Quote of the Week - Capra

I was separated from this quote for a long time and you would think - oh the internet - but no. I couldn't find this one anywhere online, even though I knew some of it. Glad to be reunited with it's paper version, now scanned and saved. That little check in the lower right hand corner means it was already a Quote of the Week on some earlier version of this blog. Never mind. It bears repeating.

In case you can't read my handwriting:

Don't follow trends; start trends.
Don't compromise.
Believe in yourself, because only the valiant can create.
Only the daring should make films,
and only the morally courageous are worthy of speaking to their fellow man
for two and half hours in the dark.

~ Frank Capra

Words to live and create by.  When was the last time you heard the word "valiant" or the words "morally courageous?" There's an inherent respect for the craft, its power and the audience here that seems to have gone missing. Let's get it back - shall we? Not just in film, in everything we create.

In the wake of the ongoing leaks from the Sony hack, it's good to be reminded that perhaps, if we can believe Capra at his word, and his films, then the entertainment business wasn't always so mean-spirited and dismissive.

It's the season for It's A Wonderful Life, but maybe it's a good moment to take a look at Mr. Smith Goes to Washington for a pre-Scandal take on Washington corruption and the power of one voice when it represents the many.

Perhaps it's time for a new model - even post-Capra. While it's always great to have the privileged guy with the strong moral center stand up for the little guys, it's even better when we can all have a seat at the table and advocate for ourselves.

Have a peaceful week. Take a stand. See what happens.

Make Good Art.

This address by Neil Gaiman says everything you need to know - and says it so well.

Writing Is Not A Mystery - The Art of Setting Speed Limits

The smart, cool, yet slightly generic-feeling, thriller Limitless deals with a man who embraces a drug that gives him an unlimted capacity to access his brain.  This is the dream drug.  Learn anything, master anything, remember everything.  Who doesn't want that ability?

Creative people want to work to the very edge of their gifts, and then some.  I read a New York Times article contesting the idea that willpower is limited.  It says people have as much willpower as they believe they do.  I'm not sure if that's true, but I'm willing to test the theory, cause how cool would that be?

What I believe people do not have, is unlimited focus.

And focus is the key ingredient to writing (and most other worthwhile things in life).

When I work with clients - or honestly, even with myself - I notice the tendency to beat up the self.   I didn't get as much done as I'd wanted.  It took so much longer than I planned.  I thought I'd get more accomplished.


When excuses start to show up - you can be sure you are doing a little bit of self harm.  You are venturing into fear and ego, and those are the enemy of your process.   Not working AND feeling guilty about it  - that's an unfriendly combination.  More carcinogens than a Happy Meal.  The excuses are a response to an internal pressure that has been externalized and which you are then using to crush yourself.

Wow.  We are such interesting creatures.  It's the internal pressure that needs releasing - and as long as we keep transferring it to the external, we cannot address it for what it is, we can't look at it, for we can't see it, and then we have absolutely no way to solve it.

Stay focused - absolutely. 

Stick to your plan - that's where your will comes in.


But rest.  Take time away.  This is so important.  This is what allows the work to happen.  It lets ideas percolate, and it lets your brain breathe.

Washing dishes can have therapeutic effects on the creative process.  Easy repeatable tasks are great.

So is doing nothing.  Nothing.  Stare at the sky.  Lay down on the grass.  Walk to the beach and just look at the horizon.  For as long as you want.

Clearing your head may mean meditation to you, but maybe meditation is another thing on your to-do list.

Go off list.  Just be.

When you feel the strangulation of guilt, fear, resentment, constriction, step back.

Take a look at what you have done - it's probably significant.  If you like, identify (but don't even bother to write down) two or three key problems you feel you're facing in the work at this moment:  the introduction isn't clear, the set-up doesn't work properly, one of your characters feels untruthful.  Just identify them, then take a walk, or clean something.  Let the slow and easy part of your consciousness work on this problem while you shine your favorite shoes.

You'll get lovely shoes and you'll probably get a great solution to the problem.

We all know we have to sit in the chair and do the work.  Even on a deadline, everyone needs breaks (and protein) to promote mental clarity.  I don't know how the supposedly sodden Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner wrote what they did without it.  I know I couldn't do it.

If you're working on multiple projects requiring strict focus - be gentle.  Some projects will feel like they're fueling each other and some won't.  Find your limits - test the boundaries.  You can improve your focus over time, but I don't believe we were constructed to be engaged at this level on the regular all our waking hours.  Go ahead and downshift sometimes.  Voluntarily.  Don't wait for the adrenaline drain to hit.  Sleep 8 hours.  Each night.  Give your subconscious the time it needs to construct its particular brand of magic.

My will and my focus are my best assets, so I try to treat them well.  My insight, perspective, and even my drive are fueled by what these two things can do when I am connected to my source.  I don't like to burn out the focus, I like to stretch it, push it, exercise it and use it.  Then make sure to get my ridiculous on somehow and shake it all out.  (Oooh, that seems like a Florence and the Machine song cue!)

When you feel the focus ebbing, when you feel brick walls growing up around you, when your mental landscape starts looking like a cell block, it's time to step back.  Take a real break.  Laugh with friends.  Garden.  Stretch.  Cook.  Go to the batting cage.  Take a nap.


Change it up.


You'll return fresher, clearer, with ideas and energy to fuel the next stage in the work.

People don't come with speed limits.  You have to set your own.  It's worth taking the time to figure out what yours really is.

(This blog is part of a series - you can look the others up on the side, or go to the blog search and type "writing is not a mystery" - either should work.)

Writing Is Not A Mystery - Sitting Down Like Bukowski

Right.  So we've already learned I'm New Age peripheral.  I'm also smut-adjacent.  If honesty is the best policy (it is), then you kind of have to tell it all.  I'm a big fan of artists who give us the whole truth, and those who know how to make ugly beautiful.

One of my favorite things is when a scruffy hipster writer comes on the scene trying to get all Bukowski all over the place.  Translation:  drink, spew some words, and lay anything that will have you.

Sure.

Thing is, if that was how Bukowski had proceeded, I doubt he'd have the canon of published books he has.  Have you noticed just how many books he authored in his lifetime?  Lemme tell you - books do not write themselves.

We also know that Bukowski held a job at the United States Post Office for decades.  (I'm a big fan of the Post Office.  Buy some stamps or something.  Keep post alive!)  One of those dying jobs that lets you work your 8 hours and go home unburdened while still having enough money for a crappy room, some booze, and boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese.

So here you are - hipster writer - on the dole, sleeping all day, drinking every night, out at pubs working your best lines, spitting the same 3 poems you wrote at Uni, professing your love for all things Bukowski, Miller, and Hemingway.

What's wrong with this picture?

Well, mon cher hipster writer - you are not doing the work.  Writing is work.  Like anything.  Work, work, work.  I sit typing this and I have been writing for HOURS today and barely gotten through morning pages, 2 blogs and an email.  A book - A WHOLE BOOK - that sh*t takes TIME.

Bukowski didn't get chicks cause he was so hot - he got chicks cause, well, I don't really know how he got chicks.  I do know that one particular female gives him credit for helping her to become the writer she was.  And that was both through him being and sharing the writer he was, and through being supportive of someone else's art and vision.

What Bukowski did, what Henry Miller did, was write everything.  I'm often confounded at how Miller could have written Tropic of Capricorn while actually living Tropic of Capricorn.  But he did it.  Somehow, he found the will, ability, clarity, focus, and time to write those tens of thousands of words.

Truth is - Bukowski sat down at that typewriter for hours every day.  While working at the Post Office, while binge drinking, while living the tales he told.  It's  not an easy thing to do.  Not at all.  It's true he was no Soccer Mom shuffling kids all over town in a minivan, but life is life, and work is work, and a bad habit is a bad habit and they all take time.

Bukowski wasn't a lady who lunched, a guy given to long workouts at the gym, and I don't think he spent a whole lot of time at the mall.  It may be that you have to give up something to get something.  Poverty and isolation has its upside for creatives - you don't have to spend time and energy on things like keeping up appearances, a social calendar, and shopping for endless hostess gifts.  (Okay, they have their time-consuming downsides, too, but that's another blog.)

You may not be able to hold onto everything in your life if you are planning to devote real time to your art.

The original On The Road scroll

Mixing life and art - it's a fine trick.  Kerouac and On The Road is a great example - if he'd had his head down writing the whole time on that east to west extravaganza, well, there'd be no story - he wouldn't have lived anything worth telling.  But if he didn't manage to have his head down writing, at least some of the time, the stories would be cocktail party anecdotes instead of a groundbreaking, defining, and now classic novel.

That's what's at stake when you don't sit down.  The loss of the very material and insight you are aching to share.  The potential loss of connection on a grand scale.  The disappearance of the potential to reach across any and all boundaries of time, space, geography, and culture to midwife something profound.

After these last three blogs, you've realized that sitting down is hyper-important to me as a writing tool.  It is.  In fact, it could be the only tool you need.  It's simple and clear.

You must sit still and write to produce any writing.  

Maybe this is what they mean by the Laws of Attraction - you can only attract the writing by giving it space and time and focus and will.  But that's pretty true of anything in life.

Happy sitting!

(This blog is part of a series - you can look the others up on the side, or go to the blog search and type "writing is not a Mystery" - either should work.)