Tag Archives: struggle

An Unknown Writer’s Circle of Pseudo-Support

Memoirs, Writing, , , , , ,

Like most writers, I have this recurring fantasy. It involves a large library, thousands of books, a bowl of jello and Jessica Alba. Oh wait, that’s a different fantasy. The fantasy I’m talking about involves this vision of one day looking back on today as a seasoned, professional writer who has made it and wonders why the journey to get where I got was so hard, so long and so filled with obstacles. But one thing that keeps coming back to me, and to many writers like me, is remembering all of those friends who stuck by you through the struggle. And to be honest, I can count on one hand the close friends of mine who actually stuck by me. The rest, not so much.

To be honest, I think this is something most artists deal with on a constant basis. I have a friend of mine who is a struggling filmmaker. He’s actually pretty good at what he does, and I have a lot of respect for his work in that field. As a matter of fact, he finished his latest film just a short while ago, and when it came time for the premiere, of all of the friends at work, only two or three actually attended. The rest kept asking about it, wanting to know when it was going to happen, and then when it did, they all mysteriously had other things they had to do.

That’s what happens to a lot of us artists when we hit that point of trying to actually introduce one of our works into the public realm. When I published my first novel, people said, “oh, that’s great” and that was all they wanted to say about it. None of them were actually interested in reading it. Oh, they’d say nice things in pleasant circumstances, but they really weren’t interested in the fact that I was struggling to be a writer, and it was about the only thing that mattered in my life. They’d talk endlessly about their families, their dreams and aspirations, but when it actually came to picking up a copy of my book, Osama Bin Laden was more popular than I was.

I did a simple experiment a few weeks ago, which I repeated a few days ago, because I was actually interested in how far friends would actually go on this sort of thing. I have most of my normal friends, and former acquaintances, as Facebook friends. So, as I have a simple little comic strip called The Adventures of Stickman & the Unemployed Legospaceman, I thought it might be interesting to start up a Facebook page for that strip itself. Then I sent out a “like” request to all of my “friends”. That was several weeks ago. To this date, five people have “liked” it. One was me. Another was that filmmaker friend I talked about. That means three others appeared from practically everyone else I know. Three.

So, I repeated that experiment by putting one of my books out onto Facebook as well. Six people have liked it. That filmmaker friend of mine, and my friend Melanie from Germany. Including me, that means 3 people have added it, and none of them are any of my actual Facebook friends who have been friends for the years I’ve been on Facebook. Kind of tells you something, if you take the time to think about it. It’s kind of depressing as well.

Which leads me to realize that if most other artists are going through this sort of support from the people they know, it says something really crappy about the way social networks interact with our psyche. I’ve talked to a lot of professional writers over the years in their formulative years, when they were really struggling, and they’ve all said something similar, kind of pointing out that the art is a lonely art, but not just because you have to be alone to write. Quite often writers feel abandoned and write from that place, and once they actually make it, seek out new sources of friendships because it’s very hard to look back at the friends you had before when so few of those friends stood by you during the toughest times.

I’m finding it quite telling that some of my closer companions these days tend to come from people who have found me through my blog, or others who have contacted me through circles of writing, rather than through my normal, already established social networks. While it leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, it also leaves me wondering if the future is a series of connections yet to come rather than the ones that seem to be dislatching from behind.

It’s a lot like the feeling I’ve always had from my family when I first mentioned that I was going to be a writer. Instead of respect, awe or even interest, I received condemnation and ridicule, almost as if it wasn’t something to be taken seriously. When I received my first positive review on Amazon, rather than say, “that’s great, Duane!” I heard, “so did one of your friends write the review, or did you write it?” That was from my family. So, you can imagine how long the desire for success in this field has been burning for me.

That’s really all I have to say about that.

Those Rare Movies Where Great Writing Appears Almost from Nowhere

Movies, Writing, , , , , , , , ,

I’ve been kind of consumed by something else lately. I’ve been trying to write Java programming for a personal project of mine. But usually when I get consumed by something like that, every now and then something else manages to hit me out of left field, and I’m left astonished because I never saw it coming. This time around it was a movie I watched on Blue Ray the other day, a movie called Sideways.

I heard the movie was pretty good, so I had bought it on Blue Ray back when Best Buy had it on sale. Of course, buying a movie and then finally seeing it are two different things as my time is usually very limited. But on the weekend, I decided to take a few hours and actually watch the movie I had bought weeks ago.

I’m usually not that taken in by movies, as I’ve become a very cynical critic of most movies I see these days. Don’t get me started on the whole remake phenomena that seems to be going on these days. But as I watched Sideways, I realized I was seeing something that was rare. It was not only a very good movie with excellent acting from everyone in it, but the writing was superb. From a writing standpoint, there’s a moment when you’re watching superb writing that you start to realize it, and for me it was pretty deep into the movie because I hadn’t even realized it was affecting me so. But at one point, I even felt the scene hitting me because the writing was so perfect and delivered so well by Paul Giamatti that I was floored by what I was seeing.

The scene was simple, between Giamatti and Virginia Madsen, who were having an intimate conversation about wine. At one point, she asks him why he loves Pinot, and it starts off as such a simple response before it turns into a metaphor for the character Miles, who Giamatti plays. He talks about how the Pinot is a red wine grape that struggles for survival, and unlike the Merlot, he appreciates everything that grape goes through as it can only survive in specific climates and areas but manages to succeed and produce a wonderful tasting wine as a result of its survival. The lines that Giamatti delivers in this scene were so powerful and so poignant that I found myself amazed that this practically appeared from nowhere yet seemed so perfect for the moment that served as its introduction.

When the movie was finished, it made me wish that so many other movies would even attempt a smidgen of the brilliance that existed within this script, but then I realized that so many other movies would shove themselves out of Hollywood’s doors and we’d have to wait for something as wonderful as the writing of that movie again.

Burdened by the Status of No Power, No Voice and No Audience

Economics, Politics, , , ,

I’ve been watching the struggles taking place in South and North Korea lately, and I find myself becoming very frustrated by the whole thing. But I’m not frustrated because they’re moving towards potential war (which happens ever decade or so), but because I often feel like I have potential answers to the problems that plague these people, and I also realize that there’s no chance whatsoever I’d ever get anyone to listen to me even if I had the definitive answers they needed.

What concerns me is not just that I find myself frustrated in life because I always seem to have a different perspective on things, a nuance that I often think might actually break through some of the problems that occur, but that I also realize that there are so many others out there who have to be just as frustrated as I am. This might be different if we lived in the 1600s where people generally were limited to their own surroundings, but today, we have the ability to travel pretty much anywhere, and we also have so much more liberal education than we’ve ever had before. It’s like we’ve been given the tools to do so much more with our lives, but we’re still limited to chiseling marketing messages on stone tablets to sell to our neighbors.

As someone who actually teaches college students in both communication and political science, I’m even more burdened by this because I often feel that I’m selling a box of false goods that empower people to do absolutely nothing because they’re never going to have the ability to influence anything beyond local issues. Yet, so many of them are probably growing up to do so many unique things that will never be given ground, so they will end up just as frustrated as the rest of us.

Yet, we keep seeing this group of people who do have access to the higher echelons of power, and they’re completely fucking everything up because their only claim to their station is that they knew someone, scratched the right back or were lucky enough to be born rich and/or entered into the right school.

The sad thing is, I’m sure this complaint is made on a daily basis by so many other people as well. Yet, I keep wondering what sort of compensation is being paid intellectually to keep so many people happy with their limited access to the pedastals of power. Sadly, I don’t think anyone who is in power really cares, other than making sure that those who are registered to vote continue to come out and continue voting them into power longer so they can continue to do mediocre services while enriching themselves, their stations and their offspring to continue the nepotistic process.

What worries me even further is my belief that an enlightened society cannot survive with more and more enlightened societal members realizing that the whole thing is somewhat of a joke where so few benefit at the expense of so many. There’s only so much one can believe in a system of “anyone can be one of the elite if one works hard enough” before realizing that it’s really a crock of shit. When that brass ring consists of 99 percent luck and 1 percent skill, that doesn’t leave a lot of very skilled people very happy with their lot in life. In the 1900s, you could laugh it off by believing that there weren’t enough people to cause problems, but nowadays, I’m not so sure.

Anyway, not much more to say. Must go back to the trenches and continue pounding on my tablet with my chisel as I make other people wealthier. Well, I work for a nonprofit, so I’m not sure how that fits into the picture, but I’m sure you get the picture. I guess we all pound on our tablets with chisels and then no one gets any wealthier. Hmm, might have to look for a better metaphor/allusion than that one.