Finding_forrester

I just finished watching one of my favorite movies, Finding Forrester. It’s an emotional story about two unlikely friends – an aging, successful author and a 16 year old basketball player, both from the Bronx – how they meet and end up enriching each other’s lives. Their initial connection is through writing and that is one of the core storylines throughout the film.

Watching it inspires me to write. When I saw it in the theaters back in 2000, I hadn’t written much in a long time. I stopped on the way home to buy a journal and spent the next month writing in it every day. At some point I got away from writing practice, I stopped making it a priority in my life, and it feels good to be doing it on a regular basis again.

I have not been working on my story much lately. I think I’m waiting to talk with Barry, the author who’s going to work with me to write and publish it, which is supposed to happen later this week. It’s like I’m waiting for permission to write it maybe? Or perhaps some assurance that I won’t just be writing it to write it, that it may actually get published. That’s part of the reason I write here so much, writing is meant to be read. I just haven’t felt like writing it lately, and that’s a lame reason. I need to prioritize working on it now, if for no other reason than to have material to discuss with Barry when we have our call.

It’s a big story and I need to stop thinking about it as such. Focus on the day to day, flushing out details, showing perspectives and context rather than just a recounting of events as I tend to do. It’s a big task and the size of it is a little daunting when I think about it. And that’s the problem right there – I’ve been thinking about it too much rather than just sitting down and writing it instead. It’s funny how paralyzing thoughts can be when it comes to writing. As Sean Connery’s character says, “The first draft comes from the heart. Thinking about it comes later, when you edit.” I can see that in my own writing here, my posts often start off stilted and stop-and-go from the writing end, but usually once I get a paragraph done the creative juices start flowing and my fingers warm up and soon I’m just typing words as they come to me.

Christine and I started writing a fictional story together a while back. We take turns writing a couple paragraphs, then send it to the other for the next installment. That has stalled lately too, as neither of us has had the time or inclination to further it, but it’s my turn to respond and I need to pick up the ball on that too. It’s a really fun exercise in play, writing something that way, taking turns. We wrestle with plot and character development, where we each want the story to go, and finding a balance that doesn’t alienate the other and yet still goes where we each want it to go. We started out writing only a few lines before sending it off, taking quick turns as we found our voices. Soon enough, those few lines turned into a few paragraphs. It really is a lot of fun to do. I’d done it once before with another friend, but that didn’t last long and I’d been searching for someone else to do it with ever since. Dana and I talk about doing something along those lines from time to time, but I don’t think he has the available time right now. He would be a blast to write stuff with. Rich and I have discussed working on a screenplay together in the past, but never found the right material or reasons to do so.

Speaking of screenplays, I think I have three that are all half-written sitting in storage. Or in my old computer files. Crap, now that I think about it, I think they were all done in Final Draft, screenwriting software, and I don’t have copies of them any more. I think I have a hard copy of my script about being unemployed still. Then there were two others that I can’t for the life of me remember what they were about. Oh, and all my journals were scanned and converted to PDFs, though I never go back and read them. I write in the moment. It would be an interesting exercise to go back and read my journals and old blog entries – I will have to do that one of these days. And I need to start writing social media posts for my company’s site, OtakuVentures.com. So wow, I’m realizing I have a lot of writing to do. 🙂

Anyway, if you don’t write currently, I highly recommend picking up a notebook and just seeing what comes out when you do. I think those spiral bound notebooks we used to use in high school are like 89 cents. Get a good pen, one that writes fast, and has a line quality you like. Then just sit down and write whatever comes out of your head. It’s a great way to process events in your life, reflect on things, or just get shit out of your head. There was a great quote I saw today from Lord Byron that I couldn’t agree with more: “If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad.” Enjoy! 🙂