In an e-mail I just wrote to a friend, I describe a story/project thing that I’m working on at the moment, and how it’s challenging me in all sorts of different ways on how I need to structure its narrative and form. At the end of my description of this somewhat multi-media story I’m creating, I wrote, “It’ll either be genius or a complete and utter ridiculous thing that fails on all levels. LOL.”
I laughed, but it’s true: it’ll either be something a level up in many ways from anything I’ve written before, or it’ll fail. Whether it works in the end or fails to work, I think I’m learning more from it about storytelling and writing (I think of them as different processes and activities, joined sometimes for the same purpose) than anything else I’ve written before, and that, if nothing else, feels good to me.
Have any of you writers out there reading this ever written something that required you to reassess how you go about writing a story before? What was it like for you? Can you say if it succeeded or failed? I’d love to hear what others (not just writers, but if you work in another discipline too) have experienced in their more challenging creative endeavors, whether it’s here in the comments or on your own journal. (Just leave me a trackback so I can come read it, too!)