Works in Progress

What is a work-in-progress? When you think about it, isn't everything we do, everything we are, a work-in-progress? It is easy to see a work-in-progress when a writer looks at his unfinished manuscript or a parent looks at her growing child. I know that when I see the leaps and bounds my daughter is making at 3, that she is definitely creating the adult she will be through what she is learning, the other children and adults she is meeting, the books that are read to her, the movies, television shows, and other entertainment she is watching. But as I watch her grown, I am growing, too, as I continue my work in progress as a mother.

Adults are works-in-progress, too. As we age, we still continue to learn and interact with our environments. Many seniors take up new hobbies when they retire, but even younger adults can take adult ed classes, read books on topics and areas that are new to them, travel to places their imaginations have previously only visited.

As I write my first novel, although I've been writing articles and short stories for many years, I enjoy the process of watching my characters and the plot develop. Even after the manuscript is complete, and I've edited it and hopefully published it, the story will continue as it is shared by others. It will become each reader's work-in-progress. They will get out of it what their experiences, backgrounds, and beliefs may find interesting and special, what touches them through what has touched them.

In Virtual Realities, it is very easy to change one's appearance and persona. Somewhat like a character in a book, when you participate in a virtual world such as Second Life , Entropia Universe, World of Warcraft, or many of the other multi-player online games that have attracted participants from around the world, you can be whoever you want to be. Many people choose to do in these worlds similar activities to what they do in real life. For instance, I belong to a group of librarians and educators in Second Life and also write for one of their virtual newspapers. Others, however, may role play and act out as totally different characters. In this way, they continue to develop their own works in progress, creating another facet of themselves using the platform of virtual worlds to exhibit it.

Whether you raise a child, write a book, read a book, take up a new hobby, or take up residence in a virtual community, you are further developing your own work in progress, your final copy, the one that is continually being edited by you.