One of the things that's influenced me recently is Edward Said's "On Late Style" (which I didn't finish, but got the gist of). It's basically an analysis of the high-culture equivalent of jumping the shark.
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The tldr as I understood it, is an "aging" process for creative work
1. A style reaches a maturity plateau, where its paradoxes become clear
2. You recognize this and persist anyway, producing fatally flawed virtuoso baroque works
3. Your work looks like horcrux-making
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I have a nearly 70k words in my drafts folder accumulated in the last 2 years. It's all late style bs that I'm not happy with. I'm going through carefully and nuking most of it. I'm too young to be there already...as a book writer I would have taken another 10y to get there.
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Hokusai said that he did nothing of value before he was 70. I think “late style” is a cultural thing.
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I think you're misunderstanding what late style is. It is not stuff that doesn't have value. It is stuff that reflects lateness. And I think it's a cognitive universal.
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Having you be 5 years older than me is the gift that keeps on giving
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