Creativity

Guest Post by Leona Wisoker: Ideas and Fear; or, The Fear of Ideas

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(I'd like to thank Leona Wisoker, a talented writer who's also had me blogging at her blog, for this contribution on writing, ideas, and fear – something a lot of us know of.  I reccomend her blog as she has some fascinating insights.)

I used to be paralyzed by the thought that I had nothing worth saying, no skills with which to say it, and nobody who would want to read it anyway. Even after landing a four-book contract deal, publishing a handful of short stories, and running a relatively regular blog for almost two years now, I still hear those statements in my head nearly every day:

It's a fluke. It's not real. People are just being nice to me. If I was a 'real' writer, I'd be signed with a Big Name Press, like Tor or Baen. I'm an upstart and I'm going to get squashed very very soon now….

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Media Mutation

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I noted a few posts back that many industries, geeky industries, are in transition – or should be.  I noted that movie theaters face many challenges, and perhaps even the and of what it means to be a movie theater, or its expansion into something else. I noted publishing is changing. Many, many industries and businesses are in transition, and those in them need to keep up or the changes may well crush them.

So, yes it's important to realize that businesses are changing in this bizarre, wonderful age of technical and media mutation. Yet, if you think about it, media itself is changing. Why should we expect the media to stay the same after all -  it relies on technology which is ever-changing, so it's going to change and morph and modify itself.

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Risk Aversion and Large Companies

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(Serdar, one of our regular posters, noted once that Hollywood isn't in the creativity business – it's in the risk management business.  He directed me to this article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/movies/manohla-dargis-and-a-o-scott-on-hollywoods-crisis.html?_r=1&hpw, which got me thinking.)

The state of Hollywood fascinates me, both due to my interest in cultural issues and the fact that it is part of the Geekonomy.  I do see some innovative films peaking through, but I also see plenty of dreck.  The sheer amounts of remakes in the queue tells me that Hollywood certainly is aiming at reducing risk in many cases (not that risk-taking has always been weird in hollywood).  I look at the amount of reality television out there and shake my head – even the good stuff doesn't make up for the repetitious crap.

In many ways, too many media endeavors are simply extraction industries – extracting the most amount safely from whatever resources are there with least  risk, and often little concern for the future. Though this may be understandable, it's really not good in the long or even medium-term.

If you think about it, your average huge media company may have many, many advantages, but also needs to pay for all that entails (lawyers, marketing, etc.). The efforts they engage in, large mega–million-dollar efforts, also have the ability to screw up beyond belief. Let's face it, putting out a big movie or video game is a great way to lose money if you do it wrong.

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