Clichés

Hmmm... Thursday it is.

Still a hot day. I will probably say this a few more times before stopping completely because any statement, no matter how new or interesting, will eventually get overused and become a bloody boring cliché.

Clichés. A long time ago when I first got hooked onto the writing bug, my English teacher of the day warned us all to not resort to writing clichés. Thus, even though I was in primary six at that point (twelve years old), I tried my best to come up with interesting story lines, seeking inspiration from books that were more of the ``young adult'' genre instead of the children one (whatever that means). While the standard requirement was at least 150 words [for primary five/six], I was easily writing 800+ words in cursive with the ballpoint pen. Considering that the GCE A-levels General Paper writing requirement is 800+ words, I was capable of writing beyond my level at that point. It got to the point that I pretty much brushed aside secondary school English, but that's a story for another day. On another short tangent though, 800--1000 words is roughly the essay length that is still somewhat pleasant to write/read---that's why much of my blog entries here tend to stay close to that range and rarely go beyond that.

Anyway, the point is, it is important to avoid clichés---that was the lesson to learn. Except that as time went by, I had less time and inclination to think up new story lines, considering that I had discovered the wonderful world of computer programming, and was deeply involved in reading and learning about mathematics, physics, and computer science in general. Then there was the whole ``the more one reads, the more one sees, and the more one fears about writing something novel'' syndrome. I mean, when there's an entire website dedicated to documenting such clichés, it is almost impossible to come up with something new. It's sort of the creative writing version of how science is about learning more and more about less and less as the easier to test and formulate ``big ideas'' have been found.

So I turned to life's more original source of all plots: uhh... life itself, or more specifically, my life's experiences. I mean, just go read my first ever NaNoWriMo entry, my second one, my third one, my eighth one, and my twelfth one. They all draw ideas from things that I had lived through. Now, don't be fooled---they are still fiction, but their source material came from things that I have experienced in one form or another.

And as twisted and masochistic as it sounds, the more fucked up a life I have, the more material to start from and work with. It's not just me nor writing though, almost all forms of art seem to benefit more from having a life experience that is sufficiently deviating from the norm to be worth memorialising in the particular art form. There's a reason why archaeologists get very excited when they discover some artefact that happens to record the really mundane---those are rare solely because they are so mundane that no one ever goes through any thought about attempting to replicate and preserve them. We have literally lost whole languages because people then did not bother to keep enough records of how their languages are to be used.

So what goes ``on record'' as an expenditure of effort is not about the mundane (and by extension, boring) but the more... exciting aspects. I mean, I cannot see myself sitting down to write the daily goings on that just keep... going on, like how I wake up, I brush my teeth, wash up, take a shower, walk around and so on. Just take a look at my blog entries here for the past year where I have been trying to keep up my routine during this sabbatical year. There were some threads that I had written before that I dropped because they got too mundane to be included here---one prominent example is my no longer talking much about the reading progress that I have done.

Thus, at some level, clichés kill the content creator's output. Yet one cannot be wholly without any form of structure/familiarity; that is a good way of scaring people away. Content creators of any sort that would like to be successful need to have some kind of audience, and [most] people like certain things for the way they are and are more resistant to change because having something that is low-surprise is quite comforting, particularly in the current state of the world where everyday is a [bad] surprise since no one can tell if the existing pandemic is going to throw up a new curve ball that will further derail any plans, hopes, and dreams that anyone has. Having structure [in the form of clichés] also ensure that the content creator can spend less time figuring out what needs to be done and can instead focus on filling in the rest of the content.

The unfortunate thing is that if a content creator follows too closely to that modus operandi, they would effectively be considered as having sold out as compared to being a bonafide artist who is always seeking to expand his/her media of expression.

Now that all said and done, I don't see myself as a content creator in that sense. I am an amateur hobbyist, and there's a big difference. This big difference is in the intent behind the action. As an amateur hobbyist, my priority is self contentment and sense of achievement, some kind of personal growth in something that is skilled based, or something that I can point to and proclaim ``hey check it out---I made that!''. The compensation I get from what I do comes largely from my sense of having achieved something from what I had wanted to do, with a secondary feeling of humble pride when there is an appreciative audience.

The last priority is getting paid for it. Amateur hobbyist basically means that I am not doing it for the money, literally. However, it doesn't mean that I can't push it as far as I want to go, even to a level that might impinging into the space of the professional. To be fair though, I would not do things that would undermine the professionals' work---they are doing it as their livelihood, and I respect that, especially since as an amateur hobbyist who wants to excel too, I know just how difficult the going can be. But the biggest difference here is that I can take as much time as I like to get from one level to the next, while the professionals do not have such a choice---they have to remain relevant or they must find a way to make themselves relevant, most possibly through setting themselves up to be in a niche area of very appreciative audiences who can make up the shortfall from lacking mass appeal.

All these go back to clichés because the ever-changing requirements of the landscape means that while clichés aren't preferred, they are still here to stay. Because they work at the level of the masses. They don't help if one is attempting to create a masterpiece, but they can be there to help with ``grinding out the XP'' through incremental improvement.

And that's enough yammering from me. Till the next update.