Words From A Sudo-Pretentious Writer ...

I go to art school, I've gone to Tisch, and therefor I have a defacto air of pretension surrounding me. As much as I hate it, it is something that I am aware of and embrace wholeheartedly, but I do attempt to do everything in my power to supress my "know it all" urges.

This is not one of those times.

Being a writer is hard. It is work. End of story. It is something that you have to study and work at every day. It takes talent and skill and discipline, so it angers me when people think that they can do it, too. What has prompted my frustration, you might ask? Well, it's been a general mash-up of things, honestly. It's the pre-med student that thinks putting sentences together is easy, the architect that insists Waiting for Godot is a spiritual metaphor, or the uncle/aunt/insert-elder-here that says, "Oh, I've lived a crazy life, if I could I'd take 6 months off and write a novel." Yes. Because writing is that easy. I want to tell that person, "You do that. In fact, why don't we switch places, and while you're taking that six months off I'll go run your investment firm on Wall Street."

People forget that writing is actually a field of work, an art form. There is a reason I am earning a Bachelors of Fine Arts IN Writing. It is because I have worked and studied the craft for four years, just as a doctor has studied medicine and a business executive has studied business. So yes, I find it insulting when someone else says that they can do it too, "if only they had the time." We would all do anything if we had the time. I would be a surgeon - if I had the time - but you don't see me cutting into people just because I've watched the Health Channel one too many times.

Get into a conversation about a story or a novel or a movie with a writer and chances are you will get a debate. It's not a conscious thing; that's the way our brains work. We analyze and judge and criticize anything that makes an attempt at telling a story. If someone out there has found a way to turn that part of their brain off, then please, let me know! I do not say that a TV show/movie/book sucks because my life goal is to rain on your parade or because I think that I am smarter or more intelligent. I say that a TV show/movie/book sucks because it is conventional or stock or unintelligent. I say that a plot is cliche because it is, and nine times out of ten, I've seen Faulkner, Joyce, Saunders, O'Connor, Murakami, Marquez, Pamuk, MacDonagh, Wilder, or Beckett do it better.

-E