Seeking a Literary Life

In trying to figure out my future, I’ve come to a crossroads – a paradox, even. I have read many books on writing, and story construction, and character, and theme, and so many levels of criticism of film and society, how it might or should or does fit into our lives. For those to try to create, there is often a personal intimacy that develops with your subject matter, to the point that pieces of the creator of a work or his/her experiences and emotions are embodied within what is created.

So many successful writers – myself not being one of them – have taken the (sometimes) noble and (sometimes) fulfilling challenge to pursue what is deemed a “literary life,” meaning, a life worth writing about. It’s common advice to common writers to “write what you know,” so changing your life to be exciting enough to fill your stories with exciting things, your imagination adding to real experience. This is a formidable task, and it seems like writing stories about not being able to write a story only works when you have the creative genius of Charlie Kaufman. And even then without enough confidence (your own or others’) in your work, and a great deal of luck, you won’t be getting a film made.

Shouldn’t everyone try to live a literary life? Not settle and take chances like the hero of our own narrative?

Yes, but it’s complicated. Because even when everything boils down to personal choice to act or to not act, everyone’s situation is different, and those differences can mean drastically different outcomes for the person who thinks they can copy another writer’s path to success.

As I was perennially trying to rework a semi-autobiographical feature film idea, I realized how every new element added was somehow related to new developments in my own life. Consequently, once I fell in love 9 months ago it became incredibly hard to include a realistic, anti-romantic element with my story. Though I plodded on in an attempt to get that missing piece that would solve all of my problems and write the screenplay for me, I asked the question: maybe my attachment and desire to write this story – and my inability to do the same – has to do with the need to psychoanalyze myself from a slight distance and discover how I – or my story’s hero – was going to find fulfillment and happiness.

But was I living a literary life? No – I was standing still in the muck of my own confusion. Write characters that you can relate to, and create a life worthy of a cinematic hero. Those two things started to appear as opposites to me, especially as I learned more about what the actual life of a screenwriter is like, not to mention the inevitable changes to the industry (read: corporate philosophy and solely bottom-line driven motives) that are squeezing the opportunity for artists who don’t want to starve until the hereditarily rich and untalented bestow their praises.

So, what now? Adapt. I’ll continue to love quality films and great stories, but I’m moving in a direction that can’t involve submitting to a broken and dying system.

It involves writing my new story through action, and not behind the protection of that ingenious screenplay that I just might finish someday.