Vulnerability

I still find writing extremely scary.



The blog has always been my safe haven. I always feel pretty free to write stuff here of varying quality, without thinking too much about it.



But still; so much of what I write is met with stone silence, and it's SCARY! Late on Monday night I posted a short story called "London Falling". Days went by, there were no comments, no emails, no friends saying 'hey I really liked it'. Absolutely nothing.



The immediate inclination is to delete the story, because it must be awful. But I always try to leave everything standing. I like to show all sides of creativity, the good stuff and the bad. So the bad stories stay, as much pain as they cause me.

Today, nearly three days later, there's a comment on the story. PAUL S has thrown it a lifeline.



"I'm bemused by the lack of response to writing of this quality. This piece is beautiful, moving and macabre; and I for one want to thank you for sharing it."



Amazing how a tiny comment by someone, anyone, can make all the difference to your state of mind and how you feel about yourself as an artist. You always kid yourself into thinking you can just write anytime you want without caring about people's feedback, but you need it.

GREAT material gets comments, and it gets shared. And if it's really great, it goes viral. Everything else just kind of sinks into the internet. Another page of semi-interesting nonsense that will capture a few, but hardly anybody.

Luckily, occasionally, a piece resonates; as this one did with Paul S. You find yourself with a little bit more fuel - someone likes what you do, and you know you'll write again.

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Feedback: Creative Stuckness

Re: Creative Stuckness.


DONNA: You know, I post comments on blogs sometimes all day long. I can't tell you how impressed I am that you not only replied, but replied with style and content and sincerity. I don't know how long it might take me to finish my novel, but I will eventually. I promise myself that. BUT, thanks to your reply, I got a little motivation and actually finished a children's book I've been playing around with for months. Yeah, it needs work and I'll have to talk my 19 year old daughter into doing some illustrations for me, but I'm excited about it and it motivated me to start thinking about my novel again, so thanks. From the bottom of my heart.


LUCKY PUNK - I love your advice on Nothing Time, and also your kind responses to everyone. It would be so easy to be cruel and horribly funny about people's procrastination problems, but you chose to be actually helpful...

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Emails In The Front Row

Been blown away by some of the emails I've received recently. Really makes me realise how lucky I am to have such wonderful readers; that's all I've ever wanted here -- to connect with people, to share a view of art in the world. 

Kid-

I am a big fan of your blog.  I am someone who has known that I am a writer since I was nine years old, but has spent the last 30+ years denying that's what I am, trying to fit in as everything but.  Somehow I expect you to understand that, although not many people do.  At any rate, after a prolonged dark night of the soul, I have chosen to be who I am, and write, because it's the only thing I know I'm good at, the only thing I truly feel good doing.

None of this was inspired by you.  However, once I decided to stop my life dead in its tracks and change directions, the first thing I did is start a blog:  www.thunderstrokes.com.  Shortly after starting my blog, I found yours.  Since the moment I first read it, your blog has inspired me both as a blogger and as someone who's trying to figure out how to live a creative life, after so many years spent ignoring my gifts. Your advice has been second only the best advice I have ever received, and that was from F. Scott Fitzgerald, who once recommended that writers "give the best part of their day to their writing." For me that meant getting up early, before the day had a chance to beat me down again, and I lost confidence in my abilities.

I feel compelled to let you know how much your writing means to me.  You are a fantastic writer, and a gifted voice.  I don't know who you are really, and I don't know that it really matters.  You speak with clarity and truth about writing in a way which encourages and challenges me to become a better, and more honest, writer.  I'm sure that's true for many, many people beyond myself. You deserve to know that.

Whether you check out anything I've written or not, I just wanted to make sure you knew how important what you're doing is to someone like me.  

And to tell you once again, thanks for being there.

Kevin Thorson

Hi Kid,

I just wanted to drop you a quick email to say how much I've enjoyed catching up tonight on the blog posts you published this week. I feel bad that you haven't got as many comments on them as I feel you should have but perhaps there are other people out there typing emails to you rather than putting comments directly under the posts; I hope so.

For me it has been one of those weeks where the universe seems hell bent against me and yet I'm still persevering and certainly today has been pretty rewarding creatively. 

I guess I just wanted to let you know that I read your posts whenever I get a minute to myself and that I do get a lot out of them. Thanks for putting them out there.

All the best,

Abbey

Dear Kid,

In the process of creating

More often than not

We seek validation

That we are worth

What comes out of what we create

Kid,

You taught me

The one person that needs to validate my work

Is myself

And only when that happens

Can we reach out and touch people's hearts

In places so deep

So within

You write for yourself

That's why others read it

Keep doing it

Because it reminds others to keep on keepin'

In gratitude,

Val 

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FEEDBACK: Self-Sabotage

My blog post 'Self Sabotage' went a week without comments, until Bruce Wayne Brady left some feedback, perhaps explaining why. 

Bruce Wrote: I've read this post 3 times in the past few days. After reading it again and seeing a lack of comments, I had to say what I was afraid to. This post hit so close to home for me that I felt guily after reading it, like you'd reached into my personal memories and scolded me. I was embarrassed that I'd done all of these things. 

Then, I thought, you couldn't post this unless you knew what if felt like too. I realized that many of us read but few of us comment, because sometime we don't know what to say. Other times, like with this post, you've said it all.

I must ask you Kid, did you write this, (as it seems with all of your posts,) from personal experience? If so, thanks for sharing so much of yourself in your writing. I think that's why I connect to this blog. You seem to put a piece of yourself into the work, which gives it heart.

Now, excuse me. I have some barriers to break through.

My Response: Thanks for the very useful feedback! So often, when things I write are met with dead silence, I worry that I've missed the mark; or worse, that I've offended people or talked absolute nonsense. So it's great to get this feedback!

I did write this from personal experience. It's pretty much the only way I know how to write! It's a common thing for me to get an opportunity or a phone call that is essential and exciting, yet I shy away from it and want to find all the excuses. The things I write as 'inspiration' are as much for me as anyone. I just feel it's good to know we're all in a similar boat -- which is why it was so comforting to see your thoughtful response. 

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Emails From The Front Row

Here's an email I received. I have linked to the things that the writer quoted of mine. I had to share this because it made my heart get all excited and fulfilled and happy. 

Dear Kid,

I'm Val, one of the 2 film-makers cycling around the world - collecting, sharing and inspiring stories of people's dreams. My partner, Tay, wrote you a while back ("Shared Dreams"). I've been meaning to write you a personal note because something in your writing struck a chord so deep within, I am often left speechless and wouldn't know how to react, until at least a couple of days later.

Often I'd find myself spontaneously exclaiming to Tay, "You know what Kid said the other day? That Adventureland was a film that 'dared to be small...dared to have heart'. Doesn't that make your heart pound harder, knowing that our heartfelt works would matter to at least one more person - like him?" Tay would smile, and sometimes reply, "You realise this only now?"

I did. And it was only in the wee hours of last night when I was reading one of your entries, "When you allow yourself to be who you are", when I read and re-read what you wrote: 'Find a place; be it a physical place or a mental place inside yourself - and be who you are' ; that I realised that this is my place. I mean, Kid's blog is my playground to be me. Your matter-of-fact; sometimes even nonchalant prose, verse, scripts, outbursts...they all made me feel safe to be myself. More than that, they created and expanded a space for me to be myself. To be the actor I want to be.

On this journey, when things go crazy and "The Days Got Busy", I read about how you try to answer other people's interviews, how you, too, are only human, and I am reminded that 'everyone is learning how to get back to being who they are'; and I ground myself back to the center core of why I am even on this journey in the first place.

Almost everyone we meet on this journey have something to say about how we should be doing it, how we are not playing it big enough, how I should be enrolling into an acting school if acting is my dream etc etc etc. Sometimes, I say to them, "You know what? You're right." And they are left speechless. I felt like telling them, "You're right because we're not yet successful. We're working on it. And 'when we've mastered our work, mastered us, and showed everyone else who we (truly) are, you will see yourselves'...in us. And you will applaud us for Following Our Own Path."

Kid, I want to be a worldwide famous, internationally acclaimed actress. The kind that wins awards at Cannes and Oscars. I want to because I want as many people as possible to connect with themselves - by me being a mirror for their reflections, by my acting to struck hidden shords of songs tucked away in their hearts, in their bodies, in their beings.

I'm Asian, I'm small (barely 1.5m), I'm turning 27 this year yet I permanently look 15. And I never thought any of the above would be vaguely possible, I never had the guts to share any of this anywhere, until I read 'If you follow your vision, believe in it, and do it, who knows.. you might just end up with an academy award, and if you don't - at least you'll have been among the very few who had the tenacity to try.'

Until I realised that there are people like you out there, when watching films like Adventureland, notice. You notice that 'Watching Eisenberg and Stewart in this movie; we get to really see the characters, we get to really feel something real; and as a result, we get to see ourselves.' That is so precious.

The short film, "LISTEN" that Tay shared with you was a birthday present from both of us to me last year. This year, other than embarking on another short on this journey, I am also gifting myself this note to you. I figured, if it's films that tell a good story, films that provides mirrors for being to reflect on, films made with heart, with art, that I want to act in, it only make sense for me to connect with film-makers who want the same thing and ask them for opportunities.

Kid, you begin your blog with, 'When I watch a film the main thing I am looking for is a good story. I like it when I look up at the big screen and can see a part of me staring back at me.' I would like to be the actor on that screen who gives you a wink right at that moment when you discover who it is that you are really watching.

"I have a dream -
to show the world the beautiful colors of emotions on the big movie screen of life."

Warmly,
Val

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Shared Dreams

Tay left this comment on my post "I'm Thinking Of Starting A Project" and it made my week, so I thought I'd share it.

Dear Kid,

I first came across your blog when I was trying to write something inspiring about our new zero budget, zero expenditure short film. That's when I read "Make your short film on a zero budget". I like your writings. Some days, they serve as an encouragement to keep filming, keep writing and to keep creating. Some days, they are painful reminders for self reflection. Some days, they feel like I have a friend out there who truly understands how I feel. 

My partner and I are currently traveling around world documenting and sharing people's dreams online with the intention "One dream shared, one dream inspired" My personal dream is to be an inspiring story teller and my partner Val's dream is to become an inspiring actress. Your blog has kept our dreams going simply because we resonate with the words that you speak: "Don't make the mistake of thinking your artistic destiny is in anyone's hands but yours. The artist doesn't ask 'how long till you get a real job?'. But if success doesn't come the artist starts hearing the voices in their own heads. Art lasts. Business kills you. Don't get excited by the big lights, just do the work that you love. I feel like we all know true greatness. We just need to trust it."

I would like to say thank you to you for being authentic, for living your dream, for trusting true greatness in all of us, in yourself day after day after day. 

Keep writing.

Here is a link to Tay and Val's project. Check it out.

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The Rough Edit.

So, you show the rough edit to a few choice people to get some feedback. You show it to your friend who's an actor, you show it to a composer, you show it to your family, you show it to some dude on Facebook who keeps saying 'I wanna make films!' and you show it to your best friend.


Your friend who's an actor tells you everything is great, brilliant, apart from the acting, which is really bad and "by the way, I played a drug dealer once and you should have cast me as the drug dealer." You remind them the drug dealer in this film is 9, with a moustache, which is different to the actor giving you feedback who is a 24 year old model. But they say "I can play a drug dealer." So anyways, you say thanks and off they go and you begin to cry because your film has really bad actors.

And then your friend, the composer, says everything is great, especially the acting, although the music is really bad and drowns out all the action, and then the composer reminds you they won 'Best Music In A Short Film 2008' as well as 'Most Likely To Be Good At Composing, East Frimley School Contest 1986'.
So you consider cutting the actors and keeping the music, or maybe cutting the music and keeping the actors. You settle on cutting the actors and cutting the music, and suddenly your film is only eight seconds long.

So you find alternate takes and alternate music and put them all in. And then you show it to your best friend, who politely says "What the fuck? Aren't you famous yet? Hasn't Spielberg phoned? After all these years nobody has really cared about what you do so isn't it time you got real and did something productive with your life?" You take their feedback constructively, and fill out a McDonalds recruitment form.
And then you show your family the film and they say "This is amazing! You're our little star. It's wonderful. You're special!" - so you immediately feel confident and loved again, and ignore the fact that anything less than special that you do from now on will make you feel inferior and a failure to your family for the rest of your life.

So now you're rolling again and ready to release your mini masterpiece. And then you show it to the dude on Facebook who wants to make a movie, and he says "I really liked it. I especially like your liberal use of film language, and the way you playfully made things nonsensical and abstract, I especially liked your use of bad wind/microphone noises and I loved the way you wrote really bad dialogue and were okay with that." You say, defensively, "when did you ever make a film?" - And he says "Shut the fuck up, it's been four weeks and McDonalds still haven't got back to you."

And suddenly you realise that nobody knows anything. Especially you. And that actor you love, it turns out they may be really fucking awful. And that actress who couldn't act, turns out maybe she's the most realistic one in the film.

Nobody knows anything. If you show the film to thirty people, there'll be thirty people to tell you what's wrong with your film, and thirty people to like things about it that you didn't even think of. Aside from 'The Godfather' and 'Shawshank Redemption' - it's been the same for every film in history. So all you can do is take one final look at it and then declare it as the final cut.

Then it's time to get those pennies you earned at McDonalds; get some envelopes and stamps, and enter some film festivals. And then, eventually - something good might come of all this.

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