Humility, and the art of script maintenance

"I have recently acknowledged that two of my most important learnings through the process of rewriting are Humility and Courage.

I don't know how much of each I possessed before; but I do know that the more I write (actually the more I rewrite), the more I gain them.

Humility - to be able to accept one's complete incompetence and ability to weave and paint,
Courage - to be able to ruthlessy decimate one's own creation - in some ways like infanticide

Humility - to use the magic wand of vision to look at the script with mercenary eyes, see what it gives you and reject it if it doesn't give any,
Courage - to use the magic wand of the backspace key to operate the cursor, and watch what you created not so song ago blurring into the white background of the MS Word document

Humility - to know that you aren't there, yet,
Courage - to know that you can get there, soon.

It is a paradoxical feeling - a moment of despair, a moment of elation.

Despair, at having destroyed something that took you hours of effort, thought and soul.
Elation, at having finally created what you wanted to.

A discovery, moments in time."

-Swami Jeevacharya, circa 2006.


PS: They say that Jauhar was cowardice; then some say that it was bravery. I choose the latter.