i think there is a common misconception about how the writing process happens. i’m not going to give you the definitive version of writing-for-the-masses. but i shall give you mine. and i believe that the first part, at least, is common to most good writers.

i was told recently that i didn’t know how to write. by someone who has never written a book, no less. i was not offended. it’s like being told that you don’t know how to drive by someone without a car or a driver’s license. there’s no frame of reference. i’ve seen this person’s writing. it’s a shoddy mess of anachronistic words mingled without systematic attention to grammar and without content of any imaginable sort. oops.

so how do i go about writing?

lately, as you can see, i have written very little. but i can still remember how it’s done.

the first step is, curiously enough, sentimentality. mood. feeling. you cannot write in a vacuum. it would be nice, to be sure, but that’s not how these things work. you simply must feel like writing or it is a waste of time to even try the exercise.

after that, the real work begins.

there are two paths that can be taken, then. and yes, this is a step-by-step instruction on the method of writing.

the first path is that you have a topic in mind. the second is the search for topics. if you take the second path, the easiest way to go about the procedure is this – lie down, close your eyes, think of something that you like but don’t really care about, then follow the pathway from there until you have something to say. don’t pick political thoughts or current issues. pick something trivial. it’s the best starting point. try potatoes. or cranberry sauce. or blueberries. or leaves. you’ll get from there to the siege of jericho in no time, i assure you. and you will have something more worthwhile to say for the journey.

now that you have a topic, the hard part is here. the beginning.

don’t skip this step. people will tell you to write the middle and then the end and then the beginning. or the middle and then the beginning and the end. it’s a worthless and time-wasting suggestion. write the beginning. if it takes you an hour to get started, that’s perfectly fine. a title might help. it might not. if you need a title, start there. if you don’t need one, don’t waste the time. start with your first sentence, then the next. the first sentence is not supposed to explain your argument. or introduce your argument. it’s supposed to say something. make sure that it does. and that your reader is not bored. boredom is bad.

then continue until you have finished.

simple, right?

more later.

the twentieth century was the golden age of the silver screen. at least, it was, until the television took over its place in the hearts and minds of the babysitter-deprived generations of the second half of the century. now that we have entered the twenty-first century, though, the art of film is dead. that’s not to say that the painful experience that is theatergoing has lost money or attendance. it certainly has not. the mallrats and obsessives keep hollywood in small change and then some.

but what has happened to the experience?

dirty rooms with larger and larger walls and poorer quality projections fill with unwashed masses who speak on mobiles and talk throughout the production. and that’s only half the problem.

trailers take up the vast majority of the average attention span, before the film has even begun – and that’s with ever-increasing admission costs. advertising for products that i shan’t ever purchase followed by trailers for films completely devoid of interest sap the life from my viewing eyes. this is then followed by the introductory scene of the main production, at which point i am ready to go home. and that’s when the film begins.

but that is an incipit problem and cannot easily be solved. it is the tradition of an industry devoid of thought but flush with currency.

what i do not understand, however, is what happens once this vast harang has been relegated to the void of past experiences and the collection of photographs that will make up the memory of the film begin to flash before the eyes.

the forties and fifties saw film noir, the sixties and seventies, the drama, the eighties and nineties, the action film, and now, the comedy.

there was a time when comedies were funny. there were banana-peels. there were characters like donald and daffy. comedy was where it belonged. in the realm of the ridiculous and the animated. but it has become a mainstay of the modern film experience. and it lost something in the translation. the funny.

so where did the funny go? it was replaced by the disturbing. food humor, toilet humor, death humor – you name the depths of depravity that you’d like to sink to and then pick the currently-running film that uses them as a basic premise for existence.

and people watch it.

and i’m sad.

i want to see plot, writing, and an alternate reality that is believable, complex, and lifelike. i don’t need to see people behaving stupidly for the sake of non-existent humor. i don’t need to see illness in the guise of comedy.

pshah. i’m going back to the sixties. they knew how to write back then.