Story

I love reading about story. How it is formed, what it is made out of, what makes a good story. I love the sense of integration that happens when, even though my ideas of the story I want to tell are so vague, I realise things I can’t put into words when a writer gives me a new perspective: like Robert McKee’s book on screenwriting, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting, talking about every scene involving a value turn, I immediately get glimpses of all sorts of ways the story I want to tell might manifest. No specific story ideas but a better sense of what I want to write from, and… I want to write. Even just for myself.

Maybe I will go back to Mexico, immerse myself in Spanish and do something like teaching, and work on screenplays while I am there. At least I have time to write them; I am not putting any of my time to good use, or I haven’t this year. I somehow believe I have a screenplay in me, and despite his talk about how the vast majority of screenplays never get produced, this is simply because they are not really that good: they don’t tell a story well. McKee says it is a seller’s market, it has always been and always will be a seller’s market, for good stories, which are somehow few and far between… I don’t know if it is true but he says if Hollywood could find good stories, it would produce them; it is not so much about Hollywood’s taste as it is just, try as folks might, good stories worth producing are not easily forthcoming. And I wonder why…

I wonder what it takes to write a good story. I probably lack the necessary literary talent or the necessary talent in storytelling (so little practice) but I believe there is something in me that can be awakened and is awakening, some yearning to tell story that is not just me journaling about my life, and some way of putting things together in my imagination that is some kind of talent at least… some way of creating story out of the raw materials of my imagination that I can do like no one else though I haven’t even attempted it yet.

There is some way I see things that, while not making up for any pack of these other talents, feels like something no one else has, and I don’t know precisely what that is, but I think it can help me put together at least one good story in my lifetime. Probably I will write one that really stinks, but who knows?

More and more, whether it sells or not, I do not feel that spending months working on it would be such a bad use of my time… it doesn’t throw me into despair like the idea of working at a local bakery, for example. Oh, I got offered an interview: my gut immediately said no, especially interviewing at such a small place where I’d be working mostly alone, but honestly to the idea of interviewing and having to sell myself at a time when I am so distraught and already so unsure of myself. So I did not respond and the offer was withdrawn… I’d rather be writing screenplays with no expectation of eventual payout…

Even just enjoying the process, learning from previously produced films, and getting to reflect more on story, feels like it would not be a waste of time in my life. I have been in a place of existential fear and dread all day and fearing the worst about everything and myself and somehow thinking about story and reading about screenwriting makes me feel more hopeful about my life somehow and like I can do something valuable with what is within me. Whether I can or not, I don’t know, but I am kind of a geek just for hearing how writers talk about scenes, and maybe I would not be so into it if there was not something in me capable of it. I have something I want to say and I am waving the white flag as far as figuring out how to speak my truth with my own life… unless I am creating or working with story in some way.

I just know I have to do what makes me happy or at least forget that life is nasty, British and short, and I kind of feel like I have no other choice but to trust that. If life ends in painful annihilation, well, at least the writing might help me process all that. Maybe I am only such a pessinist when I am not making art.

I wish I felt more paychic space to watch and think about movies but maybe when I get back across the border that will come.