Overthinking

It is usually good to thing up. To take a step back and realize that instead of trying to solve the problem you are looking at, you should solve the problem that is causing that problem. 

I can't always do it. Last week I was making a tote for a piece of electronics and I got locked into designing it with the faceplate down. Someone had wondered aloud if it would be possible to cut a hole for the carrying handle and that got me onto the wrong track. I had it all the way up to an elaborate prototype with several blocks and a slot for the carrying handle when someone finally suggested I just flip the thing over instead.

So many times, there is that answer; "how do I fit all of these in one box?" "Well...why does it have to be a box?"

But I am not sure it is always a good approach to art.

I was just watching an article on Kingdom of the Sun. Deep in mythology, full character arcs, love story, everything. Epic. But they couldn't get it to work. Until, in a top-down shuffle that changed practically all the nameplates at the studio, it was suggested to toss all that and just push out a low-brow comedy from the few bits that were working.

The result was The Emperor's New Groove.

So I just got a developmental edit on The Fox Knows Many Things. I've known all along that what I really need is a re-write. But I've known it would be a big re-write. Worse, it means re-thinking the whole series. And as I contemplate how far I may have missed on the series, and how unfit I feel for the work of doing something different, I'm all the way up to wondering whether I should be writing at all.

The trouble is, there's no lid to this box. It keeps going up until I wonder if it wouldn't be better just to veg out in front of YouTube and go back to work Monday, trying to save enough so retirement isn't terrible.

I am reading two or three books simultaneously about the artists of the belle epoque and so many of them are driven to find the art beyond what they currently know -- and beyond what the Salon finds acceptable, the public wants to purchase, and even what their friends agree with. And, yes, not a few were chasing a dead end or a mirage.

Carl Sagan once said that to make an apple pie from scratch, you first must make the universe. I am stuck once again trying to write the next chapter for Sometimes a Fox but every sentence I contemplate immediately turns into questions about the meaning of life.

I'd work on the worldbuilding for The Tiki Stars but it is the same problem.

So...what's on YouTube?