Critical Thinking

I’m working my way through Christopher Vogler‘s The Writer’s Journey this weekend. It’s not a difficult read, there’s just a lot to digest and assimilate. I can already tell that my days of reading strictly for pleasure are over.

As Vogler describes the different archetypes and the different phases of the Hero’s Journey, I find things are clicking. I’m not sure if I read this book before or if I read Joseph Campbell one, but I know I didn’t understand it the same way. I looked on DH’s craft book shelf and I didn’t see the Campbell one, but that doesn’t mean we don’t own it, somewhere.

I know I’m impatient. I’ve never been good about learning things through practice – trial and error – I do much better when someone sits down and explains the process in detailed steps. That’s where I feel I’m not ready to do this properly. OK, so a lot of this is my life-long battle with perfectionism rearing its ugly head as well, but so many of the craft books and articles say, “Here’s a way of looking at this, but don’t follow this outline exactly, make it your own.” Easy for them to say.

I’m about halfway through, guess I should go back to trying to wrap my head around all this. I don’t think it’s wasted effort, it’s just time consuming and I feel like I’m struggling. I know this is going to be harder than I thought originally, but I also know I’ll be better off in the long run instead of just scribbling down lots of drivel, especially since that hasn’t gotten me very far in the past.