1048: Emotion

The idea about the horizon geinttg bigger as one progresses and so making it seem like one isn't progressing at all comes from Clint George Sensei, who taught at an Aikido retreat here a few years ago (I just Googled him and found out that he was charged with sexual assault last year, which is very disturbing). It seemed like a very insightful explanation of the learning process.Working on a story is like geinttg to know somebody. One has first impressions and vague ideas about the other person, but as time goes on those ideas are either confirmed or contradicted. In both cases, one's understanding deepens.I teach college writing and I see students get discouraged all the time. It's hard for them to trust the process if they think they suck. What's even harder is trying to convince them that failure is often a useful outcome. It may feel like a waste of time and energy, but it offers many lessons, sometimes more lessons than the easy success offers.For me, what I'm coming to is a new understanding what stories I should put my energy into. In the past, I'd start any little comic story that came into my head. So my mini-title Litmus Test was all over the place. Now I have clearer ideas about what a story needs before I work on it. I'm also changing the process of how I create a story. I'm trying to do a lot more pre-work. And yes, I use thumbnails instead of scripts. I find I overwrite if I use a script and there are certain discoveries, such as ones about layout, that I couldn't come to with a script. I know that with The Raft and My Grandmother's Funeral I had ideas for page layout that came from something I saw in the thumbnails I had done. With a script, there would be nothing to see.