Today; Inauguration Day, will be a day filled with angst and bravado. Among the writers who fill the role of doomsayers, and the proud, I decided to offer something a little different.
For over 30 years I spent up to 10 months out of the year touring the east coast with my own shows for young children. I also helped older children write their 
own stories. I’ve been writing one of my columns since 72, as well as many other projects.
My own writing process over the years has morphed into write, rewrite, erase and the occasional grumpfest where I toss it all away and start again. I find some of my best, and worst, work has been when I’m bored. Some columns never see publication, which include at least two Inauguration Day editions. These still born garbage can babies were abandoned because they bored me, despite a few clever lines here and there.
There’s only so much rewriting the writer’s version of Groundhog’s Day can do to spice up writing.
I believe most creative people tend to relive, revisit, what they do like Bill Murray’s character. Other times they’re so bored they take right angles, “right” being interesting usage considering the changes this Inauguration Day.
Contrary to the misguided opinion even absolutely brilliant people rarely get it all right from the start, and the rest of us aren’t necessarily doodleheads. Well some of us are, but that’s another topic.
I suspect even “the masters” thought they never got what they did quite right. Raised from the dead I’m sure Twain, all the various writers of the Bible, Shakespeare, and the rest, might take one look and mentally yell out, “Rewrite!” Truly creative people; those with talent far beyond my pitiful endeavors, would probably at least concur with my conclusion that eventually there comes a time when you just have to let it go and submit, or toss it all and take a weird angle.
Re: the 2016 election and inauguration week; were the writers just bored? To put a more standard theistic spin on it, was God bored?
Intense creativity squirms out of creativity’s birth canal when writers are bored. Unfortunately the result can vary from, “That’s incredible!” to what pot smokers say after they look at what they created while high and say, “What the fardookle was that unholy, squirming, mess of roach retch?”
I’m sure you have your own examples, but when it comes to TV I think of all those episodes where some series puts a new spin on what they do. For every Bones or Castle where the characters played different roles that put a great new spin on who they are, or the storyline, there’s some episode where Picard jumps through different jumbled up timelines because Q’s annoying meddlesome nature. OK, I used an old example some may not be familiar with, but only because I love to pick on Q. No matter what you like, or dislike, truth is sometimes whoever writes life’s script can’t help but want to phaser it all into oblivion, but not have that option. Deadlines are, well, like shootouts, some hangings and Inauguration Day, deadlines.
Is there any significance we do this at… High Noon?
When I was young for all the classic Trek episodes there were at least a few abominations: like the Enterprise visiting a planet where classic cliché’ gangsters ruled: a plot ripped from some of the worse pulp novels ever written. Yet Harlan Ellison written Edge of Tomorrow? Great writing, for the time. For every Stewie and Brian get lost in multiple realities there’s Bender doing a bad Scooby Do imitation.
Nobody ever accused Hanna-Barbera of offering animation masterpieces. Some were, well… outright Boo-Boos. Even more weren’t even as good as the average bear. We can all probably cite many creative endeavors that fell flat after the curtain opened.
Life is a lot like that. So are moments like Inauguration Day. Sometimes it’s so bad, or so good, one wonders if there’s even the remotest chance some divine force, or Loki-like deity, is writing everything, and maybe we ponder another possibility, “Was the writer bored?”
If so, I think this last election and today qualify.
Sometimes historical changes, right angles and twists are necessary. Sometimes they’re just evidence of very bad writing. I’ll leave you to decide, either way, how that might apply after Inauguration Day.
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Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 40 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks, and into the unseen cracks and crevasses, that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
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