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This week: Edited by: phil1861
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| Write for yourself or write for your audience. Which to choose? Write in obscurity or write on the national stage. Write what you feel and know or write what logically makes sense regardless of personal experience. Write this way and you’ll succeed and write that way and you’ll fail. Write to please me or write to please you. Write whatever enters your head or write only what is meticulously researched. Write for your agent and publisher or write for your grandkids and family. Write because you can or write because you have to. Would not the task of writing be so much better without all of this baggage? |
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I am preparing to enter into a season of change once again in my creative life. I’m still writing on a novel on the Civil War for the home school market and still leading a drama ministry for my church. The change however is to move from live stage play scripts to television formats and creativity. If you’ve ever written a play or a drama for the stage you know what your limitations are. But the opportunity to write and direct for video brings with it a whole new scenario and style of writing. It is easy in this transition into something new to become bogged down in these questions of motivation. Who do I write for and how do I direct this to be like something else seen on television are the questions that I find bogging me down in indecision and lethargy. It is no easy task to switch gears like this when one is accustomed to writing for live theater. But, it is no less difficult to make the switch between short stories or essays to novels or non-fiction works. There is something that pushes us to do something inherently different but the fears of rejection and failure are more acute here. We are comfortable with the old and uncomfortable with the new. We have come to expect the expected with the old and maybe even consider ourselves expert at its practice. But the need to change or the desire to do something new and bold never leave us. Some of us are just expert at denying or delaying that call to change.
If you have ever written a script before you know how different the conventions and formatting are compared to the long and drawn out prose paragraphs of story writing. Now add to that the dimension of cameras and effects to that list of formatting and convention and you will see how freeing and frightening the differences can be. I’ve written for video once or twice and even played a role through a college course in just about every production position imaginable, but not for writing a sketch for video and having to direct it.
How often do you allow yourself to do something different even if it is just for the fun of it? Most of us start out writing short stories then move on to novels or essays then on to articles or even non-fiction books. That there are a few well known starting places does not mean that one has to start there. What is preventing you from trying something new? Is it lack of understanding of the conventions of the new thing? What have you got to lose in learning and trying? Or, as my wife is fond of saying; “What’s the worse thing that could happen?” Money, geography, physical health, age, job, or family can all interfere with the dream in our head if we allow them to. Common wisdom has it that only in Hollywood can one make it as a writer/director or only in New York can one make it as an actor. How narrow is your depth of field? Mine can be pretty narrow at times as I look longingly upon the work of someone else and wish that life for myself. But what keeps you from having what you want in your own back yard?
If you allow the trappings of what you see others doing and only your own limitations then the step into something new becomes that much more out of reach and ludicrous. I’m a consummate perfectionist. I’ve allowed that perfection to keep me from doing certain things because I know I have neither the money nor the expertise to pull them off. Projects dreamed of lay un-worked on and scripts started remain half finished. They remain that way because I know I do not meet my own high standards. If I cannot meet my own standards how am I going to meet someone else’s standards? I’ve been learning the foolishness of comparison and how damaging it can be to a creative spurt or change. I compare my amateurish work to that of a pro and is it a wonder that they do not match up!  . We often want the results of a pro’s work to the efforts and fumbling of a beginner. We don’t allow ourselves to be beginners again with all of the mistakes and failures that come with learning something new. Often it is a matter of pride. Do we wish to look the fool again for the sake of gaining a new skill? How skilled do we need to be before we satisfy only ourselves with the product of unskilled hands?
Allowing yourself permission to fail is the first step. There is little to no room for failure in my minds eye. Everything must be executed flawlessly and with the precision of a master before I feel comfortable in taking it on. Although I fail myself every time with this mindset it strangely does not sink in. If I cannot fail at what I do I limit what I do to only those things of which I will succeed and there lies the recipe for eventual creative collapse and ennui. Boredom and listlessness become ones companion as the same old thing is trudged out each and every time because we know it is a formula that succeed yesterday and chances are will succeed today. Although we intuitively know that there is no formula for success that guarantees 100% satisfaction day in and day out we continue to rest upon what we know versus what we fear to know.
Doing it for yourself is the second step. Often those who are knee deep in their creative profession allow themselves little time or luxury for doing something different especially if it means risking time taken away from their livelihood.
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Since I fell into a little on the topic of screenplays once again I decided to include more resources on writing screenplays and some contest advice.
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| |  | Film Blanc (13+)
The screenplay of the short film that satirizes Hollywood film "formulas."
#1069225 by Nicksax90   |
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Questions from the April 12, NL
Have you found other areas where your art and expression have found a place in this world other than what you thought when you first said to yourself “I’ll try writing”?
Do you know anyone else who started in one direction and ended up doing something different? What did they discover?
writeone
Submitted Comment:
What a great newsletter. Being a fan of SCC (Kentucky born by the way), the newsletter immediately drew me in. I have found that if you write to publish, you will almost always be disappointed; however, if you write just to write and have that feeling of actually saying something well up inside you, coming out through a pen/pencil, then the writing is worth it. A very important facet of this life we lead: Find your first reade set. Find those who care, who will be honest, who will stroke you when you need it and who can take it when you do the same.
Trisha
Submitted Comment:
I have found that the same creativity I use in my writing, I also use when I teach two-year-olds at my church on Sundays. I incorporate music, activities, games, and storytelling into my lessons which lets me express myself and give my imagination to a larger(albeit shorter) audience.
billwilcox
Submitted Comment:
PookMan,
I could really relate to your article. I started off as a songwriter, wrote a batch of songs, and then hit it to Hollywood. I was around twenty-one at the time: young, dashing, and full of it. After some amazing breaks, I finally got my chance to perform my songs live in front of a handful of A&R guys. They loved my work but they all agreed it was too personal. They wanted commercial songs that they could make money with...so, I went back home and regrouped. I wrote seven 'commercial songs' and when I returned, they bought everyone of them. Why? Because they told me what they wanted, and I wrote it. How could they not buy it?
windac
Submitted Comment:
Well written and thought provoking NL! Thanks for sharing this with us.
Turkey DrumStik 
Submitted Comment:
First off, thanks for the plugs of my lyrics. Second, I have been writing since I was ten, but at the same time, I also toyed with studying visual arts and music a couple years before that. I have various amounts of experience in each of those fields. Throughout my life, I swayed between these three fields, but my interest in writing persisted the longest, and through writing I could combine all three of my artistic interests in one package, be it through songwriting or developing a personal soundtrack to crank out a draft. Likwise, photography (my main visual art hobby) gives me a reprieve when my drive to write wanes (not to mention generates ideas and helps record details when I write about real locales). So my creative endeavors have zig-zagged, and I always thought I'd have to choose. Only now, after about twelve years of dabbling in these fields have I been finding ways to dabble in all three to create one work.
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| ASIN: 1945043032 |
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For Authors: May 10, 2006 Issue [#1028]
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