Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #44 - Making Magic

Episode Date: July 26, 2013

Mark Rosewater talks about Making Magic, his column on DailyMTG.com.

Okay, I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so I do these ahead of time, so sometimes it's hard to plan. But, if my math is correct, sometime somewhat recently, I just wrote my 600th column of Making Magic. Okay, technically I had my 600th week, since not every week I write a column. But, anyway, 600 weeks is still quite the accomplishment. I have figured out that I have written 2 million words in my column. 2 million words, which is pretty impressive in the sense that I don't know how many people in their life write 2 million words, and I managed to do it just about designing magic in this column. So yeah, today I'm going to talk a little bit about my writing in my column, and I don't know, just share some stories and talk a little bit about the ins and outs of doing a column.

So, let's do a little background. I've talked before on the podcast about how I got my foot in the door at Wizards, and that was through writing. And puzzle making, I guess. But pretty much my start at Wizards had to do with my writing. My background is writing. I'm a pretty strong writer. And I was able to turn things in on time, and I came up with good topics.

And so I ended up writing a lot of stuff in the early days. Eventually, by the way, or pretty early on, I had a magic puzzle column called Magic of the Puzzling. Then I started writing a column that was an answer column called Magic Tricks. I had some fun in that column, for those that ever read that. I would tell this story that I would interweave my answers. Like, rather than just give the answers, I would weave the story that was just a silly story, kind of a soap opera thing. It's where I introduced my evil twin, and you have to read it, I guess. It just was me being extra silly, and there was this kind of soap opera plot intertwined through which I would then explain the answers to the puzzles.

Eventually, once I got to Wizards, I started writing a column called Insider Trading, which was, it was just a column where I would tease things, and the flavor of the column was I was like, you know, while I worked inside, I was one of you guys on the outside, and I was like a mole on the inside feeding you information. I don't know if that made any sense, but that was the original idea of the column. And then, when I became the editor-in-chief, I started writing the front, I don't know what to call it, but like the letter from the editor or whatever, and it's called Mark My Words. And eventually, I think those are most of my columns. I wrote, I wrote one or two other little things.

I wrote some stuff online for, um, the sideboard and, uh, but anyway, we got to the making of, uh, matchofthegathering.com slash daily MTG. Um, so what happened was when I was putting it together, I knew I wanted some inside columns. Um, and I knew I was interested in doing one of them. Um, I decided that I wanted a design column and a development column, and from day one, I knew I wanted to write the design column. So one of my things right now is that I have written about magic continuously longer than any other person, because I go back to 94 writing, and I've been writing continuously since

1994. I also believe I have written the most words about magic, although Mike Flores might... If anybody beats me, it's Mike Flores. I'm not sure. He and I have both written so much that I don't think anybody wants to spend the time to go and count the words.

And not everything we've written is readily available on the internet, so even if someone wanted to do the task, I'm not sure. So anyway, I'll just say Floris and I are tied in that we both have written some crazy number of words on magic. But so the idea was I wanted to do a design column. And so one of the things that was important to me was that each column had a purpose. And so the purpose of a design column. And so one of the things that was important to me was that each column had a purpose. And so the purpose of the design column was to sort of capture the essence of design. And so it was very important to me that the column itself kind of mirrored how I wanted design to be presented. And so I definitely wanted design to be thought of

as being creative. I wanted design to be thoughtful. I wanted it to be something which could be explained. I wanted people to understand that there were rules we followed, but we broke our rules sometimes. And I really wanted the column to sort of walk people through what we do. And one of the things that I've discovered is that I write a weekly column on design, on game design. That's a very rare thing, because most people who do game design don't write about it, just because I'm lucky to have a place where people let me write about what I do and believe in my philosophy of sharing it with the public. Because one of the things I believe is that magic is a better game

for its makers interacting so closely with the players and that I like explaining why we do things. Because sometimes you go, oh, I might not have seen that, but you walk me through it and you get some appreciation for things that you would not get appreciation for. And likewise, it opens up a two-way conversation where we get feedback, and that feedback's very valuable for us learning what worked and didn't work. Okay, so today, I'm going to talk about the making of my column, and I feel like there's a

bunch of different kinds of columns I write. I often say that writing my column is much like making cards, in that I have many different audiences that I'm addressing. That, you know, I'm on people often call the mothership, you know, magictheater.com slash dailymagicmtg is, hey, we're the man, you know, we're the people who make the game. And so we have access to behind the scenes information that nobody does. And so, you know, I'm writing a column that nobody else could write, which is a huge...

Like, one of the biggest problems about writing about anything, but, you know, magic, let's say, is just trying to get a take that's your own. I mean, the two big things about writing, by the way, writing a column is, one, you have to have a distinct take that's your own, and you have to have a voice that's your own.

Now, the good news for me is, because I've written a lot, I found my voice as a writer a while ago. And so, you know, that's one of the hardest things is, I talked about this, I did an interview long ago where I said that I think if you write a column and people could just take your name off it and put somebody else's name on it and no one would know, then, like, what are you doing? You know, that part of what you want to do is you want to stand out and make a claim that's your own. Part of that is content.

Part of that is presentation. Content, I'm lucky because I'm doing something no one else could talk about. So when I talk about magic design, I mean, you know, the closest is the development column and I overlap in areas. But I'm really writing about stuff that's uniquely to my own. And then presentation, you know, I've been writing a long time. My background is in writing. In fact, of all the skills that I have, I use in my job, writing is the one that goes back the farthest. I've been writing the longest. And so it's true back in the day, but you know, I, I wrote different kinds of things than I write now. Um, but like I said, I've, I've written 2 million words, uh, on literally just in the

column making magic. So I have some expertise, uh, to, to, I put in my 10,000 hours that they say, um, uh, because, um, Malcolm Gladwell in the book Outliers talks about how to become an expert at something, you need to put in 10,000 hours of constant feedback, which my writing, I believe I have. Okay, so let's talk about the different kind of columns. So some of the columns I do are the regular meal columns, which is preview columns, or I do card-by-card, where I talk about stories. preview columns or I do card by card where I talk about stories or

there's just a lot of like, you know, hey, this is, the site is there to make sure you guys know about upcoming stuff and some of my writing is just doing that, just previewing things. But some of my writing I get to stretch a little bit and I get to, you know, sometimes I do sort of what I'm there for and sometimes I

stretch a little bit. And one of the things I like as a writer is that I've had the opportunity to do a giant swath of different kinds of writing. So, for example, sometimes I've been able to really go a little more out there. So let me talk about some of my more out there columns. So the one that gets the most mail or got the most mail was a column called Elegance. And what Elegance was is it was a column with a very elegant idea. But, and this is an interesting thing, people don't realize that Elegance is actually a two-part

article. Two weeks after Elegance, I wrote another article talking about Elegance. And in that article, I explained what I was up to in Elegance. And I think a lot of people who read Elegance don't go read the article after it. I think it's called A Response to Elegance. Or an Elegant Response. An Elegant Response. But anyway, it was a column in which you got there, and it was a 50-word column in which every word hyperlinked to a 50-word column.

And that column was beloved and behated. Yes, behated is a word I invented. And it was interesting. It really, really slipped people down the middle. Some people, it was the best article I've ever written, and some articles hated it. Hated, hated, hated, hated it. But I feel a lot about my articles like I do about my car design, in which, like, one of my favorite sayings is,

if you make something that everybody likes but nobody loves, you will fail. And my column is the same way. I would much rather make columns where some people absolutely love it and others don't like it at all than just make a column where everyone goes, eh, you know, it's okay. I want to sort of get some passion out of people. And elegance was definitely me trying to do something. But once again, if you go

look at elegance and you haven't before, you gotta read the article two weeks later because I was up to something. Like I said, I'm not afraid to experiment. I did another article. Some of the articles I have to be careful not to talk about because some of the point of the article I did called Mons Made Me Do It, where the fun of the article, if I tell you what I did, it misses some of the fun of it. So go read it. I don't want to tell you what I did. I did an article called

80,000 Words, where I did a tour of the the building and the whole article is 80 pictures of me. 80,000 words. A lot of people don't get that. So it's 80 pictures because a picture is worth 1,000 words. Thus it's 80,000 words. A lot of people didn't get that. But anyway,

I even went back and did an annotated version where I did the director's cut where I explained each of the pictures. But it's just me giving a tour of Wizards, me and a little whiteboard where I did the director's cut where I explained each of the pictures. But it's just me giving it to our wizards, me and a little whiteboard where I write things on it. I also did a choose-your-own-adventure pretty early on

called A Day in the Life, because a lot of people had asked me what it's like being at Wizards. And so I did a choose-your-own-adventure, which was fun. It was very accurate of my day at the time, although it was a long, long, long time ago. So it's not accurate of my current day.

This is back when I was, I think I was a designer at that point, but I might have even been a developer, not yet a designer, although I think I was a designer at that point. I was clearly not a head designer yet, that's for sure. The other thing that I've done is I've made a bunch of sub-type articles. Here's how you can tell that I've written my articles so long that I have sub-branding. Like Making Magic is the main brand, I've done some sub-brands. So let me talk about a few of my sub-brands. Okay, so there's topical blend. So in college, I did improvisation.

For those who don't know what that is, it's when you get up on stage and you say to the audience, okay, I need you to give me a relationship, a place, whatever. You ask the audience for input. And then you make a scene based on the audience's input. And the fact the audience knows that you're making it up is, they gave you the input. You couldn't you make a scene based on the audience input. And the fact the audience knows that you're making it up is they gave you the input. You couldn't have had a scene already. They gave you what to do with. And I love improvisation because I like, I enjoy

the kind of, you know, thinking on your feet and being fast and making stuff up and, you know, being spontaneous. And I enjoy that. And so I really enjoy doing improv. So I was trying to kind of get an improv feel to my column. I wanted a challenge and I thought like, okay, so the idea of Topical Blend, in case you've never seen one, is I asked the audience for a list of magic topics and a list of non-magic topics. And then I take the top vote gatherer in each category and I blend them together. So the first topical blend I did, the topic was the 10 biggest design mistakes you've made

and the non-magic topic was girls. So I wrote an article, topical blend number one to air is human, which talked about my dating life and compared my foibles in dating with my mistakes in design. And the interesting thing is, it is one of the best articles I've ever written. Maybe the best article I've ever written. It's up there.

And I never would have gotten there without me experimenting like this. I never, ever, ever would have gotten there. And so I like the fact that I was willing to stretch a little bit, and I feel like the end result was something that was truly special. So topical blend number two was designing a sixth color, and Mark Rosewater's Bat Bleep Insane, which was a thread. There was a humor site called My's Tings

that used to do a lot of humor, and they used to have a thread that would pop all the time where, you know, Maro is Bat Bleep Insane. And so anyway, that one. And so my article, which confuses a lot of people to this day, was when you went to the article, instead you went to the forums of what looked like a MyTames forum

where instead of reading the article, you read people responding to the article. And then I read snippets of the article that people would quote, but the point was the article itself was people responding to the fake article that didn't exist. And that concept confused people. I got, it was a little out there. I liked it.

I thought it was a very good article, but it was out there and it confused a lot of people. My third topical blend, oh, by the way, the name topical blend, my wife came up with that. We were looking for a name for the sub-brand for the column and my wife came up with it. We were looking for a name for the sub-brand for the column, and my wife came up with it. I really like it. Also, by the way, the sign that it's something interesting is that I've had numerous other people do topical blends.

That's a sign to me of success of something. Other people said, oh, I'm going to do that. And Gavin Verhey did one. And did Jay Mulder-Selzer? Someone who took over my column for one of our Switch columnhey did one. And did Jay Mulder-Salazar? Someone who took over my column for one of our Switch column weeks did one. And I think a few people have done them on other sites. But anyway, by the way, I'm honored the fact that other people would try to do it. From a writing standpoint, by the way, it's very interesting.

And I mean, any writers out there that like a challenge, it is a nice challenge. And I mean, any writers out there that like a challenge, it is a nice challenge. My third topical blend was my top ten favorite creatures in magic and Dungeons & Dragons, which I felt was a little too easy, so I stretched a little bit. My fourth topical blend, is that the one I did, was about magic. Not the game magic, but like poof, you know, like rabbits out of hats. And what was the, because I was a magician in my youth, so I talked about being a magician in my youth. What was the crossover topic?

Anyway, all these are, everything I'm talking about, so every 100 columns, and ideally I should have just written one from your time, I do a thing called 100 and counting, and then 200 and counting, 300 and counting, where I review, last 100 columns, and I give them a grade to 1 to 5. Oh, people always ask this, by the way. Why? Where are the 1s? Where are the 2s? Like, the reason that a scale has 1s and 2s is I have written 1s and 2s.

I try not to. I write them infrequently. And if I realize I've written a one or two, I rewrite it. That's why most of them are three or better. Because that's my borderline of what's acceptable. But I try to keep a scale that's true for all the years. I don't want to keep changing the scale. But since I've had ones and

twos in the past, like, well, that exists as a scale, but I try to avoid them. I haven't written a one in a while. I haven't written my 600 articles, so I don't know whether I have a one or a two, but I don't think I have a one. I haven't written my 600 articles, so I don't know whether I have a one or a two, but I don't think I have a one. I might have a two. Okay, other sub-brands.

Nuts and Bolts. So Nuts and Bolts was an article that started because I thought that people might be interested in some of the more mundane parts of the job. And it ended up shifting from that to being more of a primer about how to do design. I did, by the way, do a bunch of articles that were loosely connected. Design 101, Design 102, Design 103, where I talked about beginning design mistakes. Nuts and Bolts was a little more like, let me technically walk through how we make cards.

And I talked about design skeletons and how to fill them in. And it morphed a little bit. Originally, it was supposed to be more like, let me tell you about mundane tasks, and it more became how to do the process of making a set yourself. Another sub-brand I do is called State of Design. So when I took over as head designer,

I liked how every year the president of the United States does what's called the State of the Union, where he sort of talks about how he feels the country's doing. And I thought, oh, that would be neat for me to talk about how I felt design was doing. And what I do is I use it as a chance to look at the previous year, and I try to be critical and say, okay, what did we do right and what did we do wrong? And try to sort of get an honest take on, you know, the lessons of the year, but also the successes of the year, and sort of just look at it all.

The other thing that I guess is, I haven't sub-branded it, but another thing that I do, and I do it once or twice a year, is what I call, I even kind of loosely call them the Rosewater Files, which is, they're kind of personal stories, where what happened was I wrote the first top Files, which is, they're kind of personal stories, where, what happened was I wrote the first topical blend, and it was a real personal comment, I was talking about my dating life, I mean, they were really actual personal stories, and I said that I, people really enjoyed it, and as a writer, I said, okay, well, I like this, let me find

a way from time to time to tell more personal stories, and I'll find a way to tie them into magic. And since then, I've done a bunch of different ones. I wrote an article about life lessons. I wrote an article about things that I took from, lessons I learned from design that applied to my life. I wrote about my wedding with my wife. I wrote about my kids. I wrote about my time in Roseanne, which was a huge rollercoaster from exciting to very traumatic, you know, and I wrote about that. And so I

really like the personal columns because they show off something about me. Like, one of the things that I feel is very important is I, my goal in all my writing is that I don't want magic just made by faceless people. I feel like a lot of times, people are faced with the things that they love if they come from some faceless entity,

it's hard to bond because it's like, well, who, I don't know who that is, but that people bond with people. And I really feel like, it's like, well, I don't know what that is. But people bond with people. And I really feel like I want to be one of the faces for the game, that I want people to say, I have some faith in magic because I have some faith in Mark. And I think that it's really important. And one of the things that I've tried hard with my columns and with the website is that I don't want magic being some faceless entity.

I want it being actual people that you identify with. And I want to explain what we want. A big part of my column is I want to walk through and explain what we're doing. And at some level, I feel like we're paving new ground. There is no game company out there that spends the time and energy to explain to their audience what they are

up to. It's funny because sometimes I think players get so used to it that they forget that once upon a time people made a game and it got spit out and you're lucky if they wrote something about it. I write a weekly

column every week where I explain to you what we're doing and why we're doing it. I can't explain everything, but I explain a lot. I go into great detail. I walk you through our processes. That's a big part of what I started the column to do. Then I'm very, very happy that the column does do. I've expanded out since then. You know, since this column started,

I now do a lot of social media in addition. You know, I have my daily comic. I have my daily blog. I have a weekly podcast, obviously. So I've expanded beyond just doing the column. But the column is kind of my core, if you will. You know, they talk about how, like, Star Wars has the expanded universe.

But at the core of it is the film. At the core of my, you know, the Rosewater expanded universe is my column. It really is the heart of what I do. And in some ways, it's the most personal. I mean, not that I'm not personal on my podcast or my blog, but those are done quicker. I mean, you know, my podcast, I talk for 30 minutes while I drive to work. And my blog, I talk for 30 minutes before I drive to work and my blog, I answer stuff quickly,

you know, but, but my column, I, I take a lot more time on and I think about it and I, I rewrite and,

you know, it's the only thing that I rewrite, you know, hey, when I'm recording, I'm recording, when I'm done,

I want you to get my 30 minutes. I mean, my blog, I don't, I mean, I might proof my answer after I write it, but I'm not doing a lot

of rewriting or, I mean, maybe, maybe on a few very special questions, but most of the time I just answer the I write it, but I'm not doing a lot of rewriting. I mean, maybe on a few very special questions, but most of the time I just answer the question. So, I mean, Making Magic to me is the one that I take extra care on. I mean, I actually work at home on Fridays

because I work on my column on Fridays. It's important enough that I want to give some real, you know, really give some time to it. The other thing people ask me about is the theme weeks. Let me talk about theme weeks a little bit. So when I set up the column, or the website, I decided that I wanted every other week to be a theme week. And the reason I did that was a couple things.

One was it was a gift to the writers, which is it is a lot harder to write anything than write something. And that, if I tell you, write anything you want, it can be scary almost at times. The blank page can be intimidating. But if I said to you, write

about the circus, you know, then you go, oh, okay, well, whatever. And the other thing is, the themes force people down paths that you might not have been forced down. Much like the topical blend. I never, ever, ever would have read that article. But I'm glad I did, you know. I tell you what, Mons made me do it.

That's an article I wrote for Goblin Week. And I don't think I ever would have gotten to that column if it hadn't been Goblin Week. I was just like, I'm writing a goblin column. You know, but I did. And there have been a lot of columns that started because I was just trying to match something. Like, I did a column for Zombie Week. I don't remember the name of this one. Well, there are two Zombies Week.

The first Zombie Week one I did, by the way, was actually a fan favorite called ICC Dead People, which might be my favorite title ever of a column, Dead People, which might be my favorite title ever of a column, in which the premise of the column was that each creature type has a liaison that communicates with us to talk about their happiness or unhappiness with how they're portrayed. And Gark was the leader of the zombies, or the liaison of zombies. And the article was him writing letters to me talking about, um, the treatment of zombies. And really it was me just going through the history of zombies

and magic and talking about how they ebb and flowed. But it just had a nice spin to it. Um, I have done for a number of times, my creative writing will pop out and, you know, I've done a bunch of columns from the point of view, you know, of a, like I did a point of view of a common card when I did the Mirrodin review. I've done, I did, so I've done columns all about the color pie. I, in fact, I've done a whole bunch of different parts of the color pie. I did ones about individual colors. I did the two color pairings. And then I did one where I interviewed each color. I did that during Shards of Alara theme weeks, where, like, it was, whatever, it was Esper week,

so, you know, Esper centered in Blue. So I interviewed Blue and had Blue's own words talk about what he believed and didn't believe. And so you can tell my writing, sort of my background pops out. Like, I like writing dialogue. So from time to time,

one of the things I definitely have made one of my trademarks is putting in snippets of dialogue. I'll do that from time to time, one of the things I definitely have made one of my trademarks is putting in snippets of dialogue. I'll do that from time to time. I also have made a big deal out of using asides. I've made that one of my trademark things. I do a lot of parenthetical insides, which I like. Ooh, traffic.

So extra content for you. So, uh... so extra content for you so I don't know what I'm talking about the I was talking about I got stuck in traffic I'm like what was I talking about I was talking about writing oh from point of view columns

I do like I said yeah I like I like my parentheticals another sort of trait that I've taken yeah, I like my parentheticals. Another sort of trait that I've taken up that I like is I like sort of starting somewhere that doesn't seem like it's what this is about and slowly working your way until it gets to the point where it is what the topic is about. That comes from my writing. That comes from my film background.

That's a big trick in film where you start your story and you're like, what's going on? And then you slowly, like, things that seem disparate slowly come together. So I enjoy that. Oh, by the way, my zombie column. So I talked about how we did two zombie weeks. The first zombie column was about ICC dead people.

The second one, I had already done a column about zombies, and so I came up with the idea of doing a column about mechanics that had died but come back, and I wrote it in the style of a story in which all of our knee gets killed. I enjoyed that. I thought that was a lot of fun. That was a very different take on... That's another thing that I do now is, because we get theme weeks in which I've already done the theme week once before, I try to find new ways to approach it. You know, that I, like, oh, if I did something one way, I try to find a different way.

I mean, the thing that is important to understand is that I talked about this in my Tales from the Pit podcast, which is why do I write? Why? Because, for example, latest developments, I think Sam Stoddard just started writing latest developments. He is, if I'm correct, the sixth person to write latest developments. It was Randy, and then Aaron, and then Devin, and then Tom, and then Zach, and now Sam.

And in between, there was points where there was rotating and stuff. So why is it? Why is it that there have been six people who wrote the development column, and I'm the same guy writing all the design columns? And the answer is because I love to write. I love the act of writing. I am a writer. One of the things they say is, how do you tell if you're a writer?

And the answer is because you write and what that means is that writers just have a need to write and I understand this is one of the reasons that I do write and that there's something about the writing mindset that just you need to get things out and you need to sort of it's part of the way that you process things.

One thing that's very interesting about my column is a lot of the interesting observations I've made about magic came about me trying to explain them and put them into words and it made me realize something that I then went back and said, oh my god guys, I figured something out because I had to write about it.

And that I find writing to be an awesome way to sort of clear your head and let you sort of to look inside yourself. Another thing that's important is I feel that writing is a chance to kind of share in a very unique and interesting way, that it's a part to sort of make yourself something bigger than just yourself.

And I appreciate that. I mean, I find writing to be a great joy for me. And that's not to say it's not... So let me walk you through, how do I make a Making Magic? So what will happen is, either I... It's a theme week, so I know my topic. Or it's an off week. And a lot of the off weeks, while they might not be theme week, so I know my topic. Or it's an off week. And a lot of the off weeks,

while they might not be theme weeks, they're, like, whenever we get near a set, I have to do previews. I normally do a card-by-card right after the set comes out. So I have a bunch of stuff that I kind of do that whether or not it's a planned thing, it's, I mean, it might not be a theme week,

but it's planned. And then on the off weeks, when I'm sort of away from a set, when I can do whatever I want, I slowly build up inventory of things I want to do. And the way it works, by the way, is I'll come up with both neat

ideas for columns, and I'll come up with topics. Like, I knew I wanted to do an all-picture column, but I just didn't know. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted it to be. And then one day I'm like, oh, oh, oh, I want to give a tour. Oh, a tour would look well with pictures. Or I want to talk about my day.

A choose-your-own-adventure would be a good life in the, you know, day in the life of R&D. And so a lot of the times it's finding the right idea with the right thing. And I like to experiment, you know, elegance shows. Like elegance was not universally loved. There were ones that really liked it, but there were people that hatedance shows, like, elegance was not, was not universally loved, um, and there are ones that really liked it, but there are people that hated it, I mean, hated it, um, so here's another interesting thing, um, so one of the things about my column is, uh, I get a thread, I always read my thread, I always read my mail, um, my mail tends to be a little nicer than my thread, um, I don't know why, but my thread is a more...

They're a lively bunch. I do read them, though. I do read it every week. And, I mean, the feed... So another important part of my column, one of, like, the great, you know, gifts of my column is the feedback. And I value the feedback very greatly because part of doing my job is understanding

what the audience wants. And so part of doing that is creating a rapport with the audience so that the audience feels like they can write to me. And like one of the reasons I want to be a name and a person rather than some faceless thing is I want people to feel like they can confide in me and say what they like and don't like. You know, I want to be a name and a person rather than some faceless thing is, I want people to feel like they can confide in me and say what they like and don't like. I want people to be able to be honest and say, hey, you did such and such, that upset me, or you did this, that was awesome, or whatever.

Whatever the feedback is, I want to be able to get that, and that's really important to me. And so, anyway, I just, I had to stop short and my list with all my stuff went away, so I'm going to have to wing it from here out.

Yeah, I don't know if you guys know this, but I started making notes for my podcast because what I've learned is if I write little notes down,

then I'll try not to forget things, and if I don't, then I will sometimes, I'll park my car, I used to, early on, I would park my car

and go, oh my God, I didn't talk about success, how did I not talk about it? So now I have to give myself little notes. See, I wrote park my car. I used to, early on, I would park my car and go, oh my God, I didn't talk about such and such. How did I not talk about it? So now I'm giving myself little notes. See, I wrote a little screech earlier. See, there's little sound effects in my car. You can kind of tell what's going on.

I had someone pull out ahead of me, and I had to screech for a brake system not to hit them. So you got to, and also, if you talk sometimes, when my car, sometimes I will talk, and you kind of can tell that my attention is not 100% on my podcast. That is because I'm trying not to crash my car. Usually, it's pretty easy going. I'm on, it's all remote brain activity is doing fine.

But when accidents happen. So I do try to be safe. So for those that worry, like, I'm not paying attention. I very much actually pay attention. Luckily, I'm good at talking myself because I did improv for many years. And yeah, I talked about this in my wedding column, which is that I decided from my vows to my wife

that I didn't want to write them at a time because I wanted them to feel not rehearsed, but sort of fresh. And so I winged them. And most people like, that's what I try to explain. They're like, I'm very comfortable sort of talking on my feet. And so when you're willing to wing your vows at your wedding,

odds are you're comfortable sort of, you're comfortable winging things. But I do like having some structure in the podcast. I've learned it. I think it helps. Anyway, I've come to Wizards. So, I don't know. Today was more me trying to explain a little bit about one side of me. Making magic is definitely a very personal part of

what I do. I mean, so is card design, so is other things. But my writing is something that I'm happy that I found a place in this job to use my writing skills because I'm very proud of my writing and I feel like I have a lot to offer as a writer. And so I'm really happy that, you know, I have Making Magic and I have a place where weekly I can share with people and talk with them. And that that's...

I think it's both good for magic and it is good for me as a human being. So I'm glad that I have it. Anyway, thank you very much for listening and for those that have read the 11 years so far that I have it. Anyway, thank you very much for listening and for those that have read the 11 years so far that I've been writing. I plan to keep on continuing, so

check in and you can see me making magic every week. Speaking of that, I have to now go to work, because not only do I make magic in my column, but also at work, I'm always making magic. Talk to you guys next week.