April Project

I may be getting a bit ahead of myself. I still have 2 half-completed songs to finish and one more browser plug-in to write this month. But I'm already thinking what my April project should be. I've got lots of ideas swimming around in my head, but nothing jumping out.

iPhone Game
I want to make an iPhone game. Not a cross-smartphone webapp-style game, but an honest-to-goodness native iPhone game that I can give away or sell in the App Store.

I'm not so sure this, on its own, is a good project. My biggest motivation to do this is to play with Objective-C, the language used to write native iOS and OS X applications. I looked in to it a while ago; it's got some really interesting concepts not present in other language. But, as I've mentioned before, I can hardly stay motivated when my goal is explicitly learning.

There are other motivations. I want there to be more iPhone games so I can play them. It's also tempting to think that I could be the next rags-to-riches App developer and make tons of cash. Failing that, even if I only made a moderate sum it'd be nice to make money off of one my own projects, one of my own ideas, rather than explicitly making a living building other people's dreams.

Chrome App
The same thing could also be said if I wanted to build a Chrome Game. It'd really be just about that last bit though, not learning Objective-C. Somehow, this seems less appealing.


I'm hesitant to do either of these, because it seems like my motivation is in the wrong place. I don't even have a fully fleshed game idea, nevermind one that I think I'd actually enjoy playing. So all I really have for these projects is some vague desire to have something completed without actually knowing what it is I want to complete. So these projects might have to wait until I have a good game idea.


Kindle Book
Okay, so the theme might really be "I want to make money on one of these projects". But there are other motivations, too! I'd like to genuinely be published. I also enjoy writing fiction, I just tell myself I don't have enough time to really do it well.

Which absolutely isn't true, if Nanowrimo proves anything. I can make time to write a story. I just need to have it be a goal that I'm focused on.

This project also lacks a clear definition, but it's less worrying. Creativity can be like a strike of lightening, a giant shock appearing out of nowhere for an instant. More often, it's like static electricity: a bunch of smaller, almost invisible shocks that you only get by rubbing your feet up and down the entire carpet for a couple of hours. If I just try for long enough, I'll think of something interesting to write about.

But my biggest concern is keeping my project time diverse. I'm already writing daily in this blog. It's not fiction, but it's still writing. If I make it a month-long task to write fiction on top of my blog, I might get burned out from writing. And I'd rather not stop blogging just to focus my writing efforts in other areas.

Something else?
I've still got a while until April. So hopefully by then I'll have something figured out. Or I'll get inspired and do a completely different project. We'll see.