INSIDE TWICE - The Journey so far: Part 3
SUBSCRIBER NOTES FOR EPISODE FIFTY EIGHT:
Hello fabulous subscribers! I hope your Friday’s going smoothly and safely this week! Been a busy one around here! Orcas Island’s spectacular, dynamic public library invited me to help them out as a ‘consultant’ last fall as they started preparing for this year’s series of local library events in observation of the National Library Association’s annual Summer Reading Program. The national summer reading program has a different theme every year, and this year’s theme was ‘Fantasy Literature, folklore and mythology.’ The library was looking for someone with greater knowledge of genre fiction and its literary antecedents, folklore and mythology, and knew that I was a fantasy writer and illustrator, because I had given a talk called “At the Heart of Everything Human Is Story” at the annual meeting of Orcas’s ‘Friends of the Library’ association last winter. When they asked me to advise them about possible guests and programming ideas, I was flattered, and happy to support a truly—amazingly TOP SHELF library. (Not kidding! Amazing facility, amazing staff, and amazing array of programs and resources year round!)
Then the pandemic arrived, and the physical library—like so many other gathering places on the island—closed down for the duration. Though they have done a brilliant job of remaining active and available in all sorts of virtual and ‘distanced’ ways, I assumed at first that all the guest speakers and group events we’d started working on would just be canceled. Then I learned that they just wanted to translate all those guests and events into virtual, Zoom video events…which, no one had any real experience doing—including me. Nonetheless, I was their ‘idea guy’ and their link to most of the intended guest presenters, so I too started ‘meeting’ with them every week to help figure out how the events I had imagined could be re-imagined in Zoom format. It soon became clear that ‘complexity’ of any kind was not our friend at this juncture in global history—which, among other things—turned out to mean that in virtually every aspect, it would be faster and less complex—not to mention more reliable—just to do pretty much everything myself, rather than trying to find, corral and coordinate with some larger community of ‘helpers’ virtually in a shut down world. Which is how I more or less became this year’s summer reading program here on Orcas. The last two big guest presentation events that I’m responsible for arranging and facilitating as host-interviewer are this week! One featuring the spectacularly articulate, informative and entertaining Tina Connolly yesterday, and one tomorrow featuring the legendary author, one-time illustrator (yes!), global authority and consultant, and all round eminence, Greg Bear! It’s been a great endeavor, and a truly awesome group of people to work with. I have no regrets. …But when that is done for me tomorrow afternoon, I will have ever so much more attention to lavish on…say, TWICE—for instance! :D
And while all of that and my ongoing slate of fascinating freelance work (which I may even talk about here someday) has been jostling for position on my schedule, the THIRTY YEAR anniversary (I am trying not to think about that too hard) of the original EGA release of a Lucasfilm point-and-click computer adventure game called The Secret of Monkey Island is arriving this fall. What has that to do with me? Well, I did a good chunk of the background artwork in that now-’classic’ computer game, which has apparently developed quite a reverent following and many sequels over the years. And so, to my quiet amazement, I have gotten a sudden swarm of interview requests from freelance magazine writers and website hosts. I am currently spending hours per week in Gmail and on Zoom with writers and podcasters from New York to England, Greece and Germany. What amazes me most is how it’s possible to discuss my small part in the creation of this one game over, and over and over, and yet—amazingly—have a somehow completely different and unique conversation each time with each of these really enjoyable and interesting people! SO-MUCH-FUN! …But also very time consuming. So…I continue to get episodes of TWICE out—somehow—on time so far. But I am REALLY looking forward to some more spacious scheduling environment in which to do that…any week now…surely… :D
Ah, but that’s not what I’m supposed to be writing to you about this week, is it! Sorry. My bad. :] Let’s move on to that third and final post about my own experience of the TWICE journey so far!
During the past two weeks I’ve written about where TWICE originated and how I came to envision it as an online serial, as well as how those early expectations have and haven’t stacked up against the past year’s actual ‘on-the-ground’ reality. This week, I’d like to share some thoughts about where I currently imagine all this going from here—whether or not the actual future ends up bearing any more resemblance to my imaginings now than it has before, of course. :]
As I mentioned in last week’s post, writers, like every other living thing in the world, grow and change with the passage of time. I am not the writer now that I was when I sat down to start writing TWICE sixteen years ago. I don’t care about the same things I did then. I don’t see or understand myself or the world in anything like the same ways I once did. I *hope* that I am not only a better writer after sixteen years, but also a wiser, more experienced and informed person after a decade and a half of additional life. In a weirdly ‘meta’ way, my changes to the ‘story blurb’ text that appeared on the TWICE site’s homepage until a couple weeks ago illustrate this change. What I put there last year, as I was building the site and rushing to get it all up and running ‘in time,’ I just ‘polished’ earlier summaries of the story, which I have since realized represented more the writer I was and the story I was writing ten or twelve years ago than the one I am and am writing now. That’s why, two weeks ago, I replaced it. If you haven’t read the Homepage text since then (and, really, why would you have?) you might want to give it a glance. It’s much SHORTER now, for one thing, and says a LOT more about what TWICE is about for me NOW.
During the past few years the subject of storytelling itself has really become my central creative passion. I suspect it always has been SUBconsciously, but I didn’t consciously understand that in any focused way until much more recently. At this point, TWICE is very much an epic story ABOUT STORYTELLING—its fundamental place and impact in ‘real’ human lives of any and every kind, and how a fuller and more conscious awareness of human storytelling’s real nature, ancient omnipresence, and literal power to create may affect a host of other ‘real world’ human challenges and endeavors.
Given this change in focus and understanding since I wrote the previous version of TWICE, I now expect to be rewriting or writing virtually every episode from here on from fresh inspiration—on a weekly basis. So I’m not just posting long-finished episodes of an old manuscript anymore—as I had expected to be doing when I launched TWICE a year ago. I am inviting you and all TWICE’s other readers to watch as I ‘white-knuckle it’ as a very accomplished writer and publisher I know likes to say. I’m not going to take three more years to finish the story, massage it—repeatedly—into better, firmer, cleaner shape, readjust the parts to fit and function smoothly, and THEN let you see it. I’m letting you watch—every week—as I literally discover—for the first time—how best to get all my characters from where they started to where I believe they will be ending up—inventing and articulating hundreds of details—rather quickly—along the way that I think are consistent not only with everywhere I’ve been so far, but with where I imagine I’ll be going later! Doing all this ‘publicly’ is not a job for sissies, my friends. :] And I’m not always going to get it right the first time. So—again—I expect that, sooner or later, I will have to go back and change things—usually small things—that you have already read. In fact, I’ve already done so a few times. On at least one occasion, I announced the fact in that week’s illustration notes, and I will likely announce any such changes in the future too, if they’re big enough to matter to most readers. Most of the changes I have made since you all started reading a year ago have been so minor that I doubt you would be able to find them now, even if you were looking hard. But when I wrote a lot of last season’s episodes, I had no idea of some very important things and even characters that have announced themselves to ME since then—like the Archivist, for instance—who was in none of the earlier iterations, but will figure crucially in this one! It’s like a live juggling act where additional knives are continuously thrown into the moving, airborne mix—for three years—during which the juggler is not allowed to stop keeping them all whirling there. You’re not just going to see ‘a book.’ You’ll get to watch the creative process. NOT what I imagined a year ago, but what I am TOTALLY signed up for NOW. To be honest, it’s even more exciting and invigorating for me than it likely is for you. :] There is NOTHING I enjoy doing more at present than juggling these knives, and watching the pattern grow—almost of its own accord at times. …None of which is intended to suggest that I’m flying blind with no idea where I’m going. Every writer is different and has her or his own unique method and approach; but I don’t sit down to write anything more ambitious than fragmentary notes before I know very, very clearly how the tale starts, and exactly where it ends. Where I’m going with TWICE is in no doubt at all. But HOW I’m going to get there…that’s where all the adventure is waiting for me. The answers to ‘how’ surprise me—delightfully—every week. The trick is just in making sure I’m adding this week’s exhilarating ‘discoveries’ to the dance carefully enough not to bring the whole swarm of bees crashing down—on me. :]
Later on—as I mentioned last week—when the story is finally all written and fastened down at last, I also hope to revisit the ‘art’ side of this project, when I can lavish the kind of time and focus on the imagery that I am applying to the writing now. For the time being, I am working to keep the experience visual for you in some beneficial way. But the ‘art story’ here may end up someday very differently than it started out as well.
In the meantime, I still hope to publish hard-copy books of this tale for people who prefer to read it that way—probably binding up one season at a time, with the current art, for now, and putting them up for sale. Shannon and I are already discussing how best to approach that task, and I’ll keep you informed first of all when the time comes.
In general, then, my expectations of TWICE going forward involve a great deal more ‘experimental process’ and, hopefully, reader interaction and input than most writers have traditionally experienced. However this really ends up going—wherever it ends up—I am expecting that YOU will be a very important part of the journey! I hope any of you who wish to will feel free to start thinking—all on your own—about HOW you might participate here! I’ll be interested to hear about any ideas that occur to you!
Right now, I have to get this episode out—and get right to work crafting the next one!
Hope to see you next week. :] Thanks again for coming along.
For anyone interested, here’s a photo of myself (on the left) and Gary Winnick, the then-art director of Lucasfilm Games, in the office we shared on Skywalker ranch in Marin, California, where I made EGA pixel art for games like Zak McKracken & the Alien Mind Benders, Loom, and The Secret of Monkey Island— THIRTY SOME YEARS AGO. …sigh. If only I had all that time, energy and potential now, when I know what to do with it… :]