Friday, July 06, 2007

A rant a day helps you work rest and.......retire

I rant because I am. It's what makes me who I am. I rant against the system in this blog. That is nothing compared to how much I rant against myself. That is what inspires me.

I don't analyse why I write. I write because I do. I despise the politics of TV and Film. Great entertainment generally gets made despite the infrastructure not because of it. My aged teeth help me live with it but not agree with it.

But I keep doing it. I am fit for nothing else. It is a compunction. I've earned a living for a good number of years as a writer. Most of what I've written is shit. Well paid shit but still shit. To someone trying to break in that sounds like manna from heaven.

But here is the downright truth. If you think breaking in is hard then try finding a current blog from a newbie poster in 3 years time. Breaking in is hard. Multiply it by a few factors to get what a career is.

That's not egoism on my part. I don't give a crap about ego. I know any writer is only as good as their last script. That's what I love about it. I know when my last script was crap. And I know it was obviously someone elses fault.

Definitely.

And I need that assuredness to make me a good writer.

Maybe?

Definitely?

Could be?

Ah hell, Popeye said it all. I ams what I ams.

2 comments:

Good Dog said...

Hell, you’ve got to have a rant otherwise, come of the end of the day, you’re lying wide awake in bed grinding your teeth.

You think in three years the wannabe-writer bloggers will have given up or still moaning about how nobody is giving them the time of day?

Having given my views of the BBC Academy and the offer to write for the possibly less than inspiring Casualty, Holby City, etc..., I wondering if a lot of writers need to start there.

There are a couple of quotes a friend in LA passed on to me, which I’ve posted:

Faulker’s mention that drama is “the human heart in conflict with itself” and Thoreau’s “How vain it is to sit down an write when you have not stood up to live.”

Having read posts of various amateur writer’s story ideas, I’ve stepped away from the monitors shaking my head. Since most of them are “youngsters”, it seems like they’re influenced by the high-concept movies and shallow, superficial television shows, and not at all by life carrying on around them.

Most of them didn’t seem to understand what lies at the heart of drama. Instead they concentrated on bullshit, ill thought out ideas that made no sense whatsoever and came from an impoverished imagination.

I think if this lot ever get under the wire and into the compound, what we have on now will be much worse.

So, in closing... Aaaaaaarrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhh!!

English Dave said...

Much sense GD. Universal truth is the heart of drama.

What is the connection that makes us tune in? Search for that in whatever you write.