Leading up to the Obama-rama we’re thankfully enjoying, there was a lot of talk coming from the other camp—or at least from Sarah Palin—about a certain quality their ticket possessed. They called it “maverick.” And yes, of course, that particular description sounded hysterical in light of the party line they were toeing, not to mention in concert with Tina Fey’s spot-on impressions. But there was also something else about that proclamation that smacked of rotten in Denmark.

To my way of thinking, a maverick is one who is so unconventional that he or she comes up with a new and different way of doing things—a way that then often becomes conventional because it’s seen as a damn good answer for the time. And news likes to spread. But because what is later deemed brilliant is often diagnosed as insanity during gestation, the work of a true trailblazer such as this might be quite difficult to detect empirically until it’s done.

In other words, if you can still see them, they haven’t gone very far, and they’re not mavericks. If you call yourself a maverick, you’re probably not. If someone else calls you a maverick, it might just mean you go places they wouldn’t. For my money, I want my mavericks to be the ones who remain just over the dip in the horizon, forever that one step ahead—that is, until they’re ready to send us back some light. Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, Marie Curie, the Wright brothers, Jerry Lewis—innovators all, mavericks wandering the edge, casting off its side for inspiration with their own sheer guts for bait.

But…

How does one know when he or she is pursuing something noble and true or making a mockery of both concepts by taking the venture too far? I mean, there’s a fine line between betting the farm and buying the farm. Is there not? If you take something too far, at the very least you risk straddling the dual states of joining the masses in cliché and being utterly alone.

The English comedian, Eddie Izzard, does a fabulous bit about taking the attempt to be or look cool too far. Using James Dean as an example, Eddie points out how this teen idol of the fifties and his penchant for standing around with an insolent toothpick sticking out the side of his mouth would have been seen far differently if he had been given to slouching about with two toothpicks sticking out of his mouth, one on each side. James Dean was, in a very real sense, just an extra toothpick away from being a complete laughingstock and subsequently forgotten. What a fine line, think about it. So how did he know to keep it at just one? Is that part of the secret to genius—knowing when you’ve got too many toothpicks sticking out of your mouth?

As Eddie Izzard points out further, even if you’ve mastered your shtick, whatever it is, the danger yet remains that you’ll take it too far. As he puts it, you’re “cool…cool…cool,” until you’re “looking like a dickhead.” You’re edgy until you’re off your rocker. Like addictive behavior, it’ll never be enough until it’s too much.

When this happens in film and television writing, pop culture calls it “jumping the shark.” For those who are unfamiliar with the term, to jump the shark is to facilitate a systematic lowering of the threshold of verisimilitude or, rather, the work’s integrity until the art of the thing has been breached. And sadly, it’s crazy easy to do. It’s the path of least resistance. And I’d like to meet the writer who doesn’t struggle with this, wondering from time to time if what they’ve just committed to the page is Alice Sebold out-there or James Frey outta there, if it's a shark or just a guppy.

I suppose there’s no one answer to this dilemma, but of course the most obvious solution is to listen to your audience. Ticket buyers kept shelling out good dough to watch James Dean and his dental wear, so the ingredients obviously worked. The same logic when used for writers sure makes a strong case for writing groups and/or the use of trusted readers—until and perhaps after coveted sales start to speak. After all, laying the bricks and mortar of a piece can require a lot of work. And sometimes all it takes is another set of eyes to find the extra toothpick.