The Writer's Dilemma

I am a writer.

In all honesty, the signs were always there. Even now, I look back at my life and wonder why (or how) I didn’t see it sooner. When I was eight years old, I wrote a short story for my grade three assignment. While most children wrote about a page or two, I wrote thirty, with illustrations. Oh sure, it was obviously written by an amateur: spelling and grammatical errors, lack of proper story beats or theme, and I’m pretty sure I ripped off Dragon Heart (1996) and Return of the Jedi (1983). I remember the teacher once telling me I couldn’t read the whole thing to the class because it was too long and would take up too much time. Nevertheless, that short story filled me with pride, bringing a light to my otherwise dismal life.

Child bullying is nothing new, and looking back, at least I only suffered emotional scars. But when you’re a kid with only one foot in reality, you don’t really understand why people are making fun of you until twenty years later. I was always taught to steer into the skid, but I guess I steered too hard, and they made fun of me for that, too. Children can be so cruel, can’t they? Even from a young age, I got a taste (just a taste, mind you) of how bleak and disappointing reality actually is.

I’ve always had trouble making friends. That sounds so cliched, now that I think about it: depressed writer was a loner as a child. I remember clinging to a few cohorts, but always wishing that I had more. As time wore on, and we moved around, I found it harder and harder to stay connected with those same friends. In fact, there’s only one childhood friend that I’m still connected to, and we barely speak, having diverged so much in our paths since then.

When I got to high school, though, I made a new bunch of friends, all of whom I still talk to today. Even now, I’m still a bit confused as to why they latched onto me, having been much more popular, extroverted, outgoing, and outright likeable than I am, but I am grateful for them each and every day. Everyone always complains about their high school years, lamenting about how much homework they had, or their growing feelings of rebellion and desire to be free getting closer and closer. For me, high school was the best time of my life.

When I began, I was still unsure of what I wanted to do, or who I wanted to be. The only thing I knew for certain was that I didn’t want to end up like my mother. Do not misunderstand me, my mother is one of the best people I know: driven, intelligent, fierce, determined, hard-working, and generous. There’s never been a doubt in my mind of women’s superiority, simply from watching this woman. But she was always working: eighty hours a week, punching numbers into a computer, running reports for some boss who probably didn’t understand them. And she still barely made ends meet, though she did always set aside some money to spoil me. She thinks I don’t know how bad she’s suffered, but even from a young age, I could see how miserable her job made her. I was determined to ensure that I was never that unhappy.

That’s where high school really opened my eyes. Though the foreshadowing of me becoming a writer was scattered throughout my life, it still hadn’t dawned on me that I could make that a viable career. But my friends changed that when they introduced me to filmmaking.

Have you ever felt complete? Probably not. As Deadpool remarks in his feature film, “life is an endless series of train wrecks, with only brief commercial-like breaks of happiness.” It’s only been a few times in my life where I’ve felt that kind of happiness: getting married, graduating, and whenever I make a film. Don’t misunderstand me, because I’m perfectly capable of being happy whenever I hang out with my friends, or with my family, or with my wife. But I’m not talking about joy, I’m talking about feeling complete.

The first time I felt complete was when I watched myself, for the first time in my life, wielding an actual lightsaber on the screen. That red blade swung back and forth, faking a battle with my friend. It was exhilarating. I’ll admit that I’ve basically just been chasing that high ever since because I wanted to make films.

Twelve years have passed, as of the writing of this story, since I left high school. In that time, I’ve graduated with a bachelor’s degree from a university, a diploma from a specialized film school for writing, gotten married and built up my portfolio. Every step of the way, crawling closer and closer towards my goals.

But lately, I’ve just been feeling utterly destroyed by the sheer magnitude of how insurmountable this task is. My screenwriting professors never painted a pretty picture of this reality: even if I was lucky enough to get a break, it would still be a while before I got paid, and the story might’ve been changed and re-written by a plethora of other writers so the story I wrote wouldn’t even be recognizable. On a side note, does it strike anyone as odd that EVERY movie about moving to Hollywood and achieving stardom is about just how harsh that world is? Even Cat’s Don’t Dance is horribly bleak in terms of how un-achievable that goal is.

And, to add insult to injury, there’s an abundance of critics out there (my hypocritical self included) who make a living nitpicking plot holes in movies. This was another reality check I was forced to cash by my professors: your screenplay must have zero leaps in logic. Everything must be perfect, from dialogue to plot to character. You can imagine, having a lot to live up to and being told it’s nearly impossible would be enough to drive anyone mad. Add to that the fact that my ennui and self-hatred started making the perfect cocktail of mental health issues.

And to further add to my ire, I watch a lot of YouTube and TikTok and have seen…

I was raised on a very simple principle, as I’m sure many people were: work hard and someday your dreams will come true. I’m not saying that everyone I’ve seen doesn’t work hard or doesn’t have talent, but the sheer magnitude of those that are rich and/or famous who lack any sense of real skill is just baffling. In addition to throwing a wrench into my entire philosophy RE: work ethic, this paves the way for more and more people to underestimate how difficult this career path truly is, thereby devaluing all the time, energy, money, and hard work that people like me have put in.

So, I figure if they can do it, why can’t I? Why can’t I film myself over-reacting to film trailers. Why can’t I go out and film so stupid stunt that will make millions of people laugh for days to come? Why can’t I get recognition doing film reviews when I not only have the credentials, but when there are others out there doing the same thing and making money? Why should I have to settle for a customer service job where people directly insult me or outright disrespect me when I could be making money doing something that makes me happy?

Sadly, one of the things I love about art and being a writer is simultaneously something that I hate, too. It’s all about perception, opinion, and interpretation. Despite what some social interest or political groups will tell you, nothing is every either one way or the other. Humans, as a species, are idiotic. There are almost eight billion people on the planet, and it’d be impossible to know every single person individually. Thus, we only deal with a small sample size of the true population. We tend to draw an inference from this sample size and project it onto the whole of the earth because we’re lazy; it’s so easy to use hyperbole and exaggeration to simplify your world view. Though I can safely say that my experience has taught me that this is a flawed methodology, it does bring me to my next point: experiences.

This is the simple defining factor in perception, opinion, and interpretation. As a case study, let’s say that I was offering you and a colleague a product that would save you minutes off your morning routine. Neither of you will exhibit the exact same reaction because you haven’t lived the exact same life as the other person. Maybe one of you grew up on a farm and are used to things taking forever, so you don’t mind taking those extra few minutes to get the job done. Alternatively, maybe you want that extra few minutes of sleep because you’ve been up all night studying or partying and this product would allow you that extra time to regenerate your stamina.

A good example and satire of my thesis regarding interpretations can be found in the South Park episode, “The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs.” The lead characters are disgusted that “Catcher in the Rye” is considered offensive and set out to write their own book, meant to be as obscene as possible. However, upon reading it, the adults in the town (and around the world) think it is one of the most deep, complex, and divisive things that they’ve ever read, using it as a declaration of their own social or political beliefs. The episode basically pokes fun at the fact that humans will find meaning in anything, even if none was actually intended.

And a change in perception isn’t just restricted from person to person, either; sometimes, it can be within yourself. For instance: when I was in high school, I related to the titular character in Hamlet because I felt like a loner, wore black all the time, felt like my mother never had time for me, and spent way too much time thinking about things instead of taking action. After I graduated from university, I reread the play and found Hamlet to be a comical character, poking fun at the university student who thinks he knows and understands the world because he’s taken a class on it. I still related to the character, but for a different reason.

Additionally, you could probably cite the Star Wars Prequels (1999 – 2005) as an example of changing perceptions. The Prequels underwent such hatred when they first came out that it drove several of the actors to depression or to quit acting altogether. Nowadays, they’ve received a cult-following and are celebrated for being either “so-bad-they’re-good” films, if not considered “actually good.”

This is part of what make the task of standing out in a writing field so daunting: everyone’s a critic. It’s already hard to become a professionally paid writer, and when you get there, it seems like the way that your product is observed will be ever-changing and unbalanced. But there’s a larger truth that I think I’m finally ready to accept:

Perfection is impossible.

I’ve been noticing, more and more, that there is a surplus of junk food for the brain out there. Things that took no effort to do, coasted off the success or work of others, or just giving an over-reaction for the sake of comedy. But then I look and see that these things are very popular, and reach their audience. There are very few movies that I hate, but Sharknado is my most-loathed film simple because it reeks of no effort and lowest-common-denominator story-telling. Yet, there are six of them, and even I find myself incapable of not talking about it.

Conversely, though I love movies like The Artist or Citizen Kane, I’m more likely to watch movies like Star Wars or Friday the 13th. Something I maintain when I do my film criticisms is that “just because something is bad does not mean that it’s not entertaining.” Alternatively: “just because something is good does not mean that it’s enjoyable.” I also think that people’s opinions operate as variables in an unsolvable equation: the factors are determined by their life experiences, how they were raised, what they were taught and by whom.

And that’s why I love my job. There’s an inherent level of freedom in writing whatever you want, whenever you want. Rest assured, for every person who enjoys what you write, there’s going to be a person who either hates it, or just refuses to acknowledge it. For every person who’s going to think I’m making a political statement on one side, there’s going to be another who cites that it’s anti-political. And neither are technically going to be wrong. There’s maximum impact with zero accountability.

And yeah, there have been instances where literature and media have been taken in an offensive manner and used to justify some horrible things, like the aforementioned “Catcher in the Rye” controversy. But again, this is just that person’s INTERPRETATION of the work. It’s the same as citing video games as the leading cause of violence in children, when not two hundred years ago, we were burning innocent women at the stake for being witches; maybe humans are just violent by nature.

I truly do feel complete when I come up with a decent story and even more so when I get to see it come to fruition on the screen. As a writer, I can display my opinion, without forcing it down other people’s throats. I can make the choice to be as overt or as subtle as possible. I can choose to be as graphic or subdued as I desire. I can choose what words I want to say and with which (or whose) voice I want to say them. I can even choose what I want to write about and what genre.

But more important than all of that, the reason that I believe what I do is needed, is that writing allows me to sort myself out. My short film, “Resolution,” which can be watched on YouTube, is all about me literally confronting myself about the lack of forward momentum in my career. It was written because I was starting to feel overwrought by misery because my then-job wasn’t fulfilling me, my wife is stuck in the states, and I was constantly unable to save money because I lived alone. I was isolated, depressed, and (worst of all) I wasn’t doing anything about it. Basically, the video was a desperate cry for help. And the general perception that the video gained from my family and friends was that I was reaching out to them in a time of crisis. I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to all of them for their support during this transition.

Writing has allowed me to regain control of my life, reach out for help, and it doesn’t even stop there. I can live vicariously through my characters, allowing them to live my deepest fantasies or face my deepest fears. It allows me to confront my feelings of inadequacy or my feelings of joy in a positive and healthy manner. Writing for me isn’t just a passion, nor is it merely a career, it’s therapeutic. I even want to write horror for a living because I see it as a way for me to take control of the most uncontrollable aspect of existence: death.

And if it can do all that for me, then maybe… just maybe… it can do that for someone else. If my films can help one person realize that they need to reach out for help; if my stories can help someone sort out their own inner turmoil; if my writing can help people, then I owe it to myself to help them because the world won’t stop telling me that it’s not going to be fair or easy. I don’t get sad when a celebrity dies because I knew them (because I didn’t). I get sad because, big or small, they played a part in helping me understand who I was. And I think that’s an important function to have in this world.

I am a writer and, despite everything, I wouldn’t be anything else.