We Are Armchair Travelers

You know what I love about we writers? That we can imagine things so deeply and so vividly. If you’ve been keeping up with Just Effing lately, you know I’ve been doing a great deal of travel. And I have seen the dusky sky over the Dead Sea at five in the evening and I have heard the call of the muezzin in Cairo and I have seen a full moon over Luxor. But you know what, Effers – I have also imagined those things and much much more. Because of E.M. Forster, I have ridden on a camel to an ancient cave in India. And because of Charles Dickens, I have slept in a cold orphanage at night. And because of Lorrie Moore I have sat at a dining table in Michigan and complained about my sister while outside a bird sang the same three notes. And because of William Shakespeare I have watched the fairies dance in an enchanted forest.

Does traveling add to your repertoire as a writer? – well, of course. But we writers are armchair travelers. We read, we absorb, we imagine.

One thing I really like to stress to screenwriters who work with me one-on-one or in my workshops, is to write cinematically. Use your words to transport us to the place, time and feeling of the scene. Whether it is a gritty scene in Brooklyn, or whether it is fairies dancing in the forest. The other night I was on the phone with a dear friend and a wonderful writer, and I was doing a little bit of complaining about Los Angeles. I stopped myself. I don’t want to be that type of person, who complains about where I live. You aren’t complaining, exactly, my friend said. You’re doing a reckoning.  Ahhhh. Reckoning. Great word. What a gulf between “reckoning” and “complaining.” One is negative, the other is a more neutral assessing. Late last night, as I walked my two dogs and went over the conversation again, I was struck by the power of language to carve differences between things so delicately and yet so profoundly.

Whether you write scripts, poems, short fiction or novels, you are wielding language as your sword to cut through the gossamer veil. And with that mighty sword you create worlds for your reader. What a gift we have, we writers. So make sure to use it well. And – I have to stress this – partake of the billions of written words your forebears have left behind for you to enjoy. Get in that magic armchair and be transported. Watch and learn. Become part of the same tradition.