Repetition Becomes Reputation

 Repetition becomes reputation. I don't know what to tell you if you want to be a non-reading, intermittently active, emerging writer. Most of my training was as a local reporter when I was in high school. I wrote quick, dirty, cheap, pulpy copy for a lot of local newspapers and magazines. Most of it was bad. I just continued. I kept writing until an editor got so fed up with my incompetence that they fired me or stopped returning my calls. And then I moved on to another editor until I wore out their patience with my typo-riddled, scattershot prose. After a while I wasn't getting fired as often by editors and newspapers. I figured either two things were happening 1) other writers were dropping like flies or 2) I was getting better. It was probably a combination of both. 

The writing continued as others dropped away, died, moved on. At certain point I had 'a voice' of some sort tonal cloud...mushy, overwrought, too many commas, too many addendums and disclaimers. But it was semblance of my worldview and pace. After that I consumed novels, magazines, short stories, scripts, plays. I read until I found similar voices that clicked. I kept writing even though the internal voice was saying 'this is stupid...you sound terrible...why don't you have a bigger vocabulary, you should just give up right now in the middle of this sentence…stop right here…ok stop at this next period and let me out of this crazy car.' You have to nod, acknowledge the voice, and continue banging away. Banging and clanging words together until you hit a smooth stretch where the words start gliding and skipping along over the stream of noise. You find yourself in the entrancing state of 'flow.' There is no guarantee you'll get there again. Once I’m there I will tell you to shut up or curse you out. I have cursed out family members wanting to gossip or talk about the weather when I’m in a zone. I have deleted phone numbers of friends who didn’t understand how precious and pernicious  I wish there was an easier way to get to flow. You don't know how many times I've been told that I was a terrible writer or that I should just stop. Strangely it was always white guys who would offer me the free advice that I should quit or be quiet. Some even gave additional advice of possible careers: I should join the military or become a physical therapist. It's not like they are wrong. Maybe I would be better as a scientist or a nurse or an accountant. I just kept banging away at this, despite the internal and external voices. You just shrug your shoulders at a certain point and go 'oh well...thank you' and keep it moving. Keep reading, keep writing. I don't know what to tell you if writing is a binary situation of homeruns or run homes. I rarely hit homeruns when I'm first at bat. But I also don't run home. 

You want to be a successful non-reading, intermittent writer? Good luck. Let me know if you find a stable and successful model for this unicorn, because I could use their magic fairy dust when it's 2am and I'm on my 20th rewrite of the same line. I could have used that magic when I was in the hospital and dictating script changes to a director while laying on my side. I could use that magic dust to get a solid 8 hours of sleep for the rest of my life, 2 hours a day in the gym, and turn my life into a moveable feast of colorful artists salons. I might even take up a few extra hobbies with all my new free time as a non-reading, sporadic writer...become a party host, start up a line of limoncello, learn how to build beautiful Swiss clocks to mark all my free time with elegant, empty chimes. The only  resource you have that is equal to everyone else is ...time. It is free and finite. It is the garden for our reputation. What do you plant in this soil? Insults? Gossip? Critiques of others? Or your craft?

So…

…you want to hit a homerun with no practice, no foul balls, no strikeouts, no studying. Good luck. Truly. Repetition makes reputation. A lack of reputation speaks to a lack rigor. For what it’s worth I’ve had dozens of plays produced and worked on multiple tv shows. I’m going to continue to write my errant, zig-zagging, typo-filled prose.