Blankety-blank-blank

I get so aggravated when I see an ad for a movie that has a generic title.  If it's vague and tells me nothing specific about the plot, then I don't want to see it.  Examples that immediately come to mind are The Core, The Happening, The Fighter, You Again, Everybody's Fine, Life as We Know It, and pretty much every Harrison Ford movie ever.  Even Inception's title was enough to put me off seeing it until I heard the positive reviews and felt assured that it was worth my $14. 

As a kid, I took issue with restaurants that were named after the owner or some cultural representative of the type of cuisine.  I was incensed at the lack of imagination displayed by Mario's, Molly's or Don Jose's.  Maybe this resentment of lazy movie titles is residual of that, but come on, people.  You're writers!  I know titles are tricky, but unless you're adapting a board game you have no excuse. 
Now I'm going to step down off this soap box, and let you Analyze That.  If I catch you doing That Thing You Do again, I'll have the G-Force on you in 88 Minutes.  Trust me, It Could Happen to You.


so you want to be a writer?

-Charles Bukowski

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.


if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

NaNoWriMo

Do you know what November is?  Well, it is the threshold of Fall and Winter.  It is a month that houses Thanksgiving and Black Friday.  It is a time for politics and last-minute mudslinging.  It is also National Novel Writing Month! 

I first heard about it maybe five years ago from a coworker who had signed up on the official NaNoWriMo website and undertook the project of writing a 50,000 word novel (175 pages) by the end of the month.  Maybe you have a great fiction idea that you jotted down years ago but never found the time to pursue.  Or maybe you didn't know how to pursue it.  Does the idea intimidate you?  Do you feel someone else would do better writing it?  Well, stop thinking that way!  The point of this undertaking is not to write the Great American Novel.  The point is to start writing something and finish it.  Quantity, not quality.  It's a kamikaze approach to writing, and it forces you to plow through because you don't have time to stop and edit yourself.  You have to finish by November 30th.  And don't worry if you don't have an idea already in storage.  Just start writing and see where it takes you.  Wouldn't it be great to be able to call yourself a novelist by the time December rolls around?

Technically this project began at midnight this morning, but it's not too late.  Last year 30,000 people around the world started and completed their novels in the month of November.  Check out the official website for more info.

As for me, I think I've finally got the perfect murder on lock-down.  Back to it I go.

my answer

-Charles Bukowski

"why does he have to use words like that
in his writing?"

"words like what, mother?"

"well, like 'motherfucker.'"

"some people talk like that, mother."

"people he knows?"

"yes."

"but why does he associate with
people like that?"

because, mother-in-law, if I only associated with
people like you
there'd be nothing to write about that
the motherfuckers would care to
read.

That's not for you.

I was reading through a recently published collection of Charles Bukowski's poems, though he died in 1994 of leukemia.  Many of the poems in this collection had been previously unpublished, but his widow and editor took them and put them together.  The same thing happened when Michael Crichton died and his editor found a manuscript he had been working on called Pirate Latitudes.  The editor made the decision to publish it, and of course Steven Spielberg is now making it into a movie.

Now, I understand that if someone made a living as a writer, you might assume that he was planning to publish this newly discovered work eventually, but you can't know that for sure unless he told you himself.  You might think it's very tragic that the author died before he could see his work appreciated.  I, however, find it kind of disconcerting that when I die some unlucky person who has to sift through all my crap might happen upon some horrible first draft of a poem or story I've written and would try to put it out into the world.  What if I had hated that draft and decided to scrap the idea all together?  After you die, are your ideas just fair game?

If the person is famous, I think we feel it's owed to us, the audience, to read his or her last words.  I think we view the song or poem or manuscript as a gift that person was working on for us, and if he died before he could present it to his fans, then we will take it anyway because we're sure that's what he would have wanted.  "Oh, Grandma always meant to give you this brooch.  She never got around to putting it in her will, but take it.  I'm sure she would have wanted you to have it."

On the other hand, consider that some things are too personal and not intended to ever be shared.  If someone found a poem I wrote at an emotional low point (and subsequently stuffed into the back of a drawer) and then submitted it to a literary magazine, I would have to haunt them so that they could know how pissed off I am.  It's like one time when I was on a picnic with some friends.  They had a fancy picnic basket given to them as a wedding gift and it came with silverware and wine glasses and specially decorated paper napkins.  As we were passing around the food and utensils, I went to take a napkin and one of my friends took it back.  "That's not for you," he said.  We looked at him, surprised, and then we all burst out laughing because his wife said he really wanted to save those special napkins for some unknown future occasion.

That personal emotional poem I wrote 15 years ago?  That's not for you.  But that script I've been hawking the last 6 months?  That you can have.

waste

"boring," he said from his deathbed,
"I bored everybody, even
myself.
I wasted it, I was a fake, a word-
blower . . . all too fancy . . . all too
full of tricks."

"oh master," said the young poet,
"that's not true at all, not at
all."

"all too true," said the old man.
"my work was overblown
rubbish."

the young poet did not believe
those words.
he could not, he would not,
for he too was writing
rubbish.

but still he asked the old man,
"but Master, what is to be
done?"

"begin at the beginning."
said the old man.

a few days after that
he died.

he had not wanted to see the
young poet anyhow.

now that didn't matter
either.

-Charles Bukowski