About Art Practically
Post 954:
Storytelling is a weird bit of business. There’s a billion reasons to get into the practice, but even with all those reasons, few people give it a real go. Most are too busy. Most are too sane. Most are afoot with other endeavors of import, fine and ready to read or watch the occasional story but not to make one up. That’s for the strange, the deranged, the soft-brained.
We could talk about the sordid motives of writers some other time. Today, let’s focus on the simple benefits of making up stuff.
And no. Money and success are not going to figure in here. If those things come, they come. I’m talking pre-money and pre-success. There are still good reasons to write.
We get old and our brains atrophy. Exercising the imagination through writing is like spitting in the face of Father Time. Good. He’s a prick, anyway.
If you want to be a decent writer, you need to read. So, it’s a reason to read, even when it’s the last thing you want to do. Also, when you make the less smart choice and decide to watch TV, you’re still thinking of story, character, theme, all the deals. That’s correct. No rest for the wicked. Even when you’re resting wickedly.
Every so often there’s a chance you might surprise yourself. It even happens to me, and I’m a lazy hack fraud with ambitions that waver from boundless to hardly there at all. There’s all the other things in the world, after all. They pull and pull until one day you think that writing and using that head for something impractical is a bad idea.
Don’t be an idiot. How many great conversations start from books? How many relationships start from a movie? How much of your identity is inextricably tied up with fictitious characters?
Lots. A bunch. A good percentage.
But it doesn’t even matter. This is just about the simple benefits. Think of it as taking your vitamins without the weird aftertaste. Think of it as exercise without the sweat and the aches and the wanting to die. Think of it as eating healthy without the healthy food.
It’s cool. If you can write, you should. Serious or not, it’s a weird, good bit of business. Cheers and see you after.
