Two movies that nail the writing life...

The writer upon learning his novel will not be published

I suppose I'm a sucker for movies about writers and their lives. The romantic ones are especially cool. Movies dramatizing Hemingway's romantic and prodigious life. Another four-part series details the life and dangerous times of James Bond creator, Ian Fleming. And who can forget the very sexy Henry and June? I even cowrote a teleplay about Norman Mailer with author Lee Matthew Goldberg.

I guess lots of people think of writers lives as romantic. Days and nights filled with exotic travel, lots of booze, long dinners, lots of sex partners and divorces, and in between all that, getting some writing done. Sure, there's some of that, but in general the writer's life can be pretty dull and filled with more disappointments than successes (you only hear about the successes on FB and Twitter). Series get canceled, movie options dry up, editors leave their publishing houses making your books orphans, agents and editors hang onto books for far too long and by the time they go to make the sale, the marketing team isn't interested. And of course, there's the inevitable remaindering of titles that don't sell (which is why I love the indie publishing revolution because eBooks are forever...)

Two movies that demonstrate the more or less banal realities of the writing life are Sideways and Young Adult. Both films are labelled as comedies, but they both portray a realism about writing rarely seen in more romantic films. In the former, a down on his luck, very broke (he steals cash from his mom's underwear drawer), very divorced middle-aged writer is intent on taking his soon to be betrothed best friend to the California wine country for a week long bachelor party. Along the way we find out he's not only battling loneliness (and the torch he still carries for his remarried ex), he's got his fingers crossed that the book his agent is shopping to a small press is finally going to sell. In the latter, a newly divorced ghost writer of a canceled YA series moves back to her hometown with the intent to woo back her old boyfriend who, like in Sideways, is also remarried with a newborn kid.

Both movies portray the lonely writer's life, the excess drinking, the slovenly lifestyle and of course, the despair that can sometimes go hand in hand with this business (Yup, these are comedies, folks). At one point in YA, the main character walks into a Barnes and Nobles to buy one of her books. At first she thinks the table in the back that's devoted to the entire series is meant to promo the YA novels when in fact it's meant as a glorified clearance rack. Everything's got to go! Our protagonist is intent on signing a few copies anyway. But when the clerk insists she not sign any of the stock because then they can't return the books to the publisher, things get physical and desperate.

Welcome to the writer's reality. Isn't it hilarious?

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Do you Plot it or Wing it?

Indy, making it up as he goes...

Do you plot, plan, outline? Or, do you just go where your characters lead you? Why?...

...Seems like a straightforward set of questions, doesn’t it. But in truth, the answer’s not so simple. On more than one occasion, I’ve overheard established authors referring to their novels as “their babies.” That said, if I were to use the baby analogy to answer the question of are you a Plotter or a By-the-seat-of-your-pants author, I might say, Like my three kids, two of them were planned out ahead of time, from conception, to gestation, to setting up the nursery, to birth, to diaper service, to weekly babysitting, and everything else required of the first full year of a little baby’s life. It took a lot of thought, time and effort, but in the end, planning things out made for a smooth and happy experience.  

The second child required a bit less planning, but still, we made sure to plan ahead to a degree where we were confident that all would turn out smoothly. But by the time we got to the last kid, well, we weren’t even sure we could get pregnant, so we just sort of winged it. When we found out we were pregnant we just sort of went with the flow, allowing things to happen naturally. After all, we’d been through it twice before and realized that sometimes over-planning can take the fun and spontaneity out of the process. After all, life is a process of discovery if nothing else. So should writing a novel.

Okay, perhaps I’m pushing the baby metaphor to the breaking point here, but by now I’m sure my motive is obvious. When I was younger and just out of writing school in the late 1990s, I didn’t have the confidence or to be perfectly frank, the skills required to write a novel by the seat of my pants. Even if my characters were strong, their voices already speaking to me, I needed to plan out every plot point, from inciting incident to first conflict, to conflict resolution, to the epilogue. Not only did creating a clear plan help me construct and flesh out my novel, it also allowed me to go on the next morning without being stuck. 

As time went on however, and I became more comfortable with the novel process, I found that I was able to write a full length, 60K word piece of work by outlining only a few chapters at a time. I found that by planning anything beyond that would take away from my protagonist’s ability to make it up as he or she went along. Because life is a lot like that isn’t it? Often times, we find ourselves adapting to unforeseen circumstances regardless of how much we attempt to stay in control. You know, someone sideswipes your new car at the intersection, or you find that your wife’s been cheating on you…Life isn’t perfectly scripted by any sense of the word. This new method of semi-outlining allowed the novel to develop organically as opposed to one that’s built by connecting the dots. 

These days, after writing 17 novels, all of which are in print, I have enough confidence to sit down at my laptop with just a shred of an idea and in turn, build a novel out of it. That’s not to say I don’t spent time jotting down notes, or little bits of story outline, or even a page-length character synopsis or two. But what I don’t require anymore is a detailed outline. In fact, I purposely avoid it. With experience comes confidence. With confidence comes the freedom to allow your story…your baby…to take itself where it will.

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The Modern Novelist as Sage

McInerney, a sage for the 1980s cocaine generation

Ferguson is burning.

Heads belonging to Western journalists are being cut off by the evil ISIS half a world away.

President Barack Hussein Obama is releasing Islamic Radical detainees from Gitmo because he feels politically obligated to do so.

Illegal aliens are pouring into the US while millions have been legalized at the stroke of a pen, not because its in the best interest of the country, but because politics rule the day.


Antisemitism is on the rise globally.

Race relations in the US have eroded and rotted over the past decade. 

School shootings are so commonplace we are unaffected by them.

Overpopulation threatens the world food bank.

Ebola ravages West Africa.

Political correctness has moved in, and kicked the truth out on its ass.

Russia is on the move.

Iran will soon have the Bomb...

Zandri pens his novels and stories, and worries that the world he creates is entirely separate from a physical world that is growing and morphing faster than a weed on steroids. In a word, he retreats, looks away from the ugly picture. He is not writing anything that describes the world to itself. Years ago the novelist was considered a sage. The words he and she wrote, although fiction, bore a certain truth that were a direct reflection of the time they lived in. The novelist/philosopher did not retreat from the world then, but instead, challenged it.

Steinbeck, making sense of his world

Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath and spoke for millions of impoverished workers suffering amidst the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression.

Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises and a new generation of young men learned to say what they mean and mean what they say. But for the first time, men realized the power women truly have over them, and that all love must end tragically.

Later on, Mailer would write Why Are We in Vietnam?, a frantic Alaskan hunting novel that spoke as loud and powerfully as the shots that would soon be fired by the rifles on the Ohio State Campus. Mailer, the genius of metaphor.

In the 1980s we had Jay McInerny writing about the Bolivian Marching Powder in Bright Lights, Big City and suddenly, a generation strung out on Brooks Brothers, Manhattan apartments they couldn't afford, and cocaine, were now the modern romantic equivalent of Fitzgerald's Jazz Age decadence.

Zandri realizes how simplistic and even vague his examples are. In fact, he might even be lacking in a certain degree of accuracy. But the point, he feels, is transparent enough. Who are the sages of his generation? The novelists who fictionalize but who also tell the truth, or a version of the truth anyway, that puts things into some kind of order, or framework that can be better understood?

Fitz, doing what he loved even more than booze

Perhaps Zandri is doing that himself, without consciously doing it. Maybe he isn't retreating after all. Maybe in writing about a failed script writer obsessed with the blonde, blue-eyed woman who just moved in next door and who will manipulate him into killing her cop husband, he is expressing a deep-seated loneliness and isolation that isn't yet entirely realized. The loneliness is surly evident in the smartphones that occupy the two bed-stands in his master bedroom. Smartphones that, upon waking, will be the first thing touched, fondled, eyed, paid attention to, loved, lusted after ...

Add, human beings are becoming robots to the above-stated list... 

Zandri is reaching for something here, but he's not quite sure what exactly. For certain, the ambiguity is evident in the writing of this essay. News Flash! Lennon comes to mind suddenly. John Lennon wrote and sang about the world so eloquently and alarmingly in his 1970 classic, Isolation. "We're afraid to be alone..."

Not to flirt with cliche here, but the world has been spinning out of control ever since the serpent sweet talked Eve and she, in turn, got Adam to eat the forbidden fruit. Our own demise is upon us. So Zandri chooses the only sensible option. He retreats into a world entirely his own, and he writes about it. He chooses isolation as the only sane option. But then, that isolation is a direct reflection of the times we live and die in. Therein lies the irony. 

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