[Every week, I'm posting reruns of my former Scryptic Studios column, Running Up That Hill. For each
column, I do a THEN and NOW thing: THEN being the column as it
originally appeared, and NOW being my reaction to the column today. This column originally appeared on December 14, 2006.]
THEN - 12/14/06
Welcome
back to another installment of Running Up That Hill, the only
column in the known universe named after a Tori
Amos Kate Bush1 song that the columnist doesn't
even like!
The
topic of this week's column is, as the title implies, Are You
SERIOUS? As in, are you serious about writing?
Notice
that I didn't say, “are you serious about being a writer?”
Because there's a certain romanticized charm and appeal to the notion
of being a writer: the challenge of living up to the
hard-drinking, hard-living ideals of your Ernest Hemingways and
Charles Bukowskis; the mysterious, brooding persona that only a true
artiste can attain; and the money, fame and glamour we see
bestowed upon a select group of popular writers like Stephen King and
John Grisham.
So,
yeah, being a writer sounds like a pretty cool thing to do.
But (and here comes the drumroll of the painfully obvious)... before
you can be a writer, you've got to write.
And
that's where a lot of us come up short.
***
Two
years ago, I decided I wanted to be a writer – specifically, a
comic book writer. I did a lot of research on the subject, the bulk
of which was trying to get a handle on just how a comic book script
is put together. After finding a couple of examples (and here's a
good time to mention the excellent
comic book script archive
available right here on Scryptic Studios), I dove right in and
started writing my first-ever comic book script.
And
I worked on it late at night, after my wife went to bed, and
sometimes on Sunday afternoons, if I didn't get caught up in a
football game on TV. And even though I wasn't really spending all
that much time writing, I thought of myself as wanting to be
a writer.
Some
time passed. I chipped away at that script, we had a baby (actually,
my wife did all the work as far as the actual having of the
baby), and for many months afterwards, I barely even thought about
writing.
I
thought about our beautiful little baby boy, and about how nice it
would be to someday get a good night's sleep again. And I thought
about how cool it would be to someday be a writer. But rare
was the time in which I actually thought about writing, in the
sense of, “You know what I'd really like to be doing right now?
Writing!”
And
yet...
The
desire to be a writer never left me. And I grew frustrated at the
dissonance between my oft-stated intention of being a writer and the
amount of time I actually spent writing.
But
the twin fears of rejection and failure were never far from my mind,
and the inertia of several months of basically not writing at all
made them all the stronger. I'd think about writing in the evenings
after the baby was tucked in for the night. But I'd be tired, and I'd
be scared of the blank piece of paper staring out at me from the
computer screen, and it seemed so much safer to just put it off till
tomorrow.
Because
as long as I didn't actually try to write, and fail, I could safely
still say I was going to be a writer one day. Just not today.
And
that's when Elizabeth
Genco
kicked me in the ass.
***
Elizabeth
is a self-described “writer, fiddle player, avid reader, and
Tarotist living in Brooklyn, New York.” Time back way back2,
she wrote a column right here on Scryptic Studios called The
Craft. One of her columns in particular was exactly the right
message at the right time in my life to get me off my ass and onto...
my butt?
Yes,
you see, the concept Elizabeth espoused in this temporarily
apocryphal column (once all the columns from the old site are
migrated over to this new one, I'll add a link to it here so you can
read it for yourself) was, quite simply,
BUTT
IN CHAIR.
Here's
a short excerpt:
"Butt
in chair" is pretty self-explanatory. Indeed, you've probably
heard the cacophony of voices out there in comics land, harping on
"shut up and Do It", which is just "butt in chair"
with perhaps a little snorting and chest thumping thrown in. In the
end (pardon the pun), applying the seat of one's pants to the seat of
one's chair is the only
thing that will give you a finished piece of writing.
And
another:
For
me, "butt in chair" doesn't always mean working on a
project. Sometimes my writing is just practice, noodling in the
notebook, taking down stuff that I know that nobody will ever see.
Trying on images, making shit up about folks on the subway, whatever.
Before you dismiss this as a total waste of time, let me remind you
that in every other field on the planet, there is practice. Artists
have sketchbooks, basketball players dribble the ball around the
court, and opera singers spend hours making those "mi mi mi"
noises, all in the name of busting their chops.
There's
a lot more to the column, including a corollary of “Butt In Chair”
called “Butt On The Couch,” which is all about the need for time
and space in which to gestate new ideas. But the thing that stood out
to me, that seemed as if it was written especially as a motivational
tool just for my benefit, was those three simple words:
BUTT
IN CHAIR.
It's
a concept that's simple to grasp, but not always simple to implement.
And
yet...
It
actually IS simple to implement. As simple as putting your butt in
the chair, and telling yourself you're not going anywhere until
you've gotten somewhere with whatever it is you're writing.
It
just seems like it's not simple sometimes. Because the demands
and desires of Life As We Know It – all the real, true, important
people and things that make up our world – often come into conflict
with Butt In Chair.
And
there's where it all comes back to the topic of this week's column:
Are
you SERIOUS?
I
learned two things when I started applying the new gospel of Butt In
Chair to my life. One, I wasn't really serious about writing before,
because I let too many things get in the way of writing: playing
computer games with friends online, watching TV, checking email,
surfing the Internet. And two, I actually was serious now.
***
Time
and time again, I come back to Butt In Chair as a personal mantra,
when I'm struggling to carve out the time I feel I need in which to
write, or when I have the time but not the inspiration.
Just
last week, I got up early Sunday morning (5:30am) with my son so my
wife could have a rare opportunity to sleep in a little. So I was
hanging with him the first part of the day while she took care of
some errands and some work for her job.
Around
lunchtime, she took over son duty, freeing me up to write. I'd been
looking forward to this chunk of several hours of uninterrupted
writing time for most of the preceding week. And now that it was upon
me, I was tired from getting up so early and uninspired from being so
tired.
So
I put Butt In Chair, and sat there. And thought about what I needed
to be writing (a new transitional scene for an upcoming miniseries
submission). And thought about how tired I was. And how the Cowboys
game was probably on TV. And how maybe what I should really be doing
is going to Vino's Brewpub and Pizzeria to take some photo reference
for the very scene I needed to write.
And
a dozen times, I started to get up and... go downstairs to say hi to
my son and see what they were doing, or go to Vino's to take those
photos, or go just check on the game for a little bit.
But
I kept Butt In Chair, and kept forcing my focus back to the scene I'd
been struggling to nail down the preceding several days. And the
longer I sat, the more focused I got, and after a couple of hours of
pretty much just sitting there thinking, perhaps jotting down the
occasional note, it finally started coming together in my mind. And I
started writing. And kept on, and kept on, and kept on until I was
done.
And
the scene's good. It works. It accomplishes exactly what it needs to
to transition between what comes before and what comes after.
And
that's how I know I'm serious about writing. And why, two years after
deciding I wanted to be a writer, I now feel comfortable in saying
that I am one.
So
now that we've established the fact that I'm serious about writing
comic books, the question remains:
Are
YOU serious?
Footnotes
& Bibliography
1Last
week, for several hours, this column's opening line did, indeed, lay
the blame for the Kate Bush song, “Running Up That Hill,”
squarely on the entirely innocent shoulders of Tori Amos. Sorry 'bout
that, Tori!
2If
you don't recognize “time back way back” as an expression from
Russell Hoban's post-apocalyptic masterpiece, Riddley
Walker, please go buy it from Amazon.com right this minute. It's
quite possibly the most brilliant piece of post-apocalyptic fiction
you've never read.
NOW - 12/18/08
Wow.
My timing in doing these re-broadcasts of my old columns is impeccable. Because lately I've been struggling with the same eternal issue we writers always struggle with, and the very one this column is about: getting my butt in the chair and making it happen.
Don't get me wrong -- I've been getting things done, slowly but surely. But the pace has been a little TOO slow, and I've come to realize of late that I need to carve out more little chunks of writing time in the evenings after my son's in bed. Even if it's only an hour or two, adding two or three nights a week of that will seriously boost my productivity.
So, my vow to you, Dear Reader, and myself is simply this: more Butt in Chair, and less Butt on the Bed watching Seinfeld!
EP out...