Sometimes, the Internet can feel like a middle-school playground populated by brats in ski masks who name-call and taunt with the fake bravery of the anonymous. But sometimes - thank goodness - it's nicer than real life.
A good game gives us meaningful accomplishment - clear achievement that we don't necessarily get from real life. In a game, you've beaten level four, the boss monster is dead, you have a badge, and now you have a super laser sword. Real life isn't like that, right?
Let me back up a little and tell you why I prefer writing to real life: You can rewrite. A novel, for example, can be cleaned up, altered, trimmed, improved. Life, on the other hand, is one big messy rough draft.
In real life, I'm so brutally honest that it almost works against me sometimes.
I don't tend to write straight dramas where real life just impinges. But because I don't, when I do, it is very interesting to slap people in the face with just an absolute of life.
In black neighborhoods, everybody appreciated comedy about real life. In the white community, fantasy was funnier. I started looking for the jokes that were equally hilarious across the board, for totally different reasons.
I have very weirdly realistic dreams where it could be real life, except it's not.
Like, if you look at Heidi Montag, who got 10 surgeries she didn't need, I think that's unfortunate. I've always been voluptuous with a big butt, but didn't have boobs, so I wanted my body balanced out. My nose was fine in real life, but it didn't photograph well, so I had it tweaked for my line of work. I'm very happy with it.
I think a lot of people mistake my confidence on stage for cockiness in real life, and that's actually farthest from the truth. When I'm on stage, I'm that confident and that cocky because I have a microphone in my hand, and there's a few thousand people staring at me. And I know they're there to laugh.
In real life, the most practical advice for leaders is not to treat pawns like pawns, nor princes like princes, but all persons like persons.