'WHY DO I WANT TO BE A SCREENWRITER?

 Screenwriting Goldmine asked the question. 

I once said to a (then) fellow advertising copywriter ~ in a pub ‘conversation’, i.e. gassing session ~ that I was more driven by the need to persuade than to communicate.

That’s obviously contradictory, and I’d said it before I even knew what I meant. But it suddenly explained to me vividly why I wrote.

It’s common knowledge that writers (like most psychiatrists!) do what they do in order to ‘correct’ their own unresolved inner world. But I wanted to correct others’ too. Because this world looks pretty unresolved to me ~ and getting unresolveder-er by the day!

I write in the vain hope of fixing something, of adding something to the sum of human insight, however little, and perhaps only for a few isolated individuals.

It’s constantly forgotten, but writers are thinkers. We think about stuff that needs to get thunk. And sometimes we crack something, we see a way forward, a way through.

That’s why I revere Orwell, Lawrence, Ibsen, Camus, Kerouac. They exposed the lie. They blazed the trail. Not only are their protagonists Heroes, but so too are they. I hope to be heroic. Some day.

(Oh, and the other reasons I write are: Fame, Wealth, Babes and a Massive Funeral.)

Read the rest of the Screenwriting Goldmine survey here:

http://www.screenwritinggoldmine.com/blog/why-do-you-want-to-be-a-screenwriter/2013/05/30/#comment-71190


(Originally posted, WritersCut.net, 31/5/2013.)