At some point in my life I heard a story about Woody Allen's writing process. I might have been watching a documentary or maybe my mom told me, I don't remember, but I do know that I immediately became fascinated by it. Whenever Woody Allen has an idea for a new movie, he writes it down on a small scrap of paper and then puts it in a drawer. The man has been writing since the early 1960's, so you can imagine how many of these ideas are in one drawer. When the time comes for him to make a new film, he reaches into the drawer and starts pulling out the scraps of paper. When he finds an idea he likes, he turns it into a script which then becomes the movie. I just took a quick peek at Woody's IMDB page and it appears that he is responsible for some 60 titles in about 50 years. Regardless of your opinion of the guy's movies--if you hate them, don't get them, still harness feelings of extreme bitterness because Annie Hall beat out Star Wars for Best Picture--I think we can all agree those kind of numbers are insane. He pumps out so much stuff because he is never at a loss for material. That is where my fascination and frustration for writing comes from: what do I write about?
If you're a writer, or perhaps just a regular human being, you're aware of how much self-doubt goes into the initial stages of any project. Starting things is terrifying. Some people, like myself, are not convinced to start anything until they believe it's actually pretty good. That could potentially make for a dangerous cycle. It's actually a wonder I've ever completed anything on account of how many times I've said Uggghhh this is the worst to whatever it is I'm writing. You can either convince yourself that your bad idea is actually a very good one or you commit to its inherit badness and agree to go along for the ride.
Why bring up Woody Allen? Why bring up being afraid of starting things? And why burden you with writing about writing? (Don't answer that one.) Woody Allen tosses anything and everything into that drawer. (I can hear you assholes, by the way. Sling your insults about your least-favorite movies at a later date.) When his idea is "Quirky girl meets neurotic guy; they talk," it still goes in the drawer. I need to do more of that. I need to put more stuff in the drawer, no matter how ridiculous or boring or unoriginal I believe a concept to be. I am infamous for writing pages of dialogue, re-reading it, and thinking it sounds too similar to something I've seen already. Of course discretion is important with this kind of thing, but come on people, we saw No Strings Attached and Friends with Benefits come out within months of each other. I think it's important to have really crappy ideas or make really shoddy attempts at things, such as being 23 and giving yourself a break when your expectations far exceed what is realistically possible. I typically don't follow my own advice, but I'm trying to come around to that one.
Pursuing writing as a thing seems silly, and rightfully so. For the most part it doesn't produce anything tangible and convincing people that you were productive today is next to impossible. You aren't getting paid to do it, you don't actually know if you're doing it well, and if you stop doing it in the middle of the day in favor of watching the two hour block of Boy Meets World, nobody is going to wonder what happened to the book that was never written. Maybe someday I will be paid to do these things and I will have someone to whom I answer, but for now it's pretty much just me tapping away at my slowly dying laptop and hoping that I produce enough good material to send off somewhere. Knowing that my laptop is on its last legs is unbelievably stressful, by the way. For what is an artist without a canvas or an accountant without a calculator? But even though I am painfully aware of all the logical reasons I should just throw in the towel, I've never been one to listen to other people, especially a general public that assumes it knows what's "best for me." Funny story, I've had jobs where I was explicitly instructed to cut creativity out of my life and guess what? That sucked. So in spite of the odds and how they are very much against me, I find myself blindly trusting myself to not fuck it up. There's that shoddy attempt at giving myself a break.
As I've mentioned before I am currently unemployed. It's not great. I eat a lot less and the other day I bought beer with a Walgreen's gift card I got for Christmas. I apply for all of the jobs every day but it's difficult to expect results when all these applications are thrust into the infinite abyss of the internet. I've been applying for jobs since September of 2011, so my ego is just numb at this point. I would, however, have much better luck if I had any kind of competence with website maintenance, social media, or a general understanding of the things in the computer. There is a surprising wealth of job opportunities for writers who know their way around a computer. If I have one bit of advice for current English majors who spend their time convincing others what it is they will do with that: learn web design, learn photo shop, learn how to write code, establish some kind of general competency with software, and don't hate social media as much as I do. I know it sounds sad, but I am Brooks from The Shawshank Redemption. I got out of college, realized the world had changed, but I was too old to catch up. That's where the comparison ends because then it starts to get a little depressing. I see so many job postings everyday with qualifications such as "Must be hilarious! Witty! People person! Awesome written and verbal skills! Oh, and by the way, you will definitely be the person maintaining our website so know how to do all of that." Make a cool Tumblr. Create a blog that looks better than this one. Take pictures of stuff other than food. It's a young woman's game out there--learn how to play it.
Tomorrow will be another day of fantastic volunteer work with some of the smartest kids in Chicago. After that I will probably go to Subway, because it's on the way home and I have a gift card. And then I suppose I should return to the drawing board, which is really just a little purple note pad I have with a great big list of things-to-do printed on it. Many of those items are about "editing" and "starting" and "looking at again," all things that were one time in my drawer but I had the courage to pull them out. You know why? Because I want to be a writer, damn it, so that's what I'm going to do.
...or maybe I'll just go to the Art Institute because it's FOR FREE!!!
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