It's Dangerous To Go Alone! Take This!
My favorite video game series of all time is The Legend of Zelda.
Unlike Super Mario Bros., Zelda offered a new way to experience the game; exploration. Whereas previously I could only run from left to right in a very specifically designed level, Zelda allowed me to wander the land of Hyrule at my leisure; exploring strange caves and discovering menacing dungeons along the way.
As a learner and practitioner of writing, I find myself thinking back to Zelda often and the experiences I had as a child with that first game. The design of the game was very intentional; you could easily wander over to the last and hardest dungeon available but if you did that, you would certainly fail. You really had no chance in conquering this dungeon at the start of the game and to succeed here would require getting better at playing the game, finding items that would make your character (Link) stronger and discovering the weaknesses of certain enemies.
find myself using this same design when I write something and often I find myself at that hardest dungeon right away. Inevitably, I fail. If I sit down and try to write an article with very little preparation, research or planning what I end up with, most of the time, is a rambling, unstructured and incoherent mess.
Adventurers contemplating which direction to traverse.
“An attractive element of the gaming experience as a learning tool is that it provides opportunities for continued practice because negative consequences are not typically associated with failure. Rather, failure serves as an integral part of the learning experience (Gee, 2009; Groff, Howells, & Cranmer, 2010; Ke, 2009; Klopfer, Osterweil, & Salen, 2009). This encourages players to improve through repeated practice either by advancing within a game or replaying parts of a game. Failure with limited consequence, agency, and choice are seen as critical elements of a true gaming experience. That said, in the context of education where a game might become a required activity tied to real consequences, there could be a diminution in these key elements that may lead students to be less inclined to practice and realize some of the benefits of gaming.”
-Katie Larsen McClarty, Literature Review of 'Gaming in Education'
That’s okay though! Write that mess! Visit that impossible dungeon! Just see how it goes!
You never know; you might get lucky but mostly likely you will fail miserably. Video games, like writing, build in this mechanic.
It is okay to fail when you are composing, I give you permission!