for video games, so, as you can imagine, very top-notch stuff.

I have always enjoyed writing. The idea of being able to make a living off of something I have written has been my dream for, well, forever. In high school I wrote for my school newspaper, becoming the edition-chief my senior year. Again, a feat I am impressed by, but not something I have ever bragged about, my imposter syndrome is too real to allow for that. Still, it is something I enjoy, and writing for Gaming Nexus has given me that outlet of creativity I didn’t know I needed.

The rules for reviews are simple, straightforward, and typically yield the results I am looking for. 1,200 words for a review is nothing. At first, I found that number to be intimidating. After a year I laugh at it. Most of my rough drafts are near 900 words before I even begin to write.

If I’m playing a game that I have been looking forward to, or know about before the release I will work on the review before playing the game. Usually it’s a story, something about me or my life and how it relates to the game. A childhood memory, a sequel to a franchise I love, or a remake of something I’ve played through before. I like to establish some credibility with my review, I know what I’m talking about, now let me prove that to you.

After that I start to play the game. I always aim to finish a game, and again, varying degrees of success. Most of the time I have the review done before I see the credits roll. As I play I’ll add a note into my word doc to help give me an idea of what I want to talk about. I try very hard to stay away from generic paragraphs, do you really care about the music, or the frame-rate to a game, especially if I don’t notice or care about it?

Once I finish putting down what I want I begin at the top. I reread the whole review, out loud. Reading what I have just written out loud might be the best advice I can give. I find that I use several different tenses when I read out loud. By the time I’ve finished that I’ve added a few hundred, or even a thousand, extra words to my review. If I feel like I am too over I will start to cut. I try to just let my editor cut what he wants. He’s a guy I’ve known for a while, worked with at one point, and I trust his judgment completely. He has always turned my words into something manageable. The best is hearing back from him about, any positive words of affirmation he has for the review carry more weight than just about anyone else.

The only “real” tool that I use in my writing is Grammarly. I pay yearly for the premium version, something I feel that I’ll do for the rest of my life. The best part of Grammarly is noticing that I constantly make the same writing errors, usually a missing comma, and learning from those mistakes. When I see a Grammarly error highlighted in my writing there is a good chance I already know what writing rule I broke, and how to go about fixing that problem.

I once had someone steal one of my reviews. Word for word. People were mad, upset, trying to get him kicked off Steam for the review. Looking back at it now, nearly a year after the incident I too am upset. He stole my shit. But at the time, I couldn’t believe it. Someone actually thought that something I wrote was good, or at least good enough, to pass it off as something they had created. I wasn’t mad, I was ecstatic. How cool is it that someone wanted to copy my work?

So how do I feel about my writing? Overall I like it. I do find myself rereading passages I found to be funny. I am not one of those people that goes around telling people I wrote this or that. I’ve told no one about this idea I’ve just had, and don’t have any plans to either. It’s my thing I’m trying. Maybe one day I’ll share this with someone, but that’s not today.

The biggest or hardest part is the imposter syndrome. It’s next to impossible to not feel inadequate and subpar when I compare my writing to anyone else’s. I have automatically assumed you know what you are doing better than I do. Over time I have learned that I’m not terrible at writing, I just don’t do it enough.

I’m not terrible at writing, I just don’t do it enough. That’s what I am going to do here. One essay at a time. Come along, let’s see if I come up with anything good, shall we? Thanks for coming along, and again, thanks for taking the time to read any of this nonsense. 

Reading a review I wrote 10/10 need more of it. Reading a review someone else wrote 3/10, I'll read the last two paragraphs.