What Might Have Been
Monday, November 24. 2008
Collapsing probability curves is a depressing pastime. But that's what writing a novel amounts to.
The start of a new novel is a wondrous thing. Who knows what plot twists will happen in the journey ahead? What myriad mysteries will be revealed? What relationships will form and break, what battles will be won and lost, what entities will spring forth and expire?
I didn't, not three weeks and 35K words ago. But I do now, at least to some extent. I have made decision after decision from among the infinite options before me as I commit words to screen, constantly aware that the choices I'm making might not be the best ones. I long for the comfort of a cloud of possibilities, rather than a stark reality. It's the P in me, I guess.
Here's a NaNoWriMoPlus: One cannot waffle. To stay on track, one must suck it up, make the hard decisions, bid fond farewell to the alternatives. Pick a reality, move on. Without the looming word count ticker, I would quite likely find myself paralyzed by indecision. This phenomenon is why people don't finish books, and I acknowledge it's a trap. Notwithstanding, it's difficult to ignore.
In her NaNo pep talk from last week, Janet Fitch shared something her "therapist" had to say about this attitude: "I know it feels like you have all these options and when you make a decision, you lose a world of possibilities. But the reality is, until you make a decision, you have nothing at all." Even laying aside the general lack of use I have for this sort of "therapy," I can't completely agree with this statement.
It's true that I won't have a novel, a hard, physical thing, until I've made a whole string of decisions. But absent those decisions, what I do have is a vision. Making decisions draws a boundary around that vision, hems it in; it's a necessary part of sharing it with the rest of the world. But dreams don't like borders, and neither do dreamers.
Collapsing probability curves is a depressing pastime. But that's what writing a novel amounts to.
The start of a new novel is a wondrous thing. Who knows what plot twists will happen in the journey ahead? What myriad mysteries will be revealed? What relationships will form and break, what battles will be won and lost, what entities will spring forth and expire?
I didn't, not three weeks and 35K words ago. But I do now, at least to some extent. I have made decision after decision from among the infinite options before me as I commit words to screen, constantly aware that the choices I'm making might not be the best ones. I long for the comfort of a cloud of possibilities, rather than a stark reality. It's the P in me, I guess.
Here's a NaNoWriMoPlus: One cannot waffle. To stay on track, one must suck it up, make the hard decisions, bid fond farewell to the alternatives. Pick a reality, move on. Without the looming word count ticker, I would quite likely find myself paralyzed by indecision. This phenomenon is why people don't finish books, and I acknowledge it's a trap. Notwithstanding, it's difficult to ignore.
In her NaNo pep talk from last week, Janet Fitch shared something her "therapist" had to say about this attitude: "I know it feels like you have all these options and when you make a decision, you lose a world of possibilities. But the reality is, until you make a decision, you have nothing at all." Even laying aside the general lack of use I have for this sort of "therapy," I can't completely agree with this statement.
It's true that I won't have a novel, a hard, physical thing, until I've made a whole string of decisions. But absent those decisions, what I do have is a vision. Making decisions draws a boundary around that vision, hems it in; it's a necessary part of sharing it with the rest of the world. But dreams don't like borders, and neither do dreamers.
The start of a new novel is a wondrous thing. Who knows what plot twists will happen in the journey ahead? What myriad mysteries will be revealed? What relationships will form and break, what battles will be won and lost, what entities will spring forth and expire?
I didn't, not three weeks and 35K words ago. But I do now, at least to some extent. I have made decision after decision from among the infinite options before me as I commit words to screen, constantly aware that the choices I'm making might not be the best ones. I long for the comfort of a cloud of possibilities, rather than a stark reality. It's the P in me, I guess.
Here's a NaNoWriMoPlus: One cannot waffle. To stay on track, one must suck it up, make the hard decisions, bid fond farewell to the alternatives. Pick a reality, move on. Without the looming word count ticker, I would quite likely find myself paralyzed by indecision. This phenomenon is why people don't finish books, and I acknowledge it's a trap. Notwithstanding, it's difficult to ignore.
In her NaNo pep talk from last week, Janet Fitch shared something her "therapist" had to say about this attitude: "I know it feels like you have all these options and when you make a decision, you lose a world of possibilities. But the reality is, until you make a decision, you have nothing at all." Even laying aside the general lack of use I have for this sort of "therapy," I can't completely agree with this statement.
It's true that I won't have a novel, a hard, physical thing, until I've made a whole string of decisions. But absent those decisions, what I do have is a vision. Making decisions draws a boundary around that vision, hems it in; it's a necessary part of sharing it with the rest of the world. But dreams don't like borders, and neither do dreamers.
Jimmy Anderson on :
Seriously, very engaging. I RSS offline via Apple Mail, so I'm not always online when I read them, and thus not always where I can comment right then, but I am reading.
(and reading the comments as well via RSS - ::wave:: to CJ & RC)
Jimmy