drew

I just finished 'The Making of the Prince of Persia' by @jmechner, published by @stripepress. I wrote some thoughts about why I loved it, and why it's such a rare, raw look into the creative journey: It’s great to read about the nitty gritty of creating something new as it is happening, rather than with the revisionist narrativization that so often comes with memoirs and biographies. Jordan Mechner’s journals are full of personality and life, and yet often substantive on the process too. It’s also a case for the wonders of consistent journaling. Just writing for yourself, having a conversation forward and backward in time, and maybe one day for the world too. I couldn’t help but laugh at the constant neuroses and yearning to be on another path, whether it be game development and screenwriting or San Francisco and New York and Paris or sequels and new games. It’s a lovely intimate look at the messy progress of becoming, and how sometimes we see things with remarkable clarity, and other times with hilarious hyperbole (to the positive or negative). Toward the end, I appreciated Jordan’s realization that he has rarely if ever regretted his mistakes of commission (taking too much risk), but has plenty of regrets about his mistakes of omission (being too passive). Jordan's reflection rhymes with what Steve Jobs ends his Palo Alto high school speech in 'Make Something Wonderful' with: "Now, as you live your arc across the sky, you want to have as few regrets as possible. Remember, regrets are different from mistakes. Mistakes are those things that you did and wish you could do over again. In some you were a fool (usually concerning women). In others you were scared. In others you hurt someone else. Some mistakes are deep, others not. But if your intent was pure, they are almost always enriching in some way. So mistakes are things that you did and wish you could do over again. Regrets are most often things you didn’t do, and wish you did. I still regret not kissing Nancy Kinniman in high school. Who knows what might have happened? Maybe she regrets it too …" There’s a funny line toward the end where Jordan almost literally writes, “you can just do things.” This book is, of course, about the long and winding road of doing just that: creating something from nothing—not because you were given explicit permission or because you were confident you could pull it off (although Jordan is often remarkably sure of Prince’s inevitable success)—but because every person has inside them a bottomless well, waiting to be put to page or code or film. This is a book that peels back the curtain on the magic and says, why not you, too? Thanks to @tamarawinter for sharing it with me and for helping make the 30th anniversary edition possible.