saturnreturnz

One thing I learned from training for marathons…you gotta keep trying and keep slugging away. Same goes for art – gotta keep applying and keep slugging away. I don’t know if I harbor fantasies of escaping my 9-5, but I’ve always wanted to create stories that one day would become movies that make a difference—whatever that means.

These days, I find the average American voter inspiring—I never thought I would live to see the day when I would be so proud of my country, and so hopeful for a brighter future in America.

Theoretically – everything in this world should be inspiring. The fact we are even alive is a miracle unto itself. But by and large, the historic events that positively inspire large groups of people are few and far between, which is why I feel so lucky to have been part of and witness to one.

Smaller things that have recently inspired me—a pinhole camera I received as a gift. getting in touch w/old friends who I haven’t seen in too long. the smells of weekend cooking wafting through the house. pumpkin pie ice cream. long conversations with my mother on the phone. breaking in new running sneakers on a 5 mile run by the river on a perfect day. singing in my band.

Partially in order to deepen my creativity and become more inspired, I’ve taken up screenwriting classes. It’s through an online course. I’m in my 3rd week, and believe me its gotten my creative juices really flowing! It’s so encouraging to read other people who, like me, feel like the daily act of living has has crystallized all of their creative resin into an immobile amber. However, through the act of laboring over a creating a cohesive story, I’ve now realized that it’s only by descending deeply into the gunk of real life that a good story can truly come alive with details and heart. I only really realize this now. But transforming all the gunk into art isn’t easy. Not at all.

This Hemingway quote is apt:

“In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dulled and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well oiled in the closet, but unused.”