Well, well, well… we meet again.
Except, this time, I’m late with the post AND I’m behind on my other writing this week. Speaking of which, head on over to the Midnight Dreamscapes blog for “The Fro Speaks – #2” and other such tomfoolery.
“Other such tomfoolery” including (but not limited to) Clint’s “Midlife. Issue 1”.
And a prologue for my novel, The Gaia Prophecy, that I’m posting right after this because – you guessed it – life has been full of its fair share of curve-balls lately.
You ever just, like, have a week?
A week when you have one of those moments or interactions where you learn so much about yourself that it makes you reevaluate certain aspects of the life you’re cultivating…?
These moments come with a crushing realness I always struggle to describe adequately in words.
Sadness be damned, I am thankful for the hard lessons life deals me; even if the learning process can be as painful as it is positively transformative.
Change is necessary for growth. For progress.
Like I said, life throws us curve-balls. It’s up to us to step up to the plate and accept whether we swing and hit or swing and miss. Dropping the ball, we learn new methods to avoid striking out next time… but life will still always occasionally throw us off of our game-plan.
It’s like what Clint and I briefly touch upon when it comes to nonfiction writing: the nonfiction we find ourselves consistently drawn to and inspired by are memoirs and autobiographies – or, how our idols and figures we’re fascinated by overcame some of their own greatest hurdles in life.
Naturally, I find myself reading about the lives of other writers.
Okay, okay. I know what you’re thinking, “enough with the King!”
I just think it would be criminal for me not to emphasize the influence this man’s writing, in particular, has had on me.
Though writing isn’t my sole passion.
As I’ve mentioned here and on Coffee & Cannabis, film-making remains another passion of mine.
Something about being able to tell a story visually – specifically in the ways which film allow; to my mind, there are certain concepts and stories of my own that are meant for that medium as opposed to prose.
I still think it’s a toss-up between Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (2002) and Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids (2001) in terms of which film really blew my mind first as a kid when it came to the possibilities film has to offer creatively. Those films are both examples of CGI as it was beginning to eke its way more and more into films at the time.
Spy Kids, in particular, makes interesting use of CGI…
No, but in all seriousness, Spy Kids still made good use of practical effects too. Even if some of them were pretty wacky – the whole concept of Spy Kids is wacky, anyway (again, one of the things I was inspired by).
And, y’know what?
Robert Rodriguez really has made an impact on me, as a filmmaker. To get back to this whole idea of nonfiction writing, it was Robert Rodriguez’s semi-autobiographical Rebel Without a Crew that left a lasting mark on my young, impressionable mind.
Rebel Without a Crew made film-making a tangible thing for me.
And then, you have folks like Kevin Smith – writing, directing, acting; everything I’m aiming for. Kind of the middle-ground between the influence Rodriguez and King have on me, I’d say.
There are other forms of nonfiction writing, naturally, but these are just some examples of what has had an influence on me and my writing, personally.
Sometimes, I read these books to remind myself that I’m not alone – that the crazy characters and worlds I have inside my head, just itching to be written down on the page or shot on camera, are not completely unusual (though they are, of course, unusual).
I’m excited – as I hope you are – to see what worlds I can create on-film and in writing. As I field the growing pains of life, love, and living in this wide world, I turn to my writing as a form of expression.
I turn to film as another form of expression. A creative catharsis for my mind.
I return to what I love, reminding myself occasionally along the way that “The world isn’t ending.”
By doing what I love, I’m finally returning some love to myself.
thatfroninja. 