Reality Sucks - A Personal Writing History

If I trace it back logically throughout the years I can just about find the moment where my brain took every single career choice that would have been better and tossed it into my mental furnace. Somewhere between the days and nights of watching too many movies, reading too many books, and having all night conversations with my friends about what we’d be like if we were warriors in an alternate version of the Earth, I made a decision. I decided I wanted to be a writer. I’ve been doomed ever since.

When I started out I only focused my attention on screenwriting. I had convinced myself that my rough childhood was the perfect stereotype to fuel a successful career in the movie business. I stayed inside on many nights, which isn’t hard when you’re an overweight “funny” kid, and studied scriptwriting like Meatloaf apparently studied women’s bodies in his songs. I can remember sleepless nights at home when I was fussing over formatting rules, like whether I should label a scene as exterior when it was set in space. Because, let’s be honest, space is the ultimate exterior. And if that phrase isn’t coined yet then I’m calling dibs on it.

But like many bright eyed youths who are fueled by the mysticism in Hollywood and the film making business, because it IS a business, I found out the truth. The mushroom print of reality smacked me on the forehead and the tiny stars and clapboards danced around my head like they did Daffy Duck in so many Looney Toons episodes. It’s just near impossible to be a screenwriter and not live in Los Angeles. Throw in the fact that it’s nearly impossible to be a successful screenwriter if you DO live in Los Angeles and my dreams were more withered than a dried out earthworm.

Luckily I’m much more stubborn than that.

After a brief foray into the field of video editing, I realized that I had a strange addiction, one that had been fueled since my childhood but had been ignored through the teen years of seeking out sex, drugs, and alcohol – I was addicted to telling stories. I loved doing it, more than anything in the world. If someone was willing to listen I was willing to tell a story. In fact I can remember getting in trouble more than once for reciting “R” rated movie lines in elementary school.

So where does this need to tell stories come from? I have a simple answer to explain it. Some people have told me it’s creativity that takes hold of them. That some people are just gifted and there’s nothing more to it than that. I say that’s bullshit. The truth is that reality sucks. People have always known that reality sucks. Ever since the first sentient humans walked out of there hobbles in the wastelands of planet Earth, they’ve stood in the cold wind and shouted “this sucks!” They probably also bitched about disease, death, and predators that were eager to eat them alive. But I think that “sucks” wraps that all up in a nice little bow.

To combat the suck that has infiltrated reality, the universe gave certain people the need to tell stories. And ever since that person screamed “it sucks” outside of their dirty little hobble, with only the mud and rocks to keep them company, someone else was there to say, “it could be worse, listen to this!” Take that reality.

Where am I going with all of this? To tell you the truth I’m not very sure. I’m developing a cold or flu, which is inevitable when it’s wintertime in Michigan, and I just started typing with only the medication and my iTunes playlist to keep me company. But if I were to go back and ask the previous version of me what it was he was planning to do, it would be that I simply wanted to share my reason for why I write and why everyone else should write. The simple answer is that reality sucks and we need people to light the dark times in other people’s lives. How many candles have I lit? Not nearly as many as some people may think, but I’m getting there. All I hope is that I can show up at times when people are screaming at the universe and try and comfort them with a kindly “listen to this.” And damnit, that feels pretty good.