Three days ago, something wonderful happened. It may not seem like much to many but to me it was a revelation, a welcome return, a missing piece of a jigsaw found.
Three days ago, I started writing again.
There was a story that had been in my head for a few years which I'd had a lot of trouble trying to figure out how to start. I'd attempt it every once in a while, knowing there was a story somewhere there, but always deleting whatever I wrote. And yet, three days ago, at some point at night, I figured out a fresh perspective on how to write the damn thing and started going at it, staying up till four in the morning trying to figure out each subsequent scene but not in a stressed out way but with absolute vigour. I wanted to write till that glorious point where I run out of steam but look at the words with a sense of achievement.
It was only 14 pages, but a happy 14 pages nonetheless.
On the same day I also wrote 5 more pages for another script that I was writing last year and had reached the 35 page mark before stopping indefinitely. This feeling of accomplishment was something I hadn't felt in quite a while and it felt good.
Unfortunately the feelings were short-lived. The next day I discovered that the movie I'd been working on for three years wasn't being picked up by the distributor. I knew there was a good chance of this happening and had planned accordingly, but I still found myself feeling rather down about the whole thing.
When I went back to the computer, I couldn't bring myself to type a single word.
The past few nights since then have mostly been spent awake. Perhaps some part of me hoping for a little surge of inspiration to stab me in the brain and get the juices pumping, perhaps it was just from staying up three days ago. Last night was the ultimate in time-wasting-in-the-wee-hours: I watched every episode of the first two seasons of 'How I Met Your Mother'.
In fast forward.
(Believe me, I really wish the above was a joke. It's not.)
The point is, I haven't written anything since that day. True, it's only been a few days, but here's the thing:-
I haven't written like that for almost half a year.
The last time I wrote something that was truly mine a hundred percent was 'Lucky Shot', the short film to test out the Canon 5D Mark II (the 15 Malaysia short, 'Healthy Paranoia', was based on a story by Shirin Jauhari. I was actually at a bind as to what to write until she came up with the idea).
Now, I don't want to live in the past and talk about 'the good old days' but there was a time when I wrote scripts non-stop from the age of 16 all the way till about 26. Ten years of non-stop writing. When it started it was a convergence of all the right elements - my father had bought our first PC for the household (Wow! It's got a gigabyte of hard drive! Oh my God!), I had just discovered the scripts of Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith and the household video camera was at my disposal. I just wrote non-stop, any little idea, even no idea. I'd start up the computer, set a scene in a random location like a cafe and have two people sat there, talking, just to see what they'd say when my fingers took over.
A lot of these scripts are terrible. Absolutely horrid. But it was very good practice because, as any writer will tell you, writers write. You keep writing, never stop writing, always keep the grey matter going, going, going.
And it kept going. I remember when I was in a cafe waiting for a friend and thinking of all the little quirks of pirated VCD's. A story started forming in my head and I started writing down what became a ten page short film in a cheap school exercise book with a ballpoint pen. A few years later this short film was expanded into a little feature length indie flick called 'Ciplak'.
I've often wondered why, after I finally made a feature length film, my frequency of writing dwindled. Slowly at first, then picking up pace till finally, I hardly wrote at all except for sporadic little moments.
When I say write, however, I'm not talking about when I'm hired to write. I'm talking about when I want to write, and there's a big difference. Hired to write is not as difficult because, ultimately, it's not your baby. It's someone else's baby. You're just, at the most, a mid-wife. When I was writing for television, such as Ghost Season 2 or Dark City, I literally wrote those screenplays overnight, sometimes in one sitting. I'd sit for a few hours in front of the computer, smoking cigarettes, staring at the blank screen and thinking subconsciously about the story, then churn it out.
But writing for the sake of writing, simply writing a script because there's a story to tell and characters to develop and something to show and hopefully entertain, that hasn't happened in a long time.
One of the reasons I think this happened is because of a peculiar habit of mine which I'm hoping to this year shake off. I have a tendency, when creating something new, to put my absolute all into it till it occupies my ever waking hour of brain juiciness. But the second I've accomplished the basics of it all, I lose interest.
For example, a few years ago I wanted to build my own guitar. I researched, looked around for parts, learnt to wire and solder the components, did everything I could... till the guitar worked. Then I stopped. The thing is, it's not really finished. The sound could be tweaked more, the playability of the guitar can be improved considerably, only the front half of the guitar is sanded nicely whilst the back looks like Batman's butt with battle scars but the moment I got it to work, I stopped working on it with absolute gusto.
(I like this word, 'gusto'. I must use it more often.)
Same could be said about my one-time stint of stand-up last year. I was worried stiff about it, researched about it, any time my brain wasn't in use I'd use it to try and come up with different routines but the second I did it, I never felt the need to continue doing it. In my brain it was done, accomplished, finished. Let's find something new.
Perhaps the same has happened with my writing and filmmaking. Though I know it is a good trait to constantly want to learn new things, expand the mine and skill-sets and discover strange, new, interesting forms of input (this is why I relate to the 'Short Circuit' movies) but at the same time, I can't be spending the rest of my life learning everything without sticking to something.
I have stuck to something - filmmaking and music. And I don't want to treat them like I did my guitar.
Though the above may account for some of the reason why writing these days is more difficult for me there is another thing. One that bugs me even more.
After 'Ciplak', filmmaking became something feasible as a career. So I hit the film and television industry with the same gusto (hehe, 'gusto') as I did when I was trying to make my first independent feature film. I wrote constantly - screenplays for possible movies, telemovies, TV shows, all of it. I wrote synopsis' and outlines and pitched ideas all around town and discovered the horrible truth about the industry itself which culminated with the day when a producer for a big studio told me something I will never forget,
"If you're script is original or good, we won't buy it."
I've thought long and hard about those words and the many pitches and ideas I've sent out and have a strong feeling that it's this history of rejection that made the news of my film not being picked up a painful one to hear, even though I was expecting it and planned for the worse. That feeling of rejection.
I was incredibly fortunate to have been in a situation where I made my first film with no one expecting a thing and no one to impress to get funding and was even more fortunate that I made it at around the right place and the right time in the way of things that it got released, won an award, kick-started my 'career'.
(I have as much difficulty in saying that what I do is a 'career' in the same way that I have difficulty in referring to myself as an 'artist'. It just feels wrong.)
I have tried these past few years to keep a stiff upper lip about it all. There was a time when I'd get a rejection for a pitch or an idea and laugh and say "fuck it, let's keep writing," but I guess after hearing rejection after rejection it gets a bit harder to keep that thick skin up. After a while a tiny part of you starts believing that maybe you're not that good.
Then there's the fact that now that I've seen what the industry 'wants', what the industry will 'allow', what the do's and don't's are, these things start affecting the writing. Whereas once I would write without a thought of all this, nowadays I find myself not just self-censoring myself, but laying un-required boundaries because at the back of my head I'm thinking, "just in case I get a possible opening for financing, I should make sure that there's a chance that this script can go through the censorship board/get wajib tayang status/has a role for Mawi".
These thoughts are somehow ingrained in me from the years of pitching to people who's automatic response to everything I write is "it's a bit too clever, lah".
A lot of times I try to hold back from talking about stuff like this because there is that feeling that I'm not allowed to feel this way. I am, in the grand scheme of things, one lucky motherfucker, and it's such a cliche for a lucky motherfucker such as myself to moan my good fortune - "Oh, no, I made a movie and it allowed me to become a filmmaker and now I don't know what to write about! Woe is me, it's so depressing! Bring on the cocaine and other abusive substances so that I may be a walking cliche! Quick, hide the rotting pain inside by acting like a complete douchebag!" Etcetera, etcetera...
In truth, I am forever grateful to God, the universe, karma, whatever it is that makes this world go 'round, for giving me this opportunity. I truly am. For fuck's sake, in the past six months I've worked an average of a week or two each month to earn my wages, that's good living. Hell, any job where you can feasibly do your work in your boxers is a good job.
(And before anyone asks, it's the stuff done in front of the computer like writing or editing. I don't turn up on set in my undies).
But I guess, these past few months, I've also felt a bit... unfulfilled. The creative juices are at their best when I'm shooting something I want to shoot, based on a script that I wanted to write. Not because I had to, not because I'm hoping to sell it, I just wanted to.
And here's the rub - I know it's there. Somewhere, in the back of my head, stories that I want to write. It was a lot smaller before, but it's gotten a bit bigger, just a bit, and soon it's gonna pop out. I know it's gonna pop out. I can feel it trying to climb out of the mass of bullshit, the many walls built up in that brain of mine from years of "it's too clever", "too much dialogue" and "I don't think local audiences will get it". It's desperately trying to claw it's way out of all that crap back there.
One thing I've always felt was true is that there's a big difference in 'knowing' and 'believing'. You can know that you have what it takes, but you may not believe it. And it's only when you believe it that you truly shine.
I know it's there. I just need to get the believing part right. Perhaps that's why I wrote this post - to let out all the rant-y stuff inside whilst simultaneously trying to convince myself.
Or perhaps I wrote this post because I needed to write. Whether good or bad, published or un-published, necesarry or frivolous, meaningful or pointless, writer's must write.
I wonder what I'm going to write next?
Whatever it is, I sure hope I'll write it with gusto.
Hehe.
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