{"id":228,"date":"2010-01-10T09:35:56","date_gmt":"2010-01-10T15:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ilsajbick.com\/?p=228"},"modified":"2010-01-10T09:35:56","modified_gmt":"2010-01-10T15:35:56","slug":"lost-in-the-clouds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ilsajbick.com\/?p=228","title":{"rendered":"Lost in the Clouds"},"content":{"rendered":"

A friend of mine recently complained about the show Lost<\/em>: “It just seems like they don’t know what they’re doing.\u00a0 Nothing relates.”<\/p>\n

Well, this might be true, but I’d suggest that for a television show with a shooting schedule, stars to hire and renewals to worry about . . . the writers probably DO have an idea of where they’re headed.\u00a0 Are there story threads that have meandered and petered out?\u00a0 Sure.\u00a0 But I have a lot of sympathy\/empathy for writers — wonder why?– and I’d suggest that what looks like a\u00a0 meander is part and parcel of a work-in-progress.<\/p>\n

The show’s producers have acknowledged, for example, that the character of Ben Linus was initially supposed to be around for only a couple episodes.\u00a0 The thing is, Ben grew on them and opened up another story avenue for them to follow–so they did.\u00a0 Has that changed the story that might have been?\u00a0 More than likely, yeah.<\/p>\n

I can understand that impulse, though.\u00a0\u00a0 The book I’m working on now has taken the weirdest turns; things occur to me that I hadn’t thought of before I started–and I started with a pretty detailed outline and a finished draft!\u00a0 Now, in the throes of another rewrite–the first just didn’t gel and while it was “okay” it wasn’t what I wanted or was after–I thought of a complication the other day that made the book way more interesting to me but also changed what must happen.\u00a0 Now I’m simply writing my fingers off, hoping to make a certain, self-imposed deadline (gotta have those or else you’ll never get done).<\/p>\n

Will this Ben-equivalent be the key to making this thing go?\u00a0 Hope so.\u00a0 But I do believe that writing is what Stephen King once said about his own approach and process (and I paraphrase): Writing’s like piloting a 747.\u00a0 You take off and you pretty much know where you’ve got to land and there are probably landmarks along the way . . . but, sometimes, when you’re lost in the clouds, you just gotta have faith, follow the path, and hope like hell\u00a0 the runway’s still there when the clouds melt away.<\/p>\n

Happy flying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend of mine recently complained about the show Lost: “It just seems like they don’t know what they’re doing.\u00a0 Nothing relates.” Well, this might be true, but I’d suggest that for a television show with a shooting schedule, stars…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ilsajbick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ilsajbick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ilsajbick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilsajbick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilsajbick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=228"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilsajbick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":234,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilsajbick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions\/234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ilsajbick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilsajbick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilsajbick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}