Being half-finished with one, I can say with assurance that it is not all-downhill once you reach that point.

"Half done" (or "three-quarters-done," or "almost finished") often means you've finished the parts of the work that you consider enjoyable. After that, I (and others, I've observed) often find that motivation becomes a problem. Work slows down and/or you find you can't resist expanding the "fun" parts of the work -- often in ways that also increase the volume of not-fun stuff that you have to face. Maintaining resolve gets harder, and you enter "keep your eyes on the prize" territory.

How's that for a life lesson learned from plugmaking?

@dr--trowel, on Nov 5 2006, 05:38 PM, said in Why a TC:

or "almost finished"

You don't know exactly to which point that "almost" extends, but I do, and it's sometimes quite a challenge

I personally don't have an opinion that differentiates between fun work and not fun work; it all depends on my mood at the time-- sometimes I love to do graphics, sometimes I highly dislike it, and want to work on storyline. Other times I just like making resources, or fixing ResID's, or debugging. I know that this is almost entirely me though; I don't know if there are too many people with the same opinion. However, it's not "fun" or "not fun" that puts up barriers for me getting work done, or whether or not I'm motivated (because I'm really lucky in that way and always motivated to do something), but basically whether or not I have the time in between the other aspects of my life.

I think doing a TC can be really similar to writing, except a TC uses a team. However, the basic principle, at least in this situation, is the same. I like to think of it like this: A lot of people want to make a TC, just like a lot of people want to write a novel. Some people just start a novel and don't finish it, just like many do with TCs. However, I think that making a TC is more like writing a series of novels: writing a single novel is similar in workload to making a relatively large expansion, but to get a TC done, you have to be willing to stick with the same thing for a long period of time, and you have to be motivated (yes, I'm always motivated in plug-making, but not always in writing), and the most important thing (at least to me) is that you have to LOVE to do it. A TC is a pretty big commitment, and you don't make pretty big commitments (or at least you shouldn't) anywhere in life unless you have a good reason to enjoy it. So, in order to make huge, huge plugs, you have to love making plugs-- a lot. This is ESPECIALLY the case since TC's have no financial pay-off at all, at least not directly (a huge project like that on your resume apparently looks nice though).

Anyway, that's all I have to say for tonight.