Why We Write and create
I'm watching a documentary on Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes. Other than the book of the comics over the years, he did not license his characters and thus lost millions upon millions of dollars.
He is quoted (in writing--he's not interviewed because he's a classic recuse) that the strip was only meant to be a strip and it was, basically, the one area of his life he had control over.
On top of that being a really sad statement, it does touch me as a fiction writer. The administration of my college just decided to restructure (well, not just decided, they just announced it yesterday). It changes quite a bit of my job, and I had no say in it. I had no control. Some other aspects of life, such as I'll be 64 soon, I can't control.
In my novels, I have complete control, except I am bound by the rules of logic and good fiction writing. Watterson did some unique and creative things in his strip, because in a strip about a precocious and imaginative little boy one can do anything--it's all in Calvin's imagination. In the kind of fiction writing, I have boundaries, but I still can control the world I'm building as long as there is verisimilitude (love that word).
Our struggle for control really defines so much of what we do and don't do.
He is quoted (in writing--he's not interviewed because he's a classic recuse) that the strip was only meant to be a strip and it was, basically, the one area of his life he had control over.
On top of that being a really sad statement, it does touch me as a fiction writer. The administration of my college just decided to restructure (well, not just decided, they just announced it yesterday). It changes quite a bit of my job, and I had no say in it. I had no control. Some other aspects of life, such as I'll be 64 soon, I can't control.
In my novels, I have complete control, except I am bound by the rules of logic and good fiction writing. Watterson did some unique and creative things in his strip, because in a strip about a precocious and imaginative little boy one can do anything--it's all in Calvin's imagination. In the kind of fiction writing, I have boundaries, but I still can control the world I'm building as long as there is verisimilitude (love that word).
Our struggle for control really defines so much of what we do and don't do.
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