Extension 2 stress

26 May 2005

Or maybe just “extended stress”? Either way.

I’ve got a draft due at the end of next week, but ironically I’m not worried about that so much. Of greater concern is the bundle of paper that has, for the past several months, sat relatively dormant atop a speaker in my room. So… umm… the glue is getting a workout this weekend. Note to self – buy glue.

Haphazard organisation is permitted, perhaps even encouraged – insert some rubbish about reflecting creativity here. I believe in sponteneity and a certain extent of anarchy in composition, but, in my experience, there’s little that can’t be actually coherently documented – in fact, ‘sponteneity’ generally has a catalyst, although our ability to recollect these circumstances will fail. Essentially, I’m going to prepare a document I have little faith in the authenticity of. But that’s okay, provided I do it well, and make it look substantial.

Gaps are creativity. Or something.

As for the draft that is due, I consider that to be more of a process that must be undertaken at some point, rather than anything of inherent importance. Which, it may be added, is something of an inversion of my perspective of some months ago when I first submitted a proposal. Initially, I believed the end product was ultimate, and the process was a necessary evil that must be undertaken to placate markers.

I suppose not that much has changed – I’ve just refined my viewpoints somewhat. The documentation of process is still a necessary evil, but I don’t feel like the end product is so vital. Don’t understand that as my saying “I’m demotivated”… I’m perfectly fine in terms of that.

I now respect process as necessary for the creation of complex ideas, and the shaping of direction from a bunch of (mostly) unrelated threads. Right now, however, I perceive the idea (“perceive” because it may change, of course) to have reached closure. I recognise the plot in its entirety. I could now talk any individual through the story, verbally, albeit perhaps without the same eloquence that may be achieved on paper, sans sponteneity.

Of course, the process of the writing itself refines, but… I don’t mind the idea as is. And that’s what the process is about. Ideas. Not tangible sentences, structure, semantics and implicit post-modernist (contrived) nuance, but concepts. Sometimes, concepts work better than their extrapolated cousins. Not, it must be said, in an underdeveloped way – but simply in terms of power of expression. And confidence.

I think that’s a big part of it, actually. Recognising you have an idea and only you can put it onto paper. That it won’t go anywhere from your mind, unless someone else thinks of it, at which point it ceases to be your idea. The confidence that justice can be done to a notion. Writing something that will be read, and that the author is prepared to have read. That it can be adequately represented — this is my greatest concern.

My unrelated threads are:

• a work placement
• new technology at school
• a web development proposal
• weblogs
• cynicism
• influential people/authors of related texts
• other “stuff” I’ve read, influencing style