Tuesday, February 23, 2010

A Mathy Writer Am I

When I was a kid, I was not an advanced reader. I read comic books. Lots of Peanuts…I had about 32 Peanuts books. I would read them all, and when finished, start over. I liked the melancholic jokes. I was a bit of a sensitive stay-in-my-room type.

As a kid, too, I was years ahead in math. Well, about two years ahead of the other kids. Math just worked. It came to me quickly. And I liked it, mostly because it came to me quickly.

Then, Science came to me, extremely quickly. And then, well---there I was, all Science and Math. It was all so concrete and more importantly, it was FAST. I liked that I got it so fast and I was so facile. Got me a Biology degree.

Then, there was writing. I was not a good writer in high school. I was not a good writer in college. Simply put, I just did not understand it. I mean, I could spell and my grammar was fine. I could write a letter. I could write a paper if I had to. (But more often than not, if I had to write a research paper I would pretty much “borrow” someone’s old one from a few years before. I never understood why you would go to a card catalogue, footnote other peoples’ ideas to support your idea. Why couldn’t you just write, “The Great Leap Forward was neither great nor a leap. So they say…” ) But really, I never understood the fuss. Why were there so many books? And why were they all so dull?

It was all about being fast for me. And writing (and reading) was slow.

And then, slowly, I became a writer. And it is slow. And that is the worst part about it. Well, actually, that’s the best part about it. Because when you are writing, you slow down. You just do. And you catch thoughts and images and you think and you stir. And time stands still and all that “flow” stuff.

And then the math comes in. I set goals, which are numerical by nature. Time, number of pages, days. I have a deadline and I basically stick to it…and it keeps me from becoming a complete pothead drunkard.

(I once read about creative people in a self-help bookstore on Ocean Blvd. in Venice: You really only have two choices, you either create or you become an addict.)

So---I set my schedule and for days and days I write. I am in the middle of editing a screenplay right now. It’s taking twice as long as I had planned. Fine. My math is stretchy.

But it is the math, somehow, the math that keeps me a bit sane. It structures my time. It’s very grounding, while words are often simply wild.

This blog entry, and others like it, is from www.opentrench.blogspot.com

3 comments:

Rebecca Waring said...

You and Adam were destined to be together. I see 2 little boys, with bookshelves full of Peanuts books..... I especially liked the ones where they were really young and the characters are all really tiny.

Todd HellsKitchen said...

I had those Peanuts books... And Peanuts Dolls.... I had Charlie Brown, and my brother had Linus...

Don Cummings said...

I mean--I would not have survived Childhood without the Peanuts books. I would not have survived my teen years without choir. I would not have survived the rest of my life without Joni Mitchell. There, I said it.