To begin a narrative is to condemn it to an ending
Hmmm, might it be that beginning it is like inviting it out on a walk, and seeing some things together? Sure, you have to (or get to) choose a particular route that time, but there's nothing stopping you taking a different route another time.
Write, and if you don't like what you end up with then re-write or write something different - it isn't wasted time.
There's probably even some high-concept collection out there which has the same start for every short story in the book and just lets them each diverge and run their different courses. Calvino'd do it well.
Many authors recycle plots and rework them over a career. Agatha Christie springs to mind - many of her longer plots are extended, re-imaged variants of short stories she did.
Nobody can know about the perfection of the idea until it is obituarised in its imperfect actualisation.
Every telling is "just" highlighting another facet of the idea(l). The whole is bound to be more complex than any part, but that doesn't mean the parts detract from the whole. These facets are all we have, probably all we can handle. It's only a finger but it can point to the moon, etc.
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Date: 2009-11-02 04:55 pm (UTC)Hmmm, might it be that beginning it is like inviting it out on a walk, and seeing some things together? Sure, you have to (or get to) choose a particular route that time, but there's nothing stopping you taking a different route another time.
Write, and if you don't like what you end up with then re-write or write something different - it isn't wasted time.
There's probably even some high-concept collection out there which has the same start for every short story in the book and just lets them each diverge and run their different courses. Calvino'd do it well.
Many authors recycle plots and rework them over a career. Agatha Christie springs to mind - many of her longer plots are extended, re-imaged variants of short stories she did.
Nobody can know about the perfection of the idea until it is obituarised in its imperfect actualisation.
Every telling is "just" highlighting another facet of the idea(l). The whole is bound to be more complex than any part, but that doesn't mean the parts detract from the whole. These facets are all we have, probably all we can handle. It's only a finger but it can point to the moon, etc.
Not sure where the burst of optimism sprang from.