The Breakthrough

I became a writer four years ago.  Before I just wrote, but I wasn't a writer. Make sense?

There's a difference between being a writer and being someone who writes. What is that difference?

Work. 

Lots of lots of work.

Writing isn't fun for writers. Each day I come in after work and a dread sinks in. "Oh I have to write." What do I want to do? I want to watch HuluPlus or Netflix. Play guitar. Watch movies. Any form of procrastination. The Atlantic published an article about writers and procrastination which describes procrastination as a "peculiarly common occupational hazard." Oh do I ever want to procrastinate and just lay down, chill, after working 8 hours. 

Nope. I have to write. Notice the "have to." There's no choice. Everyday I have to bring up a Word document, stare at a blank white digitized page and try to figure out how to improve upon that blank white digitized page. 

I have to write something. I have to write crap, so much crap, in order to find something worthwhile. This is writing. Writing crap, so much crap. This is real writing. There's no writer's block, just scrapped writing. 

Before 2010, I wrote but it wasn't as a writer. The sparks weren't there for creativity. The discipline wasn't there for writing. I was a journalism kid, as opposed to a drama kid or a jock. I dedicated myself to the Raider's Log, my high school newspaper, as a film critic and the entertainment editor. I didn't write creatively, however. I didn't know how, or I told myself I didn't know how. 

Here's the secret to start writing: write. Write! WRITE! Write anything! 

It won't look good. Your first spurts of writing will look like drivel. No one told me that, really. Well I'm telling you that. Writing isn't magic. It may seem like that...no, no, no.

In all fairness I did try to write a bit. I wrote a poem in binary language called "Electric." I also wrote a poem that parodied the quote "Fortune Favors the Brave." There was an interest in participating in the Young Georgia Authors in 12th grade. I had an idea of a story involving a dialogue between Hamlet and Beowulf. The setting would be a graveyard of dead literary characters. Hamlet and Beowulf would be debating on how to defeat life: Hamlet's argument was life had to be defeated through deep thinking and Beowulf argued life should be defeated through force and through vigilance. 

My English teacher from 11th grade argued to me that I should write this and submit it. I never did it. I never wrote a word relating this story. I made excuses for myself. Those excuses are useless. 

There was a part of me that understood that I was going to be a writer in some capacity. In 5th grade I wrote a story about a lion who learned to talk because I gave him ritalin. I still don't believe I've topped that story, but it seeded this idea of being a writer, but a crippling self-consciousness and sense of failure let me to prevent myself from writing. 

A crippling self-consciousness and a sense of failure are useless excuses. 

What was my breakthrough, then? What happened four years ago that led me to become a writer?

When I got in college I didn't major in English or any related field...at first. I majored in Biology. That's right. I wanted to be a neurologist because I wanted to make money and I thought it was legitimately fascinating. I still love science and biology. Taking Theatre Appreciation, however, led me to realize that I couldn't forgive myself for continuing this field. I saw a production of Stephen Massicotte's Mary's Wedding at my college and I realized I had to make this. I had to somehow live up to my dreams in high school, in middle school, and commit to creating something. 

Writing was always something I could do but in a more academic sense. I certainly displayed an acumen for writing essays and academic papers. That wasn't my interest, ultimately. I didn't want a PhD. in Comparative Literature (which is a fine field, by the way). I wanted to have poems published, to write scripts that I can turn into movies. 

Therefore I changed my major to Theatre. I was going to commit to creating something. At first I was a slow starter but I realized that I owed myself something. Theatre was great because there are no closets to hide one's art. It has to be put in front of an audience. What I created, in any artistic capacity, had to be put on a stage. I had to put up or shut up. 

At the same time I took a Creative Writing class with Dorothy Blais. This was my start. I engaged in writing and came to terms with my love of poetry and dialogue. It was a start, but I wasn't a writer. I wrote in spurts and writing in spurts doesn't make one a writer. I wrote a handful of short stories and some poems. It was escalating to me becoming a writer, no doubt. When I was an assistant stage manager for Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice I had very few backstage duties so I kept a notebook and I wrote poems. I tried to combine a poem by James Galvin with the war poetry of Wilfred Owen to compare a marriage falling apart to war. 

Ultiamtely these were only first drafts, which I would leave behind, and exclusively writing first drafts isn't what a writer does. 

My theatre program required a capstone project and initially I aspired to direct a play as I wanted to direct films. It made sense...but no one wanted to collaborate with me because I had no experience directing. After stressing out to the point of having dreams of my hair falling out I realized that if I take Advanced Directing, I'll be directing a one act play. So why not use this opportunity to write a play like I always wanted? Dorothy Blais, my creative writing professor was also a playwright. She become my mentor and I began working on a play.

This was my breakthrough because this was when I began developing the discipline and process of writing. I wrote a play entitled The Five Stages of Baldness that would have a staged reading. 

This was my breakthrough. I didn't write in spurts. I wrote everyday. I wrote five drafts. I would reread my script and try to figure out how to solve an issue. This scene isn't working because the protagonist appears mean in how he interacts with this girls and the audience needs to root for him. What if the protagonist doesn't win the argument? What if the girls outdo him and outsmart him? I would conceive of possible solutions in a journal and translate them into dialogue or a scene.

I had the staged reading and it received a positive reaction. 

Applause is addictive. 

Writing happens through attrition, like Grant and Lee in the Battle of the Wilderness kind of attrition. Writing requires writing everyday, or writing the majority of the week. It means that no matter how busy one is there is an increment of room to write in one's day. An individual doesn't need a MFA to write because one works so hard and being in a writing program is the only way one can possibly write. I work 40-44 hours a day. I come home everyday and I bring up that Word Document and I have to write at least one page. It may be on a project I'm working on like a script or a poem. It may be a journal on how to solve something in a project. It may be academic or a blog post. I have to write at least one page. It doesn't take just a handful of time to write one page. 

Through The Five Stages of Baldness I reached the breakthrough I needed. I reached that point of realizing that writing is work, it's labor. Just like learning a riff on guitar requires being off time at first, or slow builds, writing requires steady steps and wasted papers or documents. It requires revision. Writing isn't typing or the physical act of picking up a pen and writing words. Writing, true writing, is sculpting. It's placing gestated thoughts on a document that serves as a mold of marble and figuring out how to whittle it down into something meaningful. It's about design, plotlines, loglines, journal work. Writing is a desktop folder filled endlessly with supplementary work on characters, dialogue, documents labeled "draft 01/06/2013." 

That's writing. That's the breakthrough anyone reading this requires as a writer. One needs to find a moment, write a page, and work. One has to put the work in. That's the breakthrough.