As we maneuver life, for some reason it is important to define our actions with purpose. Recently I've been asking myself the whys. All of them.. I want to write for television.
A Purpose
I understand that this journey is long. The journey from kid to respected writer. Or so they tell me. But what can ya do, wait? Wait for an opportunity to arise at work that will get you experience? No aaaaand no. Well the second of the two is more likely. TO BE A WRITER YOU SIMPLY WRITE. Somebody said that once. One of my professors who I look up to very much said that he needed time after college to find what it is he could write about, he believed he had not experienced enough to draw from his life something print-worthy. I used to think this was my path too. That this whole being 22 meant I had not experienced real tragedy or loss or love. And a part of me thought the same. That coming out of college made me filled with knowledge about a world I hardly lived in. A sort of bystander to wisdom.
But in reality, this is one of the most exciting parts of my young adult life and I in fact have SO MUCH to write about and to pull from, mostly from the people I’ve met. I feel like it’s not uncommon to draw majority inspiration from the people you’ve encountered in life. To then structure a world around similar individuals however, it is their intuition that matters. The decisions they decide to make why they decide to make them and most importantly what mistakes allow us to see consequences of the “fault of man” or..humanity. For me I’ve realized it’s really important to understand clearly why I’m doing exactly what I’m doing. I analyze my actions more than I actually act. This is because I draw the deeper meaning from ha-everything. I ask myself: Is this purposeful? Holding two different bottles of shampoo in my hands at the grocery store. Is this effective? Eating second dinner at 11pm.
So then here’s a question that’s been rattling my brain for months: Why do I want to write?
And not just write about me, or write jokes, but why do I want so desperately to write scripts? I could easily write a book it might actually get published one day..But a script? When the odds of seeing it on screen are .3% I know that the answer to this question will change over time, and the likelihood of writing for a smaller more independent network might be more feasible, I just hope it never goes away. (This question) That I can always ask it, assuming I know the answer is somewhere inside of me. Not asking it would be believing the answer does not exist at all. Now for me, it’s necessary. This call to action the last year in university sprung an excitement that gave my life a smidge of purpose. But I hadn’t really sketched out why. The purpose being the answer to the “end goal” the “dream job” the red dot or the treasure chest--Writing for Television. And yes the caps are necessary.
I kept trying to relay back to freshman year of university when I wrote my statement letter to petition for the film department. I talked a lot about curiosity. How everything about everyone made me curious. And this curiosity gave me a sort of first-thirst for “perspectives” and that the world was overflowing with these perspectives that are then tied to lives, and tribulations.
But now...
I see things differently. Hard to believe right? Time does that I guess. Curiosity is definitely still the wood to the flame, but only a small part of why I want to write. Being curious about the world around you is the first step towards observation. The happenings of reality filtered through my eyes. But what comes next is in my opinion 80-90% of writing. Its using that documented reality to create an imaginary one that someone from this reality can 1. Understand 2. Be entertained by and 3. Allow reflection. Not that everything does that. And this is getting into something I can only assume is “Story theory” as it relates to film and TV. It’s not new news that story is a basis of Mankind. But...I’m getting ahead of myself.
Rewind.
Writing to Celebrate Life
An epiphany sprouted in the car a few weeks back, like most epiphanies. On the subject of that open-ended terrible LIFEWHY question: why write?, I found writing visual narrative was (in my opinion) a “celebration of life.” This is, at the bare root of it because writing visual story creates an altered replica of life pushed back into our faces, using the language and culture from our social reality to narrow in on what makes us, us. The difference for books and other print media compared to visual storytelling, is that we read it we don’t live it.
Since the first quarter of the 20th century we’ve been experiencing visual narrative with sight and sound. This is simply the difference between words written for a book and words written for a screen. To change my goal oriented vocabulary from “I write to duplicate life,” to “I write to Celebrate life,” One must weigh what is worth celebrating. This is when I get excited, and realize how thankful I am.
Nothing in my life I’m not thankful I experienced. Which seems naive to say that every loss or broken bone, or fight was without a doubt worth living...But what still burns inside of me is this curiosity. Everything I have and will experience will teach me a little more about myself or the people around me. This perspective was brought about in college when I had to find things to write about. Writing helps me, get excited about even the bad and horrible because
I know that if i feel them, If I truly feel them that I have unlocked maybe a small portion of pain or joy someone somewhere else around the world has experienced. This does in any way make me able to understand and write from all perspectives but it rather allows me to unlock facets of my own human emotion. And I can only hope being human, other humans have felt in their own way what I might have.
To be continued... Toodles for now!
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