End of an Era

I remember once reading that we knew things were changing when we first started hearing Satisfaction as elevator music. It's true, too.

Each generation grows up and eventually grabs hold of the reins of production and culture. The music *we* grew up with becomes soundtracks, and people our age are the ones writing TV shows and movies, we're the ones now producing plays and writing books, and our voices are heard.

I was pretty damn happy when that happened. It was as if we'd been recognized. What never occurred to me is that it wouldn't stop with my generation, but that following on our heels was another one who wanted their say.

And another. And another.


This foot in the door of culture is a curious thing to think about. We first get a show or two (we always had the music), then become the majority of mainstream, then start to ease out, stage left. Like the paper millionaires during the dot-com boom, we think it will never end, but it does. And not with a bang, but a whisper. Soon what we think of as cool becomes increasingly suspect, then irrelevant, and finally retro.

Youth has its way. It always does. Just not as quickly as we ever want it when we're young.

(writing in more)



I received a suggestion for TRE that's put a whammy on my rewrite. I've been spending the past two months or so rewriting the last version, but someone wanted to see the original NaNo draft just for comparison purposes. I was able to oblige, but didn't look it over.

You see, everything I'm writing now is much better than what I wrote in the past.

Anyway, it was suggested, sort of, that what I do is rewrite from that draft. That first draft had "a lot of good stuff" in it that's been long forgotten, and I made the mistake this weekend of looking it over for the first time in years.

Oh fuck. I have no idea what to do now. I can't even consider that orig draft. It's not as bad as I feared, and is much cuter, but I can't bear to think about what would be involved in rewriting it, or even if it needs it. It's painful, not in a horrid writing, but emotionally, to see that awkward effort.

I'm hoping that what's been removed in the past few years is still in there, but invisible. That the ideas, if not the words, are still there. That I haven't irrevocably ruined my work.

What's funny (to change the subject) is that I've yet to read a perfect book, even though that's what I think I need to write. I can find in everything I read scenes that I consider unnecessary, problems with characters or unresolved issues, and they seem like much bigger deals in my writing than they are in others. Yes, I need to make my drafts as good as I can, but I need to remember that my writing can't be like anyone else's and that everyone else's isn't perfect, either.

Good writing, even great writing, can still have flaws.