Why I Hated Writing Most of My Life and What Changed My Mind

Before I start into what my passion is I feel that I need to start by talking about how I absolutely hated it for most of my life. Starting in elementary school writing is a normal part of school, writing in some form almost everyday. In early classes they just teach how to write different letters with the large lines so you can figure out how letters look and fit on the page and how words are put together. At that point in school my opinion on writing was that it was my least favorite subject, but who really would like something like that, with no stories or narratives being worked on yet there wasn’t much to like. Also around this time was when we learned cursive, or script depending on where you are from. At the time the teachers told us that it was essential to learn cursive but within a few years it had faded out of the curriculum to never be written by me again. Continuing on through the early years, learning spelling, sentence structure and how to write a proper five paragraph essay I never liked any of it along the way. I understood that technology would be able to assist with pretty much every aspect of writing that we were learning in english class so I never cared to listen. Then in Jr. high the only thing from english class I remember was essays, reading speed and comprehension. I don’t think I ever had the freedom of picking my own topic for essays until about junior year of high school. By then I was so burned out from meaningless five paragraph essays for years I could never come up with a topic to write about or so I thought.

While I was a freshman in high school I remember the essay writing was the worst it ever was or will be. Almost two to three essays a week and none of them were on a topic of our choosing. One was on how erosion affects certain houses that were near a river, and this essay was argumentative; we had to decide on a side and debate erosion. Needless to say I still hated english class, at the same time I was going to a special chiropractor that was helping with my back issues, this special chiropractor was an hour and a half away one way. With all this time on my hands I started writing. A fourteen year old boy, who hated writing and english class, started writing for fun. The writing I was working on was a basic outline of a superhero group and each character with their backstory. I really liked what I was working on but I was also self conscious of my characters around my family and my friends so I kept it to myself. Since then I would think about what would become my screenplay ideas but never writing them down. For weeks I would think about and contemplate the details of the story for months. Even with almost a dozen stories with multiple characters, universes and timelines, I still struggled to write in english class. Once I graduated high school I still had this dislike for the class and when I was looking at colleges and degree options one of the biggest worries was how many english classes I would take to get a degree.

Unfortunately I needed to save up some more money to go to college since I was not the best student especially in english. I worked long hard hours living at home for a few months until I was able to do some online schooling which would be paid for by that job. I would spend hours sitting on the couch working on classes and assignments while watching movies and T.V. Shows. With so much time watching television I started to branch out to more unique movies and shows, with my new growing passion for cinema my passion was halfway to being fully formed. When I watched Joker in theaters with my sister for her birthday, I couldn't get the movie out of my head, even at the dinner afterwards. I had always had an idea to write a story about how a child has to deal with terrible parents and break out of the bad environment that their parents created. Similar to the movie I had just seen where Author's mom was dealing with her own mental issues while raising a son as a single mom and that son had his own mental issues of his own. Right there I decided to write a book about just that thing. When I started the general layout of the book and I was considering where to go with the characters I wanted to show how each parent became the person they are when they have their kid. That parental backstory quickly became two long stories of each parent fighting their own societal norms, and immigrating to america. Now I have a first draft of an action, adventure, romance book where the two halves of the romance don’t even meet until the beginning of the third act. Unsure of what to do from there I left that project unsure of what to do with it and not knowing what to do if I published it on my own and no one knew or cared about it. With the idea of a huge project collapsing before my eyes I decided to write about movies, writing reviews of them and publishing them alongside some short stories to see how I write, how it is perceived, and where I can improve. After reading a quote from David Lynch about how a finished screenplay is worth more than anything and a screenplay is currency. I realized I was writing two screenplays the whole time. My passion was in movies, why would I write a book when I preferred to watch instead of read. What I now realize my passion is for is storytelling and cinema and how cinema can bring the stories to life. Many people thinking that television and movies make you dumber and rot your brain are missing out on the best parts of the world of cinema and what it can mean to the creators and the people that view it.

What makes it worth supporting? Either way movies will continue to be made right? Yes, if you are asking those questions you are absolutely right, movies will still be made no matter the support you give them because that medium has companies whose sole purpose is to support the creators that make the movies. The reason that individual people still desperately need to support people who are newcomers to the cinema world is that the movie studios have been slowly losing interest in making good stories and only seem to want to make a profit. It seems with every new movie, blockbuster season there is some meme asking what year it is when the only movies showing are remakes, sequels and reboots. Last time we had a normal blockbuster summer we had, a hellboy, lion king and a Charlie's Angels remake, yet another terminator, rambo, men in black, and x-men sequel with a shining, fast and furious, and a sleeping beauty spinoff’s. While I personally don’t think that classic cinema is dead with great original movies still being released, those movies are getting smaller and smaller budget’s and are less and less memorable. At one point those movies, the original Terminator, Rambo, and men in black were new original ideas that had people flocking to the theaters for months. Now a movie that isn’t part of a large franchise gets forgotten. Supporting the creators behind many of the things you enjoy ensures that more get made. I personally love movies so I love supporting lesser known rookie writers, directors and actors when they first start out and I can only hope that people do the same for me.