Copyright © 2025 D. Jason Fleming, CC BY-SA 4.0
This month D. Jason Fleming dropped a timely post in this age of banning books and censorship, and an interesting question: Should bad creations be saved?
And not just morally bad, how about things that just didn’t find a large enough audience (something Hollywood would call a flop)? Or just, you know, sucked, especially by people learning a new craft.
I saved my early embroidery attempts to show students when they despair ever getting good. “This is my first/second attempt at free embroidery.”
“Wow, I’m better than that.”
“Yes, you are.”
One consideration for the discussion is what happens if the work created is now problematic? For example, some of my early writings in the eighties included “gypsies”, a culture I was hyperfocused on for nearly a year. Since then, the proper way to refer to the nomadic culture is Romani. Should I delete the early writings, modify them, or let them stand?
The substack post about Ephemeral raises a lot of important questions.
Read the post here: https://djasonfleming.locals.com/post/6620232/ephemeral?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
D. Jason Fleming blogs about Books, Movies, and Writing.