Sometimes you find yourself with an image or a line of prose (or an entire story concept) and you just don’t know what to do with it. You work at it, poking, picking, twisting, shaping, but it never quite comes together. It’s as if the idea stubbornly remains hidden (if it’s there at all), and yet you’re sure there’s something in there that just needs tempting out. I think of these things as snippets. They usually end up stored away in a folder called “miscellaneous” or “WIP,” and few of them ever see the light of day.
Lately I’ve been thinking about snippets; all those wobbly, unrefined drawings and lines from stories I haven’t completed yet and probably never will. A lot of my favourite stories have their wobbly bits. Some of my favourite stories that I’ve written are stories that are not finished. A lot of art I like or images that grab my attention are messy, asymmetrical, or unrefined.
I’ve come to the realisation that this stuff doesn’t always have to be squirrelled away in a misc folder deep in the bowels of a hard-drive.
It’s difficult not to be influenced by my idols and people whose work grabs my attention. I find myself trying to post my work in a similar format to theirs. Theirs is always beautifully presented, always carefully pulled together. Even the “rough sketches” are geometrically immaculate and the “first drafts” are too obviously edited to be true first drafts (or “Draft Zero” as a lot of writers like to think of it: that horrendous crap that comes spewing off your fingertips before you’ve had chance to tidy it up into a first draft. Yes, that is a thing). I don’t always believe what I see, but a part of me still tries to emulate it.
I’m teaching myself to show my work more, and maybe share things that I’m not necessarily done with or massively proud of. I got into the habit of thinking that creative output always has to be finished, in final, edited and polished draft form, before anyone can see it. I’m trying to train my brain into allowing myself the leeway to show all those concepts and attempts that perhaps don’t fit anywhere. Sometimes it takes someone else to interpret something to understand that these fragmented pieces are worth reading or looking at, or might simply inspire something entirely new.
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