The Blog to Be

A few weeks ago, I was listening to Zadie Smith (of course) on the Talk Easy podcast. She had lots of great insight as always, about life and writing, but something mentioned during her chat with Sam Fragoso that really stuck with me was the Zora Neale Hurston quote the two briefly discussed: “There are years that ask questions and years that answer them.”

That quote is so succinct, so intuitive and in many ways, comforting.

It got me thinking about the years in my life that have really posed questions. There have in fact been many of these. Being only 26, there have been far fewer that have really “answered.”

As we approach Thanksgiving though, and this year begins to wind down, I have been thinking about the ways in which 2023 has been a year of answers. Not necessarily for the big, overarching life questions that I have gathered up until this point. Those may never get answered and when they do, I may wish I wasn’t in such a hurry to know them. Rather, for other smaller, but no less significant, questions.

And amongst all of that, ironically, an answer I have come to realize is that it is okay to have questions.

This may seem obvious, but it is something I have really struggled with lately. While 26 may be very young, and let’s be real, kind of a random age, in some ways it feels pivotal. For me, it has felt like an age in which outside forces have really started to put pressure on figuring everything out. Not only that, but in some cases, more frighteningly, an age by which you already need to have things figured out. And to not have done so—to not have yet reached some of what society deems to be life’s biggest milestones has at times left me feeling everything from motivated to confused to empty.

Then I came to understand that, it is not so much the unknown itself that is anxiety inducing , but more so the discomfort that sitting with that unknown can bring.

The instinct I’ve often had is to run from that discomfort—to not sit with it too long for fear of what it ultimately could reveal about myself or others or humanity at large.

If there is anything my adult life has taught me so far though, it is that there is some beauty to be found amongst that discomfort because often within that can be growth.

It is just as exciting as it is scary not to understand everything there is to know about life, love, the world, or even myself yet.

And of course, even in a year that answers, those answers inevitably lead to more questions because human curiosity for better or worse, is insatiable. There really is something to the phrase “take it day by day.”

So this Thanksgiving I am thankful for the answers that keep the questions going.

I am so endlessly grateful for the wonderful people in my life. The family who lift me up, the friends who make life so much brighter and love without conditions.

I am thankful for all of the years I was able to share with my father, who was the greatest.

I am thankful for my insane, but loving dog who nudges me awake every morning and falls asleep by my feet each night.

I am grateful for the food in my fridge, the warm blankets in my closet, and the roof over my head.

And I am grateful for this medium, this art, this outlet—this mind boggling work that is writing which never fails to make me feel alive, and fills me with a purpose that has yet to be answered, but that I hope I live up to one day.

I’m in my head a lot.

I overthink most things. Sometimes that includes big, important life decisions, and other times, it’s what I want to eat for dinner that night.

I also overthink the words I use daily.

I love the feeling of stringing together the perfect sentence. I’ll change the positioning of a word once it is on paper ten times in ten different ways to see where it fits the best. That’s what makes writing feel so empowering. You can edit yourself. You can arrange your thoughts in a way that is nearly impossible to do when speaking. There is both beauty and deception in that.

But making sense of the words running through my head and getting them out onto paper sometimes is tough. Making sense of my jumbled existence in a way that forms a story or some cathartic version of self expression is difficult.

And is the self expression inherent to the writing or am I shoehorning it in? That, I overthink, too.

Writing is so often equated to being therapeutic and it is, but I often consider how much of myself I’m supposed to give to it. When I sit at my desk there’s always a little voice that says “all of me” and then that same little voice a few minutes later says “except this and that.”

Why in the privacy of my own notebook am I sometimes both scared and invigorated to be myself?

Lately I’ve been having trouble being vulnerable in my writing and in my storytelling in a way that I haven’t been in real life. While the competing sentiments in my head aren’t sure how much of myself to give over to any particular project, I’m almost positive that some vulnerability is essential to writing anything.

If I didn’t find the beauty, the humor, the sadness in life’s eccentricities and mull over them for a period of time, then I’d have nothing to write about. Life fuels the writing and there is no writing without life.

On some level though, this fear confirms to me that I’m living a life worth figuring out on paper. We all have this, but sometimes self doubt manifests itself in the form of fear, and that fear is the kick I need.

In a way, being in my head helps with it all, too. It can help to shape stories. It allows me to deeply consider things both as they are and as they could be.

At the end of the day, it feels better to get out of my head and onto paper, even when it’s a jumbled mess. It’s worth it, even when it makes sense only to me, at least in those first few minutes of a session. Even when I’m writing a scene that makes me cry my eyes out, or a joke that makes me laugh until I cry (I’m not that funny). Even when I feel like showing it to no one, or when I feel like showing it to everyone. I feel incredibly lucky to have it. I realize that the world inside my head isn’t so bad, but sometimes, it feels better when put onto paper.

I’ve been trying to recharge creatively lately. By lately, I mean the past several months. As much as I hate to admit it, my output has been on the lower side. It’s been nonexistent here. Throughout my day to day, it’s been present, but not as much as I’d like. The recharge has been real, though. I’ve been reading, going to movies, making playlists, taking walks, and trying to bulk up. If my output is not going to hit the mark, at the very least, my input could be expansive. 

I started thinking more about input and output this past week, as I was listening to an interview between Zadie Smith and Ashley C. Ford from the fall of 2020. When answering a listener question during the Q&A portion, about how isolation during Covid-19 has affected her creative process, Smith commented: 

I just don’t recognize creative process as something that has anything to do with my life. I recognize time. How many hours do I have? When do I have to do other things? How much can I get…what’s the ratio of reading to writing because I’ve got to read a lot. These are the things that bother me. 

Her emphasis on “because I’ve got to read a lot” stood out to me for several reasons.
My first thought was Stephen King’s line from On Writing, “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all else: Read a lot and write a lot.” It’s something I’ve heard from various other writers and artists as well since then, and now here was Smith, a very successful writer and literature professor, and one of my very favorite authors, also admitting to concerning herself with this ratio on a regular basis.

Usually, when I go through these slumps in output, I do turn to reading and watching movies. It is of course, a writers dream to essentially be let off the hook for procrastinating because you are reading, even if that is a huge part of the work itself.

I often struggle though with determining what the proper balance is, and with feeling guilty for picking up a novel or doing more research instead of just getting to work on whatever project I’m trudging through, and vice versa. Then there are so many times when I question whether my slate of reading and watching has had any apparent impact on my work at all, or whether my work is lacking because of a lack of input. Words like this from Smith, and similar words of advice from King, make me feel better about my constant battle with this ratio, but I’m not sure I fully understood the reverberations of it until this most recent bout of reading v. writing I’ve been doing.

Since re-reading Frankenstein last year, I’ve been obsessed with the Romantics, particularly Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Claire Clairmont and the rest of their crew. After Frankenstein, I picked up a biography about Mary, which then led me to another biography about Percy, which then led me to not only a batch of other books about the time period, their journals, etc., but also, classic novels of the time I’ve never gotten around to.

I was just following my current interests, with no specific project in mind, not thinking any of this would be relevant at all to my two rom-com like feature scripts. Yet, the works themselves as well as the amount I’ve been consuming have had an impact in ways that surprise me when I am working. Not only has this burst of reading done things for my current projects, but has spawned a couple ideas for future things, and made me want to get to work more.

And even if it did none of these things, at least visibly, that’s almost not the point. In On Writing, King also takes the time to say “I read because I like to read. It’s what I do at night, kicked back in my blue chair. Similarly, I don’t read fiction to study the art of fiction, but simply because I like stories. Yet there is a learning process going on.”

All that said, am I simultaneously disappointed in my lack of work produced over the past several months, and happy I’ve increased my input during that time?

Yes.

Do I feel like I’m getting back on track though as of late, with a more comfortable balance?

Also, yes.

I’ll probably never not feel guilty when I’m not writing, but it eases the concern a bit when I hear from others and see for myself that input is just as, if not much more important, than the output.

They are the butt of many jokes, but some film podcasts actually can be a great resource for those who want learn more about films and filmmaking, or just nerd out about movies in general. My personal favorite is The Big Picture from the Ringer, with hosts Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins. They always have interesting commentary, interesting guests, and great interviews with various filmmakers. I’ve learned a lot about the craft just by listening to these interviews, often multiple times. 

The guest on today’s episode was filmmaker Alex Ross Perry (Her Smell, Listen Up Philip) a frequent guest on the show who’s films I originally discovered through the podcast. A cinephile, with unique storytelling interests, who’s worked in both the indie sphere and for Disney, his thoughts on the industry, on movies, and filmmaking is pretty insightful. While the episode today was fun, it led me to listening to an episode of the show from 2018, an interview with Perry I had somehow missed. 

During the 2018 episode, Perry talks a lot about how he works, and what he’s learned going from young filmmaker at NYU to making Listen Up Philip to writing Christopher Robin for Disney. A couple of things in particular that he said really stood out and got me thinking. At one point during the beginning of the podcast, Fennessey asks how a filmmaker in their 20s would learn what films would cost $50,000 to make vs. $200,000. Perry responds by saying: 

“By making something where you don’t have 50[000]. Then you’ll know that when you have 50 you can do anything. When you have 200[000] you can really do anything.” 

Then a few minutes later, he elaborates on this further when talking about making Golden Exits with a cast of well-known actors, but thrown together and borrowed locations. He says:

“It’s kind of an embarrassing thing to be doing on your 5th movie, begging for favors, but at the same time, it’s less embarrassing than someone saying it feels like you haven’t made a movie in a really long time.” 

This is such an interesting way of framing the advice often given to young artists, which is to just keep making things. Keep writing, keep painting, keep making movies, and that you get better at your art with each project. Its important advice in general, but the practical nature to which Perry applies it here is helpful, I think. Starting with small budgets will help you make the most of a larger budget eventually, and plan your film accordingly. And working within a budget is not always glamorous, but it gets the job done and the film out there, which is often the most important thing anyway.

All in all though, the most encouraging part of this insight is not to let the limitations of a budget, or the thought of being a little scrappy with gathering your materials, prevent you from doing any work at all.

This post has been a long time coming.

Too long.

Throughout my life, I have often considered starting a blog. I just never knew what would be in it. I usually told myself I was too young to have something to say, that my life was too boring, or that my writing was still developing.

Then I started to grow older, and I realized that no matter what age someone is, there is always something to say, we just may not know what that is yet. I certainly don’t, but I’m figuring it out.

I also realized that my writing will always be in development. There is no magical finish line for me to reach. Part of being a writer means constantly experimenting with new practices and projects every time we pick up a pen. Plus, if writing is never finished, then writers are never done growing. A blog, however, could help me with my growth, not in spite of the imperfections of what is published on here, but because of them.

Lastly, I understood that my life, at least from my perspective, will always be boring. But a blog doesn’t actually have to be about my life. It doesn’t need to be my diary published for the world. Who would want to read that, anyway? Definitely not me.

One of my very favorite writers, Zadie Smith, notes in her essay “Life Writing” that,

“the dishonesty of diary writing— this voice you put on for supposedly no one but yourself—I found that idea so depressing. I feel that life has too much artifice in it anyway without making a pretty pattern of your own most intimate thoughts.”

I’ve often felt this way about keeping a personal diary too, and I thought a personal blog would be exactly that come to life. So, if I wasn’t going to make my blog about my day to day, and if I don’t yet truly have a specific area of expertise since I am only in the process of building my life, what would it be about?

Another one of my favorite writers and creators, Austin Kleon, advocates for artists, especially young artists, sharing their process and their findings with others. Kleon says in his book Show Your Work that “The best way to get started on the path to sharing your work is to think about what you want to learn and make a commitment to learning it in front of others,” and that ‘you can’t find your voice is you don’t use it.” This book, as well as the rest of his trilogy, have been major influences in my life thus far, and helped motivate me to push forward with making this blog.

Previously, I have written professionally for various outlets in print and online, and I have written privately, for myself, in my own journal. I have also written film reviews, articles, screenplays, short stories, essays, poems, and unfortunately, eulogies. Now, I’d like to write something that is a completely different form of expression; something that helps me better understand my own process and passions, and allows me to share those with others.

This will be a site where I can express interests, share what I am learning, reading, watching, enjoying, creating, and maybe ignite some type of spark like so much of the media I consume on a weekly basis does for me. At the very least, it will give me an extra excuse to spend time studying things that enlighten me, and dive deep into worlds and subjects I love.

So hello dear reader, and thanks for joining.

Natalie