I am still working on the writers group anthology project. We’re trying to come up with a theme, and I think I have one.
Which also means I’m ready to face the idea firing squad when I share it with the rest of the group.
When posing an idea to a group, the outcome is as unpredictable as using eight-sided dice with one side damaged. That, naturally, is the side that always comes up.
Sometimes your idea results in a blank stare, as if you’ve just magically spoken Lithuanian. That silence is then broken by one person who says “Hmmmm” contemplatively. The group pessimist may respond that it’s too much of something or too little of another. The person who is the designated opinion to end all opinions may decide either way depending on which side of the hammock they fell out of that morning. Just because you meet to exchange ideas doesn’t mean everybody is ready for them. If your coffee hasn’t kicked in, the best ideas on the table might as well have been unsaid.
In other words, just like in our government, nobody seems to agree on anything anymore.
I don’t know what is so darned inconvenient about making concessions in life, so we can set a standard that might work well for the most people. Sure, in a population as large as ours, for every 100 people given an idea on which to vote, 45 may totally agree, 15 may be on the fence, 10 will hate it and 30 will vote with their alliance, which could be anybody among the other 70.
The ten who hate the idea won’t want to change their lives one iota to accommodate something new. The allies don’t like to go against their gang. It’s the other 15 who make or break an idea, because with the changes come suggestions from all sides, and some of them will alienate 1/2 to 1/3 of those 15 on the fence. So as those swing votes go, there goes your majority.
We have five people to vote on a theme for our anthology. The first round of voting went about as well as the last two weeks in Washington as our supposedly elected representatives of the vox populi tried to iron out a deal that would cover our debts after we apparently (when and how, I don’t know) went to Chinese lenders for money we couldn’t pay (or something like that).
But I digress. Sometimes an anthology doesn’t have a unifying theme (unless you’re writing for a certain spiritual soup series of books), but other ideas have been panned curtly as not being suitable, and we can’t move forward without one. Theme means the title, and the title makes or breaks sales.
Mine will be simple. I’ll put it to the group. I don’t know how they will vote, but I’m ready to be rejected. I’m a writer, so I should be prepared for that. Maybe it will be a good idea that gets panned, or a bad one that gets the okay because everybody voted with their alliance. Who knows. I’ll suggest it anyway.
It’s not as if I’m agreeing to a loan from China.
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