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Crisis of Content (II)
This one will be hasty. I have to meet someone at six - a long-awaited (and dreaded) project is nearing fruition - and I want to change into some pretty clothes. Part three of this saga will therefore have to wait until I get home tonight (I also got photos back from this weekend's experiments, and I'll scan some of those - you have been warned.)
So: Unknown desires.
Last night I was reflecting on this curious phenomenon: The answers I don't want can almost always be used to obtain the answer I did want, but that's not necessarily the answer which I should want.
Whee! Clear as mud, eh?
Okay, let's try again. To choose one example of many: Suppose I write a story. I ask people for their honest opinions on the story, and - bless their hearts - I get them.
And I am invariably unhappy with all the answers I get. I can't say that to them tactfully, because then they might think I never wanted their feedback again, or (perhaps worse) I wanted them to lie to me. Besides, it's not their fault - there's nothing wrong with their answers.
The problem is that I was hoping for the answer I wanted - I was hoping everyone would magically love the story, agree that it was perfect, and thus spare me the pain and heartache of rewriting the thing, perhaps turning into something completely different and thereby losing the original idea forever. I was hoping someone would read this and say "This is great, we must publish this immediately." I was hoping, in short, that it would be easy. Because writing something once is easy - often amazingly laughingly easy. Writing something twice is quite hard.
You see? From the answers I'm not happy with, it's possible to deduce the one I really wanted.
But ... that answer wouldn't be the best for my needs. If it were always easy, if there were no struggle, I wouldn't learn anything. The answer I want is not always (not usually) the best answer.
As I say, that's an example. I didn't have a real story or project in mind. And one of the reasons I didn't have a real project in mind is that lately - say, for the past three months - this process hasn't been working right.
Instead, what's been happening is that I get feedback, and I am disappointed in all of the feedback ... but when I try to deduce from that what was on my wishlist, I can't. I literally have no idea what I was hoping to get. And, worse, I have no idea what the best answer would be. Would have been.
I'm getting responses where I can see the realistic goals and the unrealistic ones, all in a row ... but none of them seem to match what I was shooting for.
It makes me crazy. How can I want something and yet not know what I want?
One of the reasons I am working on this interactive-fiction stuff right now (and boy, is it melting my brain - I think that's another reason I had a Visual Interlude this weekend, to get away from the interactive project) is that with it my goals are modest, known, achievable. It's not setting out to be Great Fiction - it's a thrill ride, plain and simple. It's not aimed at publication, because it's web content. It's doable, because I know what I want it to be.
With the novels, I do not have the pleasure of making that statement. I have received so much input - and it's all been very useful, believe me! But it doesn't help me aim. I don't know what these novels want to be. I don't know what I want them to be.
There's another reason I'm concentrating on the interactive stuff as well. I'll come to that later tonight, when I finish this triptych.
© Columbine
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