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The Expressive Intelligence Studio blog has a new post up about the roleplaying card game Magic: The Gathering, which made me feel nostalgic in an odd sort of way. Because while I did enjoy the game in its heyday, I had a very different experience with it because I never actually bothered to learn the rules of the game. I was inspired by the art on the cards and bored by the scoring system, and so instead came up with a new set of rules entirely (which I don’t remember at all now). I taught them to my friends and we played informal tournaments with each other at home, at school, wherever.
Like pretty much everyone ever, I have a certain fascination with my childhood, largely in part because I had no qualms whatsoever about turning up my nose at the so-called rules and inventing my own. No matter how silly or irrational they may have seemed. And because of this fearlessness (or, if you like, naiveté), the artifacts of my childhood consist of horribly-drawn comics, short stories plagiarized from my favorite novels, and scripts for movies I planned to make, camera be damned. I even convinced some of my friends to participate in an original musical about gang warfare, which wasn’t a fraction as hilarious to me then as it is to me now. Sure, I might not have had the necessary knowledge to write about such a subject, being a preteen girl from the suburbs of New Jersey. Sure, I might not have been the best candidate to compose the original score, not being able to actually play any musical instruments. But who cared? I was going to write as much of the musical as I could, and rehearse with my friends as much as I could, and have a blast doing it.
While I am thrilled beyond compare that I can (fairly) confidently say that I’m a better writer now than I was at 10 or 12, and that my ideas now actually come to fruition, I feel like there’s something I’ve lost. When I used to sit down to write fiction or dream up my next Tony Award-winning musical, I was generally thinking: OMFG this is so much fun! What’s going to happen next? I think I’m going to make my main character go to the moon! And I’ll give her superpowers! Yeah! Dig it!
Now when I sit down to write, my thoughts are more along the lines of: What does this paragraph say about character? Is this sentence too obvious in revealing theme? This verb could be replaced with a stronger word.
You hear over and over again that “there are no rules” in fiction, and to an extent that’s true. There are, however, a series of pretty rigid guidelines you’d be wise to follow if you want to create a work of fiction worth reading. Lessons on character development, story arc, etc…there’s a reason why there are so many creative writing programs out there. But it’s wrangling with these “guidelines” that’s the problem. You can get caught up in them and get distracted from the story you’re actually trying to tell. Or at least, I can.
I guess that’s why I’m fascinated now with experimental forms like flarf, sunbathing teeth, microfiction, and whatever else the Internet is churning out these days. Because many of these new forms revel in breaking the rules, it’s more or less a creative free-for-all. In a good way. I want to write good old-fashioned novels, sure, but I’m realizing that there’s a sort of freedom you get with these experimental forms, when you bend the rules (or disregard them entirely) and don’t worry about being “good” in a traditional sense. Or, sometimes, don’t worry about being good at all. Because I think that that fearlessness, or naiveté, or whatever you want to call it, is too important a part of the creative process to leave behind in your childhood.
There was definitely some kind of unbridled optimism and passion for and within the genius we supposedly harbored in our young selves. This generally diminishes as we grow older and see more of the world, receive more criticism and take a few more falls. Usually, by the second year of college – the artist is sufficiently “broken,” or as many of us see it, finally practical and realistic about our abilities and life goals.
Of course, there are the occasional people who slip through the “breaking process” and wander haplessly into a world of delusion even when they’re well into their thirties and forties and so forth. I’ve seen this in a former roommate – 21 years old, 5′2″, with a face looking like “Strega Nona” (I’m going to hell for saying this) who would practice her runway walk up and down our foyer in a pair of heels and lingerie so she’d be ready when Valentino hand picked her from a crowd to model his Fall line. She said it without the least bit of sarcasm which stunned me into a silence on the topic that lasted for the remainder of our lease.
While there are plenty of people out there on both ends of the spectrum, I think this once again comes down to the idea of striking a balance. We obviously can’t be completely delusional like my former roommate – but a touch of optimism and hope for ourselves can sometimes go a long way. The people most critical of themselves are usually the ones who have been harboring that secret genius who’s waiting for its big break.
This is fantastic and exactly what I needed to read this evening. I recently cleaned out my house for a cross country move, and adult me was stunned and moved to tears by the boxes and boxes of started/unfinished journals, fanfics, musicals, graphic novels, scripts that young me had taken such pleasure in.
The phrase “broken artists” used by the above commenter is smart and right on the money. Second year of my acting bfa program? well, wouldn’t you know it, exactly the time I realised that obviously any natural talent or instinct or passion I had had were incorrect, and I must throw them all out… to be replaced with something that never actually arrived.
Broken Artists’ Rehab Center anyone?
Thanks so much for this!
I think I may go spend a little time with that fanfiction character I used to have such a crush on…