Great expectations

After numerous people recently described a certain comedy as the funniest thing they had ever seen, I made sure to buy a ticket and go and see it myself.

Of course, throughout the film, I couldn’t help but wait for the particularly funny bits to come. As I waited and waited, anticipation got the better of me and although funny moments presented themselves, it seemed a little forced and inevitably didn’t live up to my expectations. Not because it wasn’t funny, but because it was expected to be funny.

This led me to another scenario, where expectations didn’t quite match the end results, but for very different reasons.  The example I was thinking of was the film Casablanca, an absolute classic, which I didn’t see until a few years ago when I accidentally stumbled across it in a DVD store (embarrassing, I know).

It is hard to believe that the writers of the screenplay didn’t trust it to be overly successful. It is more believable when you learn that they frantically worked to complete parts of the script before it could be filmed and producers rushed it into production.

Little did they know that it would still be cherished by generations to come.

In a lot of ways, first time authors have the luxury of submitting their first novels with little consequence.  It is this ‘nothing to lose’ attitude, that results in some writers without publishing deals (initially) and leaves others to loathe their first published novels as ‘substandard’, compared to later works.

Personally, I prefer the latter.

It goes without saying that I wouldn’t submit something I wasn’t completely happy with.

But it is to be expected that a writer’s writing will evolve and improve with time. If the same piece of work is continually edited, the writer might never be satisfied with the end result and might never see it in print.

What is the point of writing, if no one ever reads it?