"Decanoning" My Own Works | Falcon Talks
On the Burden of Albatrosses and Losing Passion for Old Projects
Hi everyone!
So, as a creator, I have a LOT of ideas.
To help keep track of them all, I have a "catalogue" or a "canon" of works that I've completed. And in that canon, there’s also a LONG list of things that I hope to one day complete.
On this long list of future things were lots of ideas for writings, comics, songs, and other things that I was excited about at one time or another - things that I was SURE that I'd complete and add to my GREAT CANON OF WORKS.
And for years, I kept adding to it.
However, recently, a thought struck me as I thought about an idea that I've had for years.
You see, a long time ago, I had written a series of short romcom scripts for a webseries idea that I had.
I had finished six scripts in total - it had a nice start and a nice finish, and I was pleased with it.
I sent it off to a studio that had released several romcom shorts on YouTube that I had liked, but I got rejected.
However, I was still determined to film it on my own one day, or at least do SOMETHING with it.
So, I added it to my "canon" of future works, and then I set it aside.
Years would pass, and every now and then, I'd think about how to reinvigorate the idea - how to maybe update it or transform it into another medium.
Recently, I picked it up again, thinking about maybe about turning it into a series of short stories for this very Substack.
However, as I was thinking about it, I realized something...
I... wasn't really excited by what I had written anymore - I wasn't even excited about the core plots that I had come up with.
Those plots that I had come up with now seemed... trite and boring to me - and they might have even been trite and boring at the time that I had written them as well.
And with that, I realized that I was just holding onto this work because it felt like I had an obligation to it... for some reason.
Realizing this, I gave it some thought... and I decided that I had to decanonize it.
I had never done this before - everything on that list was suppose to be a GOAL that I would accomplish, a DREAM that I would achieve, a SACRED WORK in MY canon.
But I was wrong.
I opened the "catalogue" and I looked through the entries.
At the top was a list of my completed works - and I was proud of most of these.
But, as I went down into the things that were "in-progress", I saw them - the romcom webseries idea that had long grown stale, ANOTHER romcom idea (this time a novel) that I had long lost luster for, and many more ideas that I had lost passion for over the years. Heck, even an old Wordpress blog that was filled with hastily written reviews of video games and other media was on there - listed as something for me to one day archive and bring to glory on my new website.
These entries had become albatrosses - burdening my mind intermittently with their presence on what I had deemed to be the future of MY CANON.
Finally realizing this, I scrolled down to the bottom of the list, and created a new section called "Non-Canon".
And I started to decanonize the things that I had lost the passion and the excitement for.
I decanonized the two romcom ideas that I no longer cared about; the terrible video game reviews that I had written so long ago; the Rock, Paper, Scissors video game that I kept trying to make more complex and worthy, but to no avail; and many more things - both completed and incomplete - that had burdened me every now and then throughout the years with time and energy spent thinking on how to reinvigorate them.
I put down a lot of albatrosses that day.
It's an ongoing process, of course.
I'm sure that there are still things on the current "canon" that I will lose passion for in the future.
And I'm sure that I'll add in new half-baked ideas on there that I will be super-excited about at the time as well.
I hope though, that by realizing that I CAN "decanonize" projects or ideas that I've started but have lost the passion to finish, I can better focus my time and energy on ideas that I DO still have the passion for.
And I hope that this will help me do more of the same in the future - letting go of things that I have lost passion for more easily, rather than letting it haunt me out of some misplaced sense of obligation.
Hey, thanks for reading the main article.
I hope that helped some of you out there.
As an aside, I feel like I better understand now why there are so many unfinished works out there, even when their creators are still alive and creating other things.
I mean, a lot of us are still clamouring for George R. R. Martin to release the new book in A Song of Ice and Fire, or for Patrick Rothfuss to finally finish The Kingkiller Chronicle.
And I'm not saying that those works (and others) will never get finished, nor am I saying that your frustrations with a piece of art that you've invested time and love into being left unfinished are unfounded.
But, life is tough, and full of ups and downs. Creating is hard - inspiration comes and goes, circumstances changes, and life can hit hard.
Many of us start something new with great intentions and excitement, and a lot of those things will get dropped. We've all done it.
Who knows what can happen in that long period of creation?
I mean, I know that the pandemic certainly hit a lot of us hard, and an illness knocked the motivation to create out of me for a good while.
So yeah, I hope that we can all be a bit more forgiving of ourselves (and others) for having to drop a project - especially those that require a lot of creativity, time, and/or effort.
And I hope that we can be a bit more grateful for what we (and others) DID get finished while the passion was still burning.
So, with that all said, thank you for reading!
Let me know in the comments if you have any thoughts on this or if you’ve ever had to “decanon” something as well!
Bye!
