No one can accuse me of pandering or writing purely in the hopes of having a commercial hit. I doubt I could do that if I tried anyway. My friend pointed out that I also have a track record that establishes that I’m not fixated on having commercial hits. I forgot that part.
But the hallmark of a good writer is not avoiding script calamities. They are unavoidable. It’s responding to them - working hard to get the story right, being prepared to sacrifice every part or piece of the story and ultimately the episode itself to get the story right so the jokes will fly. It is hard work, but it’s mostly indoors, done with a MacBook Pro, nearby copious amounts of coffee, so it’s not all bad.
[In other words, the only way out is through.]
Story-surgery is required at a number of stages - and is more easily done early on in the process. That’s why is worth being brutal with your story or outline before you start writing a script. It’s like baking a cake. Mary Berry says to make sure you measure the ingredients carefully. If you don’t, it’s very hard to remove flour from a cake and add an egg when the cake is in the oven. The script equivalent of removing flour from a cake is through-the-night rewrites, caffeine overdoses, panic, sweat and weight gain. This, in my experience, can be exhilarating, once or twice but is mostly no fun
On realizing when my vacation started
December has been an unusually stressful month this year, what with jury duty, a rather punishing work schedule, and the usual Christmas shenanigans.
How would you like to be remembered?
I would like to be forgotten. What’s so good about being remembered?
“A little out of date”
"Merry Christmas from the Kensingtons"
My friend, the novelist Lewis Shiner, has a new Christmas short story up on the Subterranean Press site. It's titled "Merry Christmas from the Kensingtons" and is Lew's own Christmas ghost story -- particularly the ghosts of Christmases past as lived out in a series of annual family photo postcards.
![[ C ] Joseph Cornell - Penny Arcade (1962)](http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5137/5498928968_bf62a28f39_m.jpg "[ C ] Joseph Cornell - Penny Arcade (1962)")
It's a haunting story, and in reading just the simple descriptions of the family members as they age and grow, I found myself writing each person's lifestory in my head.
Lew said he had bought such a stack of family photo postcards at a flea market and the images, showing each family member growing older and with their personalities inevitably peeking through, year after year, haunted him.
I share his fascination and deep imaginative involvement with found objects. I've always found art installations made from found objects more interesting than other types of sculptures, for example. I also enjoy such items as densely collaged artwork and Cornell boxes; contemplating the original objects and sorting out my reactions to them, and then to their new associations and relationships within the artwork, can keep me staring for hours.
The power of Lew's story -- and of those found images -- shook loose a memory from my own mental lumber room of when I cleaned out the attic of our rental house before moving to our current home.
Artists don’t talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it’s stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.
PADDY CHAYEFSKY