Writing Sucks...Sort Of

If you happen to have a co-writer in your life, hold onto them for dear life. Reknown director Billy Wilder had a few. Charles Brackett and I.A.L Diamond. Even the best work like this.

Bouncing ideas off one another is an amazing thing to do, if you trust the other person’s sensibility. Too often we are alone when we write, because we have a path and it’s often sidetracked with another voice in the room that isn’t yours.

I write alone and it sucks. Maybe because my thoughts are random and often dumb, people latch onto my dumb thoughts and try to carve a story path through that dumb thought. If you don’t move, you die on the vine.

A lot of times there are people who interject with a dumb idea while you’re thinking. Don’t ever think they are dumb. I mean they are dumb, but it could lead you to something else. If you’re stuck, more often than not a dumb thought may dislodge your brain. Or taking a walk. My brain is muddled these days with dumb unsubstantiated thoughts. It comes with being somewhat a people pleaser. It’s a terrible trait to have and I pray you never suffer it.

What it means is you worry about how others perceive you. You shouldn’t really think about it, but it creeps up on you. A psychiatrist once told me that a lot of this isn’t ever proven, but only things you conjure as your brain isn’t busy with other things. For example, the things in front of you. The present is so much more…fleeting, that considering others’ is much more a function of…functioning. In other words, to keep myself busy I think about what others may think about me. It’s generally just a dumb passing thought. Because, quite honestly, no one thinks about you as much as you think. No one cares. Or they do, but probably with the same type of concern you have for them. Which is an odd cycle. But generally speaking, no…no one cares. Because there’s too much shit in front of them already (in the present). Man, did I get sidetracked there.

It use to be easier to write stories back when I was young. I guess my imagination was a little more fruitful then. Because the unknown is out there, I suppose. I mean, experiences were the unknown. The other you get, the more you know since you’ve been through it. In the 1980’s there were a TON of teen sex movies. Why? The unknown. We still cared about getting into a girl’s panties. Nowadays, kids watch more porn in a day than we did our entire lives on VHS (which is STILL the best way to watch porn…Look up Racquel Darrian’s work).

As humans, we are always constantly working our lives around things. It’s perceiving danger in places.