The Control Continuum

How important is being true to one's own vision? How faithful can one even be?

Being true to oneself is the only way to create truthful work
V.
The writer understands the subtexts and themes and intricacies the *least*, because she is too close to the work to see it clearly.

I've worked over the past six months or so to be totally myself in my writing, readers be damned. Not that I threw all structure, grammar, or pragmatism to the wind... I've just tried to become more comfortable with the unknowable, even when the unknowable is my own mind. I've tried to stop trying to control *everything*, and let myself (as a writer, and my work as art) loosen up, be free, shelter from judgment-- relish instinct.

But now that I've found a novel writing groove, and a short story writing groove (finally!), I've got to make this claymation.

The claymation's been sitting in my head for months and months, and now that I've got people who want to see it, I've finally got to finish the damn thing. And it's bizarre to have full control over an entire production like this.

1. Find the idea
2. Write the script
3. Create the clay creatures
4. Build the set
5. Film
6. Edit
7. Soundtrack
8. Get it out there

I'm on the tail-end of #4 right now, and it's suddenly hitting me that even if I *don't* like it, I'm in total control of this project-- even down to the production values. The (lazy) demon on my shoulder says, "cut a few corners-- who cares?" The (masochistic) angel on my shoulder says, "You'll care, if you're going to show this to anybody, knowing it's not your best possible work."

The control issue is bizarre in writing, I think, because each media needs such different levels of it. On the one hand, there are short stories that are limited enough in scope that they can flourish on an absolute minimum of plot, and a maximum of whimsy. Novels require a bit more in terms of logistics, simply because they're so big-- but their logistics are all writerly. No extra lay-out of money required to help those logistics along. I think the medium that requires the MOST writing control is television.

Television writing is *incredibly* constrained; you've got a certain set of characters, a certain location, a certain basic set-up, thematic limitations, and everything's got to be done to a strict time/page/action formula (approx. 8-pg pulses), and all in about 55 script format pages.

And yes, with television writing there are certain physical concerns-- please don't expect the sets or the CGI to be fancy. Please don't require athletic feats that will take weeks to prepare. But no way you've got to stage the thing.

That's where the play/movie continuum takes over; not only have you got to write the thing with at least a novelistic level of writerly control, you've (at least as an unknown) got to actually make it *happen* in a physical way.

So on the one hand, I've taken great pains to give up control and give more say to instinct for my short story writing-- which has taken a turn for the much better. And on the other, I'm making a movie-- in which I've got to build the "actors" no less.

Why am I making myself schizophrenic? Well, because it's fun. And fascinating, to stretch those control/instinct muscles in all kinds of new ways.