Introduction to the 3rd Draft

First Note: Pay no attention to the date stamps on this blog.
I've re-arranged everything so that the chapters appear in order as you read down the blog, and that the various drafts read in the order they are written.
Because blogger publishes new posts at the top of the blog, it was necessary to re-arrange all the dates.
So pay no attention to the date stamps.
The real dates are that the first draft of this story was written in 1999-2001. The second draft of this story was written around 2005-2007. And this blog post right now I'm writing in 2017.

After having given up on this story for about 10 years, I'm going to start fooling around with it again, and I'd like to briefly set down my reasons for doing so.

A brief history of this story is as follows:
I worked on it from 1999-2001, at which point I gave up.
Aside from the usual burnout associated with long projects, my primary reason for giving up was I began to doubt my abilities as a writer.  I felt like the basic premise of my novel was still really awesome, but that my prose was so awful that I couldn't pull it off.

While going through my old computer discs in 2004. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my prose wasn't quite as bad as I remembered it.  Okay, sure, it wasn't great.  But it wasn't quite as awful as I had remembered.  In fact, maybe with just a little bit of re-writing, it could actually be readable.

So I worked on it again from 2005-2007.  At which point I gave up.  Aside from the usual burnout associated with long projects, I gave up because I started to think that not only was my prose pretty awful, but in fact the whole premise was pretty stupid.
Bad prose could potentially be saved by re-writing, but if the whole premise is awful, then you might as well just give up.

But then, in 2017, while re-arranging my old computer discs, I started reading parts of my story again and... maybe it wasn't so bad after all.  Maybe I gave up on it too quickly.

While I was thinking this, a number of other things hit me:

1).  After reading Tonoharu, I watched Lars Martinson's video:



Lars Martinson talked about the importance of failing faster.  (Lars Martinson was himself borrowing from Extra Credits).

I was struck by the idea here that most of our artistic endeavors are failures.  But we learn from the failures.  So rather than being obsessive perfectionists about stuff, we should just get it done as soon as possible, accept that we are going to fail, and then learn from the experience.

Had I heard this back in 1999, it might have impacted my life more.  I could potentially have failed faster on this story, gotten some feedback, and used it to improve my writing.
At this point, I'm 39, and I'm accepting that I'm never going to be a professional writer.  (That ship has probably sailed.)  But I'm going to try to fail faster on this story anyway.

Part of the reason I never finished this story was because of perfectionism.  My prose was never good enough for me, so I kept trying to re-write parts of it, or I eventually gave up.
Also, on Stephen King's theory that all good writers are voracious readers, I tried to read as much as I could so that that would improve my prose, and I spent so much time reading that I didn't get around to actually writing.
Also, in order to make this book line up with the actual history as much as possible, I spent a lot of time researching the Paris Commune and Karl Marx, and  worrying if I had all the details exactly right.
This perfectionism stopped me from ever finishing the story.

A couple other things popped up on my radar.

I read American Gods by Neil Gaiman .  In the afterward, Neil Gaiman said that he knows the book was flawed.  It struck me that this is how novelists have to finish their first book.  They know it's flawed, but they just finish the thing anyway and hope for the best.

And then, shortly after that, I saw this Youtube Video from Folding Ideas:



I was struck again by how he said perfectionism is your enemy, your pet projects will kill you, just get them done as soon as possible, and move on to something else.

All of that combined made me think about this story.

I know my prose is terrible.  I know the whole premise of this story is flawed.  (It seemed like a great idea when I was 23, but now I realize how stupid the whole thing is).   But I'm going to try to finish it anyway.

In my 2nd draft, I basically started re-writing the first draft from scratch, because I realized how flawed the first draft was.

In my 3rd draft, however, I'm going to basically just take the second draft and run with it.  Yes, I know how flawed some of the scenes are.  Yes, I know how flawed the characters are.  But I'm just going to try to finish it, and then move on to something else.

There's an additional reason as well for me returning to this project.

One of the reasons I gave up on this project in 2007 is that it was consuming too much of my free time, and I was at an age where I should have been putting more of my energy into my professional development.
Writing, if it is done well, takes up an incredible amount of time.  You need to write a certain amount of words just to find your rhythm.  And then you need to read a lot to be a good writer.  Then the research, and revision, etc.  It's a hobby, but sometimes it is hard to keep this hobby in its box, and it can take over your life.

So I stopped doing it to focus more on my career.

However, now I find I'm at a stage in my life where I feel I've put so much into my career that I'm beginning to lose my own identity.  I need to carve out a space for myself.
I want to start writing again just as a form of self-expression.

But at the same time, I need to keep this hobby in its box so it doesn't take over my life again.

In reading this interview with S.E. Hinton, I was struck by how she worked through her writer's block by only writing 2 pages a day.
I'm going to adapt this as my model.

Admittedly, this is slightly paradoxical.  I'm taking inspiration from the "fail faster" videos, but also adapting a snail's pace.
But I simply don't have the time to pour all my energies into this story.  I have a full time job, and I'm also doing a lot outside of my job for professional development.
So, I'm going to try to fail faster on this story in the sense that I'm going to keep it moving forward.  I'm not gong to obsess over re-writing, or accuracy, I'm just going to keep the story going.
But at the same time, I'm only going to work on it a little bit each day, because I recognize that this is just a hobby, and that I need to devote my primary energy to my job.

From that combination, hopefully a 3rd draft will emerge.  It will probably be terrible, but at least it will be something.

The 3rd draft can be found in this Google drive folder HERE.

I've also gone ahead and finally chosen a title for this story.  (The story has never had a title.  Ever since I've set this blog up in 2004, the title of the blog has simply been "Working Title".)  I've decided to go with the title: "Tragedy and Farce."

The title comes from Marx:
Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

It's a somewhat pretentious title, and perhaps doesn't even fit the themes of the story exactly but... again, I've decided perfectionism is my enemy.  The key is to just chose something and go with it.