Gonna Get Over You: A Rambling Blog After Being Sick
Hello.
I am just now getting over an upper respiratory infection, which is in part why I haven't posted anything in a little while. This blog post will be a little ramble-y because I don't have anything HUGE to update on, but several things at once that really aren't more than a few sentences. SO LET'S GET TO IT.
Last Monday, Injustice 2 came out on Xbox One and PlayStation 4, and let me tell you it is just as amazing as the hype says it is. My husband and I have been playing pretty much nonstop since we bought it. The customization options alone make it worth purchasing. The story is okay, too.
I started feeling sick last Tuesday, then went to the doctor on Wednesday where they said I had an URI. Did you know that depressive thoughts are a symptom of URI's? Because I didn't, until I started sporadically having them while my head swelled like a balloon and my cough tried to eject my lungs through my chest.
#me on any given day
On Friday, I was still feeling too sick to pack myself in a stadium with thousands of people, so I was thankful that I was able to watch my friends graduate from university through a live stream of the event on the main website. Later that night, I was feeling well enough to go to a friend's graduation/moving/birthday party to wish her well on her and her family's future after they move down to Houston. Luckily we live in the age of the Internet so no one is too far away at any time.
On Saturday, I received my final grades for my classes this semester. I did well, and now I only have one more semester to go before graduating in December.
It's crazy to me still that I'll be getting my Bachelor's degree in Creative Writing. It wasn't something I had ever considered a possibility before my husband. I had enjoyed writing from a young age (see previous blog posts), but no one in my family had ever given me the encouragement to say "You should do this if that's what you enjoy."
Honestly I wish that I could've graduated with my friends at the end of this semester, but I'm proud and excited for all of them and what they plan to do for their futures. Without the course work of college, I'm sure many of them will start producing phenomenal writing unlike anything they have before.
I've been making slow progress on my screenplay since I got sick, I've added a few pages here and there, and I'm well into the second act of the action at this point. Most of the slow progression has been making sure that I keep things plotted correctly to show the progression and story the way that makes the most sense, while also providing an escalation of the action.
this is how frenetically i type sometimes
When I was testing out the idea of the screenplay (because I was debating on whether I should write the novel that I had originally plan, or finish the screenplay I had started for class), I approached a friend of mine and had him read what I had so far. After he finished reading it, he told me that it was very melodramatic and over dramatized, and that was good for the subject matter I was trying to convey, but that I also should consider changing the setting of the screenplay because "gay conversion therapy camps don't exist in our time."
When I tried to explain that they do exist, even though some states in the U.S. have outlawed them, he completely dismissed what I was saying and moved on to another point of conversation. I was completely baffled; I didn't know what to say, so I just shut down.
I later confronted him about it because I was upset. I presented him definitive news articles about gay conversion therapy camps, from the last three years. I provided him with web pages advertising conversion therapy services.
When confronted with this evidence, he told me that I should not care about negative opinions of my work so much and instead focus on trying to make my work better for myself.
It's good advice, but not applicable to the reason why I was upset at the time. I blew up on him, got completely upset, and stopped messaging him.
I feel like this personal account is important to authors for two reasons. The first reason is that my creative writing professors have always said, "The work must stand on it's own." In a publishing office, a room where they're reading the script or whatever, the author will not be present to explain the piece. I can't explain to a producer or movie-person (I'm not sure who reads scripts before they get picked up for production) why the screenplay is set in 2017 and not 1988, just like the writer of Donnie Darko can't explain the movie to me (I really don't get it).
if you havent seen this movie, just try to explain to me whats going on
And that's okay. Not everyone is going to "get" your writing, what you're trying to say in any given piece. The difference, of course, is whether someone doesn't understand because of their worldview and understanding, or they don't understand because the writing is convoluted and confusing.
The second reason is that not everyone is going to like your work. And that has to be okay, too, because everyone is different, and people like different things and the reasons are not always apparent. I don't like most fruit unless it's in a smoothie, because the texture feels gross. People think that's insane, just like I think it's insane that there are people who don't like Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Season 3 now streaming on Netflix).
You have to be okay with yourself and what you're doing, even if there are people who say "don't do it." Anne Washburn, a playwright who wrote "Mr. Burns: a post-electric play" came to one of my classes last semester and fielded questions from the class. She said when she was writing the play, that there was a moment she said to herself: "Who is going to read this? Who is going to produce this?" And she said that when you have that moment is when you should definitively decide to keep going. Because any work worth doing, and any success the work might have is scary.
An aside: for context, Washburn's play is about a group of survivors following the nuclear power infrastructure in the United States collapsing struggling to remember an episode of "The Simpsons," and the changes the episode goes through over seven, then seventy years, in an evolution of pop culture into a cultural mythos surrounding nuclear power.
So do the work worth doing, do the work that makes you question "Who will read this? Who will like this?" Create work that you are proud of, the work that makes you stop and think and be afraid of failure and success all at the same time. And say "hello" to all the haters as you pass them by.
