The Value of Keeping a Journal

"The unexamined life is not worth living." -- Socrates

Some things are never written down but instead are forgotten and buried.  It's a tragedy.  Everything, no matter how foul or obnoxious, deserves to be written down if the thinker/writer wishes to do so.  For those awful, cancerous secrets that are eating us alive there is a remedy -- the journal.

My father beat me.  My mother was a crack addict.  My uncle molested me.  I'm an anorexic teenage prostitute.  Nothing should escape the penetrating scrutiny of your journal.  These horrific experiences were the basis of famous and highly profound works of memoir by brave, self-examining writers.  And, these works have transformed the lives of others.  Consider Anne Frank's diary and the impact it has had on the subsequent generations following her death.

The journal is the literary equivalent of the paparazzi.   The images depicted in your diary will not always be flattering, in most cases you'll sound like a selfish, whining child.  However shallow, ignorant or resentful a mood you may find yourself in, the journal can safely contain it, so you don't have to.  Let the bitterness and anger flow onto the page.  It all needs to go somewhere or else it'll bubble up to the surface and boil over into the other areas of your life like a backed up septic tank of emotional baggage.

Be aggressive in your effort to examine and expose yourself.  This personal document will track an emotional trajectory that you can trace over the course of your life.  You will find there are themes that reoccur in your life with different characters in place and under different circumstances.  If you're like me you'll find the same mini dramas being played out over and over again, perhaps on a larger scale with more at stake.  In other words, the same bully who pushed us off the monkey bars when we were eight confronts us at middle age when we argue with a boss or spouse.  Hopefully we have matured a bit and act differently today than we did when we were eight.  But imagine how an eight year old might capture this experience in a journal entry.

"Tommy knocked me off the monkey bars today.  I hate him.  I'm going to kill him tomorrow after school.  I don't know how yet.  Maybe poison.  But I want to punch him in the jaw in front of everybody first."


Perhaps best remembered for her erotic fiction, Anaïs Nin was  also a passionate diarist whose grand oeuvre, in my opinion, was her journal.  The testament spanned decades and fueled much of her other work.  In it were revelations about her sexual adventures, including a well known affair with the author, Henry Miller, that were shocking for the time.  Loaded with fecund language and uninhibited erotic force, her diary left a lasting impression on my writing life.  I highly recommend this great and often overlooked writer.


Next week -- We're kicking off our new monthly guest blogger feature.  The first of our special guest bloggers,  Herb Goss, a veteran TV writer/producer with over 600 aired episodes to his credit, shares his insights on the writing process.


This week's suggested website:  Creative Writing Prompts - (www.creativewritingprompts.com).  Over three hundred writing prompts to spark the imagination of the fiction writer as well as the journal writer.  Check it out and see which ones work for you.

This week's writing prompt: Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time.  On a single sheet of paper list your strong points as a writer, e.g., dialog, description, plotting, etc.  Spend a few moments defining what you do well.  Next, picture where you would like to be in your career five years from now, then ten years from now.  Now you have a clear goal in front of you and the strong points you listed earlier are the road map that will get you there.  Fold this sheet of paper and stuff it in your journal.  Have a great writing week.

Can Art and Commerce Coexist?

"To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle." - Walt Whitman

Audiences worldwide long for a good read.  They want to be entertained, inspired, thrilled, shocked, educated, etc.  In short, audiences want to be moved and it's our job as writers to deliver an engrossing adventure.  As writers we dream of creating "the great American novel, or penning the perfect soliloquy.  What we must strive to achieve then is creating a satisfying journey for the reader/viewer.

I've noticed that quite often a novel by a new author or a small, independent movie by an unknown director, far removed from Hollywood, pops up and speaks to us in a different language, or with a different perspective and somehow that freshness strikes an universal chord.  Agents, producers and famous actors long to read that original script that grabs them from page one.  But it's important to recognize that sometimes it's the person who not only breaks the rules but who has no conception of them that captivates our attention and speaks to us in that authentic, fresh voice.

Consider this:  commercial success is not always the primary motivation for creating works of art and literature.  People write for as many reasons as there are styles of writing.  A book that examines this and a personal favorite of mine is Patrice Vecchione's "Writing and the Spiritual Life."  It reminds me that among many other things writing has the power to transform old wounds and lead us to a richer, fuller life regardless of our financial solvency.

Recently a friend of mine,  an award winning composer, was struggling after completing a new composition.  While the piece conveyed the juxtaposition of humor and loss he intended, the music didn't follow a conventional structure that would have made it commercially viable.  There was no concrete transition between an "A" part and a "B" part.  The disconnect between the two musical phrases was part of my friend's artistic intention.  Luckily, he didn't heed the avalanche of criticism to change it .  He didn't inject an artistically artificial transition between the two sections of music just to deliver what was expected.  He stuck with the integrity of his initial artistic vision and left the piece alone.  The result, at least for me as a listener, is that the absence of the transition emphasizes the narrative.  Parts "A" and "B" are distinct.  They are in conflict.   For me, the abruptness between the phrases works.


What my friend's example illustrates for me is the distinction between art and commerce.  First and foremost the music had to satisfy him then he could decide how he would shape and present it to the world.  It works much the same way for a writer.  Countless stories have come into being solely because someone took a risk and presented an honest experience over a well tested cliche.  An artist tries to think outside the box.  A craftsman yearns to build a better box.  Which are you?


Another excellent book by a wonderful writer and teacher is "Old Friend from Far Away" by Natalie Goldberg.   In it, she shares her thoughts about writing memoir.  Nothing spells adventure quite like memoir.  The lives of courageous men and women who faced great opposition is always wonderful fodder for uplifting and inspiring stories.   Some critics and many writers insist that to some extent all writing contains elements of the writer's own life story.  And, that's the seed of our fresh, authentic voice.


This week's suggested website:  Scribd.com - Scribd is the world’s largest social reading and publishing company. They've made it easy to share and discover entertaining, informative and original written content across the web and mobile devices. Their vision is to liberate the written word, to connect people with the information and ideas that matter most to them.


This week's writing prompt:  Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time.  Make a list of five movies you haven't seen.  Not current box office fare but classic, time honored, universally acknowledged masterpieces you've been meaning to watch for years but somehow haven't got around to it.  Try to list the ones you're ashamed to admit not having watched.  Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Titanic, Raging Bull, Gone with the Wind, etc.  When you have five write an imaginary logline for each film based on what you think it's about.   In the next few weeks and months, watch the films on your list and see how close your preconceptions were to the actual product.  Enjoy.  Have a great writing week.  


P.S. - If WATERCOLORS is on anyone's list, please let me know.  :)

Working Is Networking

"We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth." - George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

The idea that "no man is an island" couldn't be more true than for a writer.  While many people imagine a life of solitude, where the writer spends her days in a dark cave -  a hermetic alcoholic, the truth is that today's Hollywood screenwriter needs to be very well connected and quite the social butterfly if she wants to succeed.
One way to stay connected and extend our reach (audience) is by embracing technology.  Easier said than done for those of us over 40 who did just fine before the days of Facebook and Myspace.  Embracing new technology is not as easy or fascinating for us as it may be for those writers who came along just a single generation later.

Back in the day, we knew and appreciated the importance of face time.  We followed up meetings with thank you letters (yes, snail mail) or phone calls.  It wasn't uncommon for a person to have 50 or 100 numbers committed to memory and leaving behind an address book at a party was only a partial inconvenience.

Today the concept of staying in touch is pretty much the same but the mechanisms are very different.  We can now keep up with thousands of our friends and contacts at a time.  And, as in the past, it's crucial to "like" or a comment when an associate posts something of mutual interest on a social networking site.  After all the hard work of writing and editing your masterpiece you're going to want an audience it share it with.  You can begin to develop that audience now.

A big piece of the successful marketing campaign for WATERCOLORS involved word of mouth, blogging,  an active presence on multiple social network sites and other online strategies.  This led to countless opportunities for screenings, print and television interviews and other publicity that helped boost the film's DVD sales.

Identify who the editors, publishers, agents and producers are in your field.  Start your own little database of people who could be influential to your development as a writer.  Get to know their needs and preferences.  When you have a project you know is a match, reach out to them.  Nothing ventured nothing gained.  Few things are as important to success as getting your name out there.  Today, the tools are almost unlimited.

This week's suggested website:  Oneword.com (www.oneword.com)  This site has devised a fun and effective writing tool.  Log in (it's free) and the site provides you with one stimulus word.  The assignment is to write something that pertains to that word (off the top of your head) for one minute without stopping.  A timer will let you finish your last sentence after sixty seconds.  Log in and see what other writers came up with using the same word.  This is a great way to stay sharp.


This week's writing prompt:  Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time.  This week's exercise deals with personification and perspective.  Can you bring life to an inanimate object?  Disney did -- time and time again.  Imagine your sunglasses could talk back to you.  What would they say?  What do they want out of life?  What are they afraid of?  It's all a matter of perspective.  Get inside the "head" of your toaster.  What does it long for?  Have fun with this one.  Give your selected object a personality (a paranoid bicycle), some fatal flaw, a compulsive behavior (or anything else that strikes your fancy).  Make it come alive.  Give it center stage and let it have its say.  Have a great writing week.  

Let's Get Physical!

"Do something scary that won't kill you" - Tony Horton

Inspiration can come from many places.  And, the more open we are to new experiences, the more opportunities we have to blossom as human beings.

I recently came across the above quote from fitness guru Tony Horton, the inventor of the popular P90x Extreme Fitness Program  and author of the new book, "Bring It."  The idea of doing something scary (reaching beyond one's perceived limits) stayed with me.  It's an exciting concept that I think applies to many areas of life, including writing.

I began to think that the richness of our stories comes from our ability to capture nuances of detail.  Detail is experienced through the body, and more specifically, the senses.  Working on our prose, many of us writers are sedentary in front of a computer monitor or bent over a desk, thinking, thinking, thinking, always living in our heads, in our imaginations.  Too much of this can deaden our senses.

Having a body that works as a finely tuned instrument has its own benefits, not the least of which is better mental functioning.  Nothing stirs up creativity more than physical activity.  It "clears out the cobwebs."  The adrenaline and the endorphins enrich not only the body but also the mind and spirit.  People who exercise are living happier healthier, longer lives.  It's as simple as that.

As writers we must dedicate ourselves to understanding our bodies. Our bodies are the vehicles we use to travel through the universe.  Keeping our minds and bodies sharp, alert and working at their full potential is in our best interests.  Take a look at what best-selling author and writing instructor, Julia Cameron, has to say on the relationship between writing and the physical body in her book, "The Writing Diet; Write Yourself Right-Size."  You'll find that your writing will benefit from keeping fit with renewed stamina and power.

This week's suggested website: The Writer's Guild of America.  (www.wga.org) The mission of the Writers Guild Foundation is to serve the community of writers and for writers to serve the community. Through events, outreach programs, library and archive they strive to educate and inspire writers as well as to promote and preserve excellence in writing. They are a 501 (c) 3 associated with, but independent of, the Writers Guild of America West.


This week's writing prompt:  Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time.  This exercise is meant to loosen up your powers of observation and your ability to make unpredictable connections between things.  It's an improv acting exercise that goes back to my theatre days in college.  Write a sentence starting with the letter "A."  Then continue with another sentence that starts with the letter "B."  (e.g. - Ana likes her new dorm room.  But, the school is horrible...etc.)  See how far you can get down the alphabet in five minutes.  Keep it fresh, keep it unpredictable.  Have a great writing week.

The Benefits of Failure

"You need a thick skin to survive in this business."

I must have heard this officious piece of advise a thousand of times as I embarked on my journey to become a writer and "make it" in Hollywood.  But what does it really mean to have a thick skin?

Every creative artist experiences rejection.  For writers, the rejection we get can be exceptionally brutal.  If we're putting ourselves out there and doing the work the rejection we receive amounts to piles of letters from editors, agents and publishers stating right there on black and white how inept we are.  At least that's one way of looking at it.


Another, perhaps healthier way to look at rejection is to consider that feedback of any kind is an opportunity to become a better writer.  In a recent interview I was asked how I dealt with bad reviews of my film, Watercolors.  In truth, those bad reviews were just an opportunity for me to fine tune what may have not worked with some audience members.  The truth is that the great majority of audience members and critics did like my film but the few bloggers and smaller publications that trashed it still had good things to offer me as a writer/director.  I had a lot of useful information and although I can't use it for a rewrite for Watercolors, I'll have in the back of my head for the next project.  


Perhaps the greatest trick is not to take it personally.  Some people will make suggestions that you'll find pathetically amateurish - consider the source.  Other times you'll get a solid nugget of gold (even if it's in the form of a harsh statement) that perhaps underscores a weakness in your writing.  Don't be so hurt by the harshness that you miss the gold.  Remember that critics get paid to write interesting copy and sometimes that means slamming someone.  In all likelihood, if you adjust based on some intelligent feedback your rewrite will be better than your initial idea.  We all have weaknesses in our writing - in our psyches - in our hearts.  They make us unique.   They make us human.  


One of my favorite pieces of memoir is a book called "The Great Failure" by Natalie Goldberg.   Goldberg is a Zen monk, a painter and a wonderful writer.  She's been a huge inspiration to me in my journey.  I hope she'll do the same for you.  In her book she describes many experiences where putting her own ego aside allowed her to become a better writer.  In the end, nothing is a failure -- it's all a learning experience.


Having a thick skin doesn't mean being impenetrable, invincible or arrogant.  Thick skin means letting the nonsense that doesn't apply slide right off.  And, they'll be lots of it.  Know your own self worth and understand the process that works for you.  Hopefully, part of your process will include knowing how to work with rejection and criticism.  


This week's suggested website: Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America - (www.sfwa.org) The SFFWA, or SFWA for short-short, is one of the most effective and widely-recognized of all non-profit writers' organizations. Members have access to all manner of resources and publications and can benefit from the protection offered by the SFWA.


This week's writing prompt: Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time.  Consider some of your favorite publications and what it took for those contributing  writers to sell their piece.  Harper's, The New Yorker, Esquire, etc. all work with the top writers.  Now, in a positive spirit, give this writer your criticism.  Look for ways in which the story missed its mark or could have been more effective in your opinion.  Be ready for when roles are reversed and its your story in Esquire that people are criticizing.  

Going the Distance

Are you in it for the long haul?  Are you a better sprinter?

Short stories and poems can sometimes come in flashes of inspiration.  When they do you write them down furiously with the force of an explosive sprinter.

Conversely, novels and screenplays are long term projects.  No one writes a novel or screenplay in one sitting.  To successfully accomplish your writing goals you'll need to treat your project like a sustained marathon effort not a dynamic sprint.

Interestingly, I've also found that a screenplay or other long work is more like a marathon of hurdles.  You will encounter one bump in the road after the other.  Scenes you thought were brilliant one day won't work when you reread them a week later.  Some days you'll feel like you're running in place, not making any progress a all, your destination no closer as a result of your efforts.  It's especially on these days that you've got to make sure you carve out your writing time and just get through it.

One way I managed to get through my first script was to set mini-goals for myself that I could reach within a day or two at most.  Hitting these goals day after day helped to build my confidence which in turn kept me motivated.

Naturally, this approach isn't meant for all writers.  So, in the spirit of fun, here's a completely different  philosophy and approach.  Viki King's How To Write A Movie in 21 Days, baffles and excites me.   Ms. King offers some great insights and exercises regardless of how fast you ultimately write your screenplay.  A really fun and informative read.  I highly recommend it.

This week's suggested website: Book-in-a-Week - (www.book-in-a-week.com) This site is for ambitious people only. Book-in-a-Week encourages writers to write as much as possible during the first week of every month.


This week's writing prompt: Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time. Consider the project you're currently working on.  Give yourself realistic daily mini-goals for the coming week, e.g., Monday - 1,000 words in the novel, Tuesday - research my main character's favorite hobby, Wednesday - re-read and clean up scene #3, etc.  The idea here is to build your masterpiece slowly and methodically.  Be sure to set a goal that matches your current skill level and comfortability.  This will reinforce your writing practice.  Have a great writing week.

Can Artists Be Organized?

Like many people, I struggle with being organized, both in my personal life and in my writing.  But, every now and then something lights a fire under my butt and I go into "ACTION" mode.  A day of intense house cleaning does wonders for moving your life and creativity forward.  Clearing out the cobwebs of doubt, fear, indecision, etc.  is a necessary process to ensure a healthy artistic life and push through to clarity.

Frustrated that I haven't finished a significant piece of work in a while (it happens to every writer), I called a friend of mine who's a producer in New York and someone who's opinion I trust to have a bitch and moan session.  Afterward, I decided to take  stock of where I was with my various projects.  I had a vague idea that I was juggling multiple story lines, characters, etc. in my head for some time but didn't have a clue to what extent.

After spending some time digging through piles of old notes, scanning my hard drive for computer files of character breakdowns, treatments, etc.  I realized that I had no less than seven feature films, five television shows and two novels swirling around in my head and in various stages on paper.  I was even seventy pages deep into one script idea.  I never realized I had so much material.  I actually had been very busy all along.   I hadn't seen any "real" progress because my efforts were spread thin to say the least.

Now, I found the fortitude to hunker down, focus and finish something.  I have tons to work with.  And I'm relieved to find out I haven't been meandering, wasting time getting nowhere.  I was just momentarily scattered and maybe a little dejected -- common states of emotion that all writers need to get used to.  Does any of this sound familiar?  Do you go through a similar process of creative monsoons followed by what seem like creative droughts?

Perhaps the most influential book on creativity and more importantly the psychosis of a creative person I've ever read is Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way."  In more ways than I could ever express here, she has kept me sane.  She really covers it all, rejection, self-doubt, writer's block, commitment, etc.  Her exercises are fun and effective.  She's a true lover of the creative process and understands it from the inside.  I truly urge you to take a look at her work - it will influence your own for certain.

Maybe being organized doesn't come naturally for you either but cultivating the habit of being organized can help when the ideas are pouring in on top of each other.  Organization helps us affirm that our work is valuable and has a place in the world, namely, prominently displayed!

This week's suggested website: The Poetry Foundation. Publishers of Poetry Magazine.  These guys have been around for over 90 years, well worth checking out.  (www.poetrymagazine.org) Nothing informs your imagination and feeds your creativity like poetry.  


This week's writing prompt:  Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time. I call this exercise adding to The Golden Notebook.   I hope you'll use it for years to come.  It's a simple yet powerful tool for affirmation, a yardstick to measure your writing progress over the years, and a deep well of inspiration when you feel you may have writer's block.  Here's how I found it works best for me:  Take your favorite notebook and create a master list of the titles of all the projects you've ever contemplated undertaking.  Imagine that you've already written them all.  Then list next to each title a small logline or 3 line synopsis of that work.  Treat it as if you were asked to catalog the works of a great master.


Here's an example from my own Golden notebook.


Title: Blood and Grace
An up and coming Spanish matador develops a growing obsession with a touring Russian ballerina.




Title: Jasmine Hill
A frustrated novelist and professor of English at a prestigious New England university goes on sabbatical when she can't get a publisher interested in her latest novel.


Keep your Golden Notebook filled with the seeds of your future masterpieces.  This is where you'll come to when you're ready to plant something in the fertile ground of your writing.  The best ideas will always find a way to capture your attention and force you to plant them, fertilize them, harvest them and share the bounty.