Yes We Can!

Hello, Effers! And a happy Friday to you all! Yesterday I completed an article for my friends at the Great American Pitchfest – the assignment was to address the new year. Oh dear, what would I write? Something about the calendar for 2010? Something about discipline and structure and goal-setting? Well, sure, all good. But you guys know me by now; I’m the self-appointed Queen of CHIN UP GUYS! So that’s what I wrote. And here it is, available nowhere else right now…for you.

YES WE CAN

Ahhhh, December. Who doesn’t love the holiday season, with the sights, sounds, gifts and family? Surely it is the most wonderful time of year. Well, mostly wonderful. Until a family member kindly tells you that you should quit writing and get a “real” job.

A well-meaning brother-in-law took aside a dear friend earlier this week and told her she should think about “reality” now, and her “future,” and stop “messing around” with writing.  You know the best part? This is a repped TV writer who was staffed last year. She just didn’t happen to get staffed THIS year. But she’s busy writing with the support of her agent, and she’s immensely talented and connected. But the poor, poor dear should get a “regular” job like everybody else, according to her relatives.

Even though she knows in her heart-of-hearts that her brother-in-law’s assessment isn’t true, it still stung and it still churned up a lot of self-doubt about the quixotic nature of the business of show. Maybe she should get a “real” job, she thought.

Coincidentally, quite recently, I had a family member very sweetly tell me that they had a great idea: That I should go back to school and “teach people something that really helps them.” As opposed to what I do now, teaching people the confidence, tricks and skills necessary to write a great story. You know, because that doesn’t help anyone. OY VEY!

Sometimes having the support and understanding of your family seems tough when you are a writer. They mean well, they really do. But they hate to see us suffer. All that writing and so little validation! All that angst and no sale, option or red carpet! Why do we do it?! We must we suffer so? Why don’t we just forget it and focus on reality like everyone else? What are we really accomplishing at the end of the day? Who are we helping? What are we doing?

Recently I had the outrageous good fortune to be in the Cairo Museum of Antiquities.  Cairo, incidentally, reminds me of BLADERUNNER. But I digress. I noticed carving after carving of scribes, prominently displayed and elaborately decorated. Our guide told us that scribes were greatly respected and honored because they could use the written word. To keep records. To tell stories. To wield power. At that time, one who could write sat at the right hand of the Pharaoh – and was considered almost god-like themselves.

Now people just think we’re weird. And sure, okay, fine, maybe we are a little weird.  But weird or not, dear writers, you are part of my tribe. You are scribes of the imagination; you tell stories of landscapes untold and of people who have never walked the earth before. You write down your dreams, your nightmares, your hopes and your fears. You use words to create worlds where before there was nothing.

This holiday season – and throughout the year – I love every single crazy writer who hunkers down in the den or family room, the café or the airplane or the bus to scratch out a few lines and smile to themselves.  I love every writer who writes against all odds – because you have to do it in order to be whole. I love every writer who spends time indoors when everybody else is outside because he or she had a great new idea. Because without your stories, my world would be much, much paler.

What if Herman Melville had given up? What if Charles Dickens had gotten a real job? What if Shakespeare had gone outside to get more sun? To think of a world with even one fewer book or movie in it is unthinkable to me – and, I think, to many. It’s just that the process of writing, while we’re in it, is something people don’t really understand. We need to be alone. And it takes time. It doesn’t mean we don’t love our families, it just means we need our space and at least as importantly, that we need some faith.

As the new year beckons with possibility and promise for writers, I want to encourage every single one of you out there, great and small, new or seasoned, to bravely continue writing from your heart. Be fearless, be passionate and don’t let anybody tell you to quit or to “get a real job.” You are the storytellers. We need you.  And remember this, guys – the acorn is just a nut that thinks it can be an oak tree.