A Writer Who Won’t Write

A writer who won’t write

Watching a show about

A writer who won’t write,

 

Written by a writer who did write,

But not truly. Not like it was

Written by a writer who did write

 

Truly of his character,

Out of a love to write,

Truly of his character.

Writer Movies

I just finished watching a writer movie, and was compelled to make a list of all the good writer films I’ve watched, so that you, dear fellow writer, may be inspired when you’re stuck and too lazy to read a book. Here are the ones I know of, in order of my knowing them:

1. Finding Forrester
2. Freedom Writers
3. Dead Poets Society
4. The Ghost Writer
5. Capote – though I haven’t watched it all the way through yet. The book was excellent – and I hope that when I say this you wonder why I said it, because you know that this is a given. If you don’t know this and are inclined to watch movies to not have to read books, well, I think you’d be better off elsewhere.

Those were the titles I could come up with, but not being satisfied with that paltry list, I went searching the troves of the internet. And of course I found stacks and stacks. But I also found something I was not expecting – a somewhat kindred spirit. As I hope you are. And this is what he said (my thoughts italicised):

“I first came to Los Angeles many years ago with the hopes of doing a lot of writing (always the hope, always the hope), but instead I did a lot of walking (sounds like my first time in London). Given the profoundly accustomed car culture (blech) of the landscape, I was an anomaly (don’t I know it – scenes of me biking along the freeway perilously close to the rushing traffic on the outskirts of Philadelphia come to mind) as I walked everywhere and glimpsed at apartments (no ‘at’ there, mate) I would never live in (is this a common writers’ pastime?), restaurants I wanted to eat at but never got around to, and bars where I wanted to drink at with friends I didn’t have yet (nice – that’s the spirit). Los Angeles was my compromise (hmm?), one of many in a lifetime (the truth hurts).  Los Angeles is the city where people who are too afraid to go to New York end up, in the same way that Chicago is the city where people who are too afraid to go to Los Angeles end up (he had me with this line – there’s a quote for sure). But in my heart, New York was supposed to be mine (wait – I thought it was supposed to be mine).  I had always wanted to be a writer living in the Big Apple (are you channeling me? Am I channeling you? Am I not alone in my dreams after all? I kid you not, I see this in my head all the time) – it was a desire straight out of a Woody Allen movie (will have to check out Woody Allen then).   The mosaic colors and mental acoustics were so vivid with this dream that it painted me as occupying a nice apartment in upper Manhattan (yep) with my junior editor at VOGUE Euro-Asian girlfriend who had enough style to make up for my lack thereof (this is reaching a self-fulfilling prophecy level of ridiculousness; the parallels, I mean), while I labored away at my great American novel (mm, guess it’s not a complete match), at my desk under my framed Velvet Underground poster, in the evenings after a full day’s work on the staff of THE NEW YORKER magazine.  Well, ahem (ahem, indeed).  In the cosmic battle of dream versus reality, reality won (I intend to win my cosmic battle, that’s why I’m wasting so much time right now not writing), and instead, I ended up in Hollywood (tough break, lad), suffering writer’s block on an untitled science fiction screenplay I couldn’t for the life of me figure out the ending (were you channeling Chuck Lorre as I channel you now?). So instead of hunkering down to finish my script I walked everyday to my local video store and rented movies about other people writing (such an alluring rut suddenly so deep when one wishes to climb out – immersing oneself in other lives when one’s own fails to provide, usually thanks to oneself). Something about watching movies about writers inspired me (and yet the inspiration is so short-lived; by the time the film finishes all I want to do is watch another).  I remember a former creative writing professor once told our class that when you sit down to write you should surround yourself with books (books, that’s the key) by your favorite authors.  It’s akin to the philosophy that being around smart and creative people will only challenge you to elevate your own game. “Hang out with your heroes,” the professor would trumpet (which leads me back to the ever-hanging question: why am I still not studying writing?). And hang with my heroes I did – some of them characters from these movies, some of them filmmakers of these movies.  Not only did movies about writers put the fire to my ass but it also kick-started a prodigious creative period that led to my first writing assignment at a studio (that could be the problem – TV being inspired by TV. The blind leading the blind, except in this case it’s those who can do nothing but watch leading the same. But I don’t mean to sound so harsh, man).  Oh Hollywood, compromise and all, I’ve finally arrived (I just prefer to hang on to my New York for now, thanks).

The art-critic Robert Hughes once wrote, “There is no tyranny like the tyranny of the unseen masterpiece.” (Oh the beauty of true words) For us writers, that is what inspires us to put pen to pad at our desks at home, in our cubicles at work in between spreadsheets, and in our beds before surrendering to slumber (These days I wish it would go more on the night-time offensive, not these mid-day ambushes). When our muse heads for the door (Oh Calliope, where art thou, and why hast thou forsaken me), we follow her outside to park benches, to cafes and restaurants, or as Chuck Palahniuk once did, wrote the pages to his novel Fight Club underneath the cars he was fixing or as Michael Martin who wrote the pages to his script Brooklyn’s Finest while working the New York subway system (is it really thought that Americans don’t get irony?). David Mamet deplores writers who write in public.  “When did writing become a performance art?”  He bitingly asked in one of his essays. As per usual, Mamet is right.  Writing is not a performance art.  Insular and singular in its act of cerebral stewing, writing lacks the dynamism of dance or the force of slam poetry (I find myself not much into slam poetry; it’s like the pop of music – obvious, beating, and usually shallow. But it has its place, and at least poetry continues to morph). The act of writing is dull to everyone but the writer (word).  Sometimes it’s even dull to the writer (double word).  Nothing is more boring than filming someone writing.  But yet there have been many great films about writers and about what inspires them and what tortures them. Here is my list of the 20 Greatest Movies About Writers.”

And you can check out this list if you’re still interested. I found that by this point I cared very little about what I’d originally come to the page in search of – that want was lost in the excitement of once again finding someone whose thoughts had at least once traveled along paths so similar to the ones mine traverse all the time.

I was inspired, not so much by the writer movie I’d just watched, though it did do a bit for me, but more by a post listing good writer movies. Ha. What are the odds. Oh, inspired enough to revisit my neglected blog page.

And here you are.

I am still writing up my December blog, by the way, slowly and not always surely, but it will get done. And I am still, though undeserving, being graced with various events taking place in rapid succession, connected in my mind to string me along to all sorts of cognitive destinations.

(I seldom end these on a note related to the bulk of the post, do I? Always promising more, never delivering. Always plagued by a guilty conscience for not.)

I’m A Writer

[Originally published 11 November 2008. Updated 4 November 2010.]

Sometime during high school I realized how cool I think it sounds to be a ‘writer’. Someone asks another in some setting, whatever it may be, “So what do you do?” and the other replies, “I’m a writer.” It says so much and yet so little. It speaks of the courage to interact critically with the forces at work in the world, yet ambiguously refers only to the act of putting words on paper. And at some point quickly following my realization of my admiration for that label, I came to the conclusion that I wanted it for myself (No doubt a story I read in junior high called ‘The Book of the Banshee’ was an influence in this process, though I didn’t recognize it as such until much later).

In the general scope of things, ‘writer’ is a rather accessible aspiration, quite like being a runner. There are speedy and slow people, fit and fat people, tough and tame people, but all that is irrelevant. One is a runner simply by getting out and running, entering a league of elite set apart by willpower alone. And writing is the same way.

Many write to no one but themselves. They are the unheard artists, or perhaps merely the heartbroken. But unlike those who run alone and, though runners, keep their efforts and performance to themselves, I want to take this further than myself, both for my own improvement and for whatever may come of it. I’ve run a long ways alone.

So I will be a writer, regardless of any other labels I may accumulate, whether I can coherently present perspective or not even negotiate a single sentence succinctly. Getting published is certainly beside the point (in this age of blogging – ugh – no one needs an editor of any sort to get opinion out, and the world is the worse for it). You are my editor, should you choose to make your presence known by responding. And while Truman Capote emphatically states that the ability to write is an innate talent unaffected by formal instruction, iron does sharpen iron.

That’s one thing writing has over speaking (because, make no mistake, this is about communication as much as expression) – those who read are under no obligation to react visibly, or even stick around if they don’t care. But those that do will stay, read, and hopefully interact. I truly do hope that. Accepting the fact that communication is what you take in, not what I spit out, tell me what you don’t like (and what you like, of course, though I try not to take encouragement, however well-intentioned, too seriously) in the concepts, opinions, facts, vocabulary, anything.

And if it bugs you terribly, by all means, call me out on straying from my focus, whatever that may be. It’s a dreadful temptation for me which I succumb to far too often – as evidenced by the earliest entries on my blog. I mean to minimise such distractions as much as possible in these more lengthy compositions. Rambling is for Matsu entries, Facebook messages, and shorter blog entries (which in turn grow tiresomely long). Still, keep in mind that any material here is in draft form; nothing short of publication is final. Hack away, that’s what threads are for, but know that you may just get what you demand. Revisions should be expected; I’m finally realizing that I must stop trying to get it right the first time.

This is something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time, even as I swear that that will not become the refrain of the rest of my life. The greatest catalyst was coming to America [and more recently the UK] and seeing the sharp differences in certain aspects of life. I want to record my observations and I figure they could be entertaining to more than just my future self (hello there, by the way – are you where you should be by now?). No doubt I will look back on these and marvel at my erroneous mindsets and beliefs, but these are necessary stones in building a vantage point from which to look back. If I have even an inkling of what I’m doing here.

Welcome to the process.

-Brad