DogeFight Pre-Mortem

In less than a week, I'll be writing DogeFight. It's a big project with big stakes, but strangely the writing doesn't worry me at all. What worries me is everything else.

(for a quick briefing on what this is about, visit the FAQ)

Let's take a look at my potential pitfalls:

Posting to this site

See, I foolishly rebuilt my entire site using NextJS a few weeks ago — knowing full well I was about to do DogeFight — and some of the kinks still aren't worked out. I am 99% certain I will be able to post chapters without issue, but I was also 99% certain Bitcoin would keep going up without any significant dips, and well...

Unclaimed NFTs

This is honestly the trickiest of the problems: if a particular NFT doesn't get sold before the deadline, that chapter basically exists without user input. If that happens, do I give the chapter away so it's not blank? If so, I've basically ruined all future auctions. Do I NOT give the chapter away, but ask for input on Twitter (distributing the responsibility widely)? That might kneecap the auctions too.

I'm not married to the auctions due to money stuff so much as conceptually, if NFTs don't influence the story, then a big part of the project has failed. Then again, it's a first-time experiment aimed at people who probably have no idea who I am, so slow uptake is to be expected.

Unclaimed NFTs are scary. I'm afraid I won't have time to think of a good workaround on such a tight schedule, either. FEAR.

The Gaping Void of Nothingness

It is well established that I suck at promoting myself, so this is always a big danger. If nobody knows about DogeFight, not only will there be no input, but I will essentially be writing into a black hole. I can do that, of course, but I'd really rather not. The fun part of livewriting is the interactivity, and dropping cruel and ambiguous hints on Twitter :D

Sideshow Issues

All my most successful livewriting projects have had one thing in common: a group of dedicated Smart People who answer questions and filter data before it overloads my brain. On this, I have no safety net, so I'm very much at the mercy of someone coming along and asking "why is [the hero] eating chicken strips instead of pizza?" and then I'm distracted and adding pizza to every second scene and it's just CHAOS CHAOS CHAOS and nobody likes chaos.

This one scares me, but not as much as the others. But it could still go very wrong very fast.

In Conclusion

I am not actually scared that the story won't work, because I know I have a rock-solid outline that is full of twists and turns, and when injected with user-generated silliness, it will sing. I'm also not worried about the user-generated silliness at all, because I thrive on absurdity. And I'm not worried about the wildcards either, because giving someone absolute power over my writing is what I do best. I'm genuinely curious to see how they're used — or if they're used.

Long story short: DogeFight starts on June 1, 2021. Be ready for a very wild ride — assuming none of these worries come to pass.