Culture of Success

[rowyn]

In 2002, I started writing novel-style fiction again, after a long hiatus. At that point, it had been about ten years since I'd done any serious writing: anything more than noodling with ideas and outlining a few chapters.

I remember in 2002, it was terribly important to me that I succeed this time. I drew up The Master Plan(tm) and stuck to it for years, because I knew if I stuck to it, someday I'd succeed. For some definition of success: I'd have a finished book, anyway. It worked, too. Two and a half years later, I had a finished book.

But even before then, I'd gotten into the habit of finishing things. I was GMing on Sinai, and jordangreywolf had this thing about finishing story arcs. He hated to leave characters dangling, so if he started something with one he'd work to keep the story moving along and eventually resolve it in a timely fashion. When I first started roleplaying there this rather surprised me, because I always thought of RP as something you stopped doing when it became too much work. You played when it was fun and easy, and if it got so hard to continue that it wasn't fun any more, you just quit. It's a game, it's supposed to be fun, and if it's not why keep at it? But Greywolf would bull through the hard parts, and this pattern was contagioius. After a while, I started bulling through the hard parts, too. I discovered that I liked finishing up the RP stories I'd started. I liked the sense of accomplishment, the closure that it gave to those events. Finishing things felt better than stopping them.

Now, six years later, I've internalized it. Not just the idea that I should finish things, or that I can finish them. That I will. I may take breaks and I may hit rough spots, but I don't really think "I'll never finish this" any more.

Recently it struck me what a difference it makes, to have a pattern of successes to look back on instead of a string of failures. If I look back on the whole of my life, I still have ten times as many unfinished novels as finished one, and dozens if not hundreds of more uncompleted RP campaigns. Until I met Greywolf, I never thought of a campaign as something one finished, anyway. Characters' stories went on forever, until the GM got bored and stopped running for them. BUt I don't look back that far any more; I look at recent history and regard that as the modern trend, and I assume I'm going to succeed.

And now that I assume I'm going to succeed, succeeding is a lot easier.

Overall, it's a good place to be. It's much better than six years ago, where I stopped writign for years at a time because it all seemed so pointless, when I didn't think I'd ever finish anything.

But I'm not sure it's an unmixed blessing. Sometimes I wonder what the costs are. When you think you won't finish a project, that can make you reluctant to start. But when you're sure you will, it can make you even more reluctant, because to begin is also to commit to finishing. Sometimes I wonder if I'm too stubborn now. Would it be better to say "No, this was a mistake. It was too ambitious. I'm quitting now and doing something else" instead of bulling my way through to the conclusion? Is closure really that important?

With novels I've given myself more free rein to play, to start new things without finishing the old ones. But with campaigns, where several other people are involved, I can't bring myself to do that. I need to see it through.

Comments

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Bah. I wrote up this big long email ... and then my mail service crashed. I SAVED it, at least: I saw how long the Internet logo was grinding away, and had a suspicion that I might get a "page not found" error at the end of it, so I did a select-All and pasted it into a Word document for later. But still ... I'm addicted to checking my email! Whatever will I do?! =P

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Anyway, one thing I just wanted to address was that my "ethic" on Sinai was not necessarily that all adventures must be finished: It was that at the very least, they needed closure - an exit point, an escape clause, or at least permission for someone else to pick up the pieces.

I was reacting primarily from a transition to the freeform "make it up as you go" style of GenesisMUCK to what became a more GM-based "journey adventure" pattern on SinaiMUCK. On Genesis, you show up, you talk with and interact with whomever is there, and maybe there's some Big Overarching Melodramatic Plot, but somehow it's not going to preclude you from having that tea party on Thursday (unless you suddenly get attacked right in the middle of it).

On SinaiMUCK, there were several cases where GMs would drag PCs off into distant lands of their own creation ... and then lose interest, or maybe the plot would otherwise scuttle because the GM recruited 5 players and only 4 would ever show up for a given session - and the GM refused to do ANYTHING without EVERYONE present. People often had just one PC, and if that PC was "in limbo," the player couldn't do anything roleplay-wise until that plot was resolved.

I could never actually FINISH everything, but I would try to work toward good "stopping points" - whenever possible getting the PCs back to Rephidim or some other circumstance where they could plausibly show up for "light" RP. And when I couldn't perfect that, I'd often try to work out an "escape clause": If I'm taking too long and you'd really like to be able to roleplay with someone else, JUST DO IT, and we'll sort out the details later. At least, that was the ideal; I can't say I always lived up to it - or that anybody took me up on it. (After all, if it isn't on camera and in front of a cambot, then perhaps it isn't "real" enough.)

It wasn't so much about me wanting to complete everything (though that was certainly worthwhile, too). It was just that I didn't want to essentially take possession of someone's cherished alter ego and lock it away - forbidding anyone else to pick up the story because I wasn't "done yet." (Not that I can recall any GM ever really acting that way.)

There are plenty of things I start and never finish. In fact, many times I start with the expectation that I probably will not finish - but it's for fun, or it's for the learning experience, or whatever. It's mostly just when I have made a commitment with someone else, that I don't want to come across as betraying his or her trust.

That's one reason I found "Unfinished Tales" to be a particularly liberating concept: To think! A place to start at stories, with no expectation or requirement that they'll be finished. Enjoy the ride so long as it lasts - but there's no promise that it'll be finished in timely fashion. No pledged Monday-Wednesday-Friday updates to fail to keep up with (as perpetually happens with web comics). It's done when it's done, IF it gets done, and that's fine. It gives permission to try, without making a commitment out of it. And I think that's cool, too.