Here be some things that have hit home as I've hacked, slashed and spawned out a picture book manuscript every single day over the course of a month...
- Writing is so much fun. When you're in flow and blasting out crazy ideas, losing yourself in immersive worlds of your own imagination and riffing on the things you love and remoulding them to your own designs you are in a place of supreme fun. I've had a hell of a lot of fun.
- Knocking out a daily obligation - a self-set deadline - can be brutal but it ensures you stay sharp and just do stuff. It makes you make it happen. Plus it makes your precious creative urges into something more sacrosanct and essential. You can say "I'm a writer!" (or artist or conversely whatever else you apply yourself to) with more conviction than normal and the demons of doubt dissolve into the aether even quicker.
- Talking to yourself feels better when you're playing with ideas and creating stories. I feel less like a lunatic when I'm typing to an imaginary artist and directing them towards obscure movies and describing the look of an anthropomorphic monkey than I do talking to myself about mundane things like "where did I put my pen?"
- I have very little interest in telling quotidian tales. Without even doing a great sweeping assessment of the 31 stories I've typed up, I know that the majority have elements of the surreal, the absurd and the fantastical.
- I find it more of a challenge to be 'accessible' and not obscure or 'dark' though I can do it. I'll have to do that overall sweep thing but I'm pretty sure that most of the manuscripts have 'mature' matter within. The majority of tales are probably what you'd call 'cult' works.
- The nature of picture books is that they are about the combinations of words and pictures. As none of these things have pictures yet and are all about what I'm imagining they are simply seeds with potential. As such, the next problem is how I try and flog my magick beans to the people who can make 'em flower. How I make 'em believe in my magick beans and the potential amazing and awesome that may grow is another challenge that I will deal with another time when I feel ready to look at my bean collection again...
That's the next step of the aftermath of this odyssey - working out "what now?" I think I'm going to have to work that out soon because I'm feeling a void where the daily picture book writing challenge used to be. Still, I know I'm eager to work on different stuff now and write/draw/think on new things so I'll see what happens. More retrospective analysis may come later but for now, anyone want any beans?
interesting thoughts there. incredible you had the energy to keep that up.
ReplyDeletei've never been able to 'force' myself to write like this, and it's something i've gotta learn to do: did you feel like writing was a difference process when you *had* to make a deadline every day? were there some days when you just didn't feel like it? how does the material from those days stand up?
Thanks Chris! :D
ReplyDeleteEnergy: I think once you're locked into a work ethic you just ride on momentum and generate your own energy, especially if you're inspired. It's a self-fulfilling thing I think.
I definitely did feel a sense of constant 'deadline' that that only became tense when I felt that things were getting in the way of writing (mostly 'cause I was itching to create and not deal with 'real life' distractions). There were a few days when I thought "hurm, I don't like this" and so, if I didn't stop in my tracks and work on something else instead, I guess those are the ones that are weakest and don't stand up as much.
I'll have to see how many of 'em do stand up when I reappraise them all with those fresh eyes which I don't quite have yet. ;P