Our thanks to powerful guest blogger and Master Cat! Alvaro Rodriguez, a Texas-based screenwriter whose credits include Machete, From Dusk to Dawn: The Hangman’s Daughter, and Shorts, for pushing us with this piece:
Okay, okay. So it’s not that black-and-white. There are writers who sit at the laptop or the legal pad and symphonies fly from their fingertips like so much neon in a Gaspar Noe movie. But they’re just really good at hiding the fact that at some point in the process, they’re the first kind of writer.
Writing is a question. It’s many questions, I guess, but the first question is, Will I be read? Will reading leave me with a sense of accomplishment? Will reading validate my existence? It’s an invitation to dance — the writer and the prose, the reader and the prose, the intermediaries who shuffle the prose from writer to reader. There are dance steps as careful as a foxtrot, but within that structure, you the writer (even you the reader) can go all Pina Bausch if you desire.
This is a lead-in to the idea of pushing, and the power to push. It’s simple physics but it’s metaphysics, too. It’s the ability to be the wind at your own back at every step of the way, from concept to draft to (may the Great Spirit bless us all) sale to Redbox with many steps and even reversals in between.
The power to push isn’t just about self-help pop psychology, either. It’s also the power to push for a better strategy, to push your own talent to something new, to push expectations higher for your work, to push into the undiscovered, the untried and the unexpected.
At the same time, like any good dance, there’s a counterbalance: compromise. The road to hell is paved with it. But if you the writer can push your signature, your style, yourself into the project, you’ll find that compromise doesn’t mean acquiescing. Pushing coal sometimes makes a diamond.
So get your dance cards out, find something with a good beat you can dance to, believe in your own forward momentum, and push, dammit, push.
Alvaro Rodriguez
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Perfect timing, Al. I’m working a new project with the green-light dangling, and, by last night, had become completely frustrated with it – enough to make me want to drop-kick the iMac and walk away from the whole thing. I woke at 3 am with an Aha! moment (and I didn’t even shower) and now, think that I may have pushed through this painful wall, and hopefully, will have a script that my partner and I can agree on.
Writing is like giving birth. So yes, push, dammit push!
You’ve got the touch. You’ve got the power.
Alvaro, This is wonderful. Positive. And thanks for the HUGE opening laugh!
Thankfully I still fall into the first category of writer : )
What kind of writer am i given that i strive to give a voice to the parts of me that are dead? lol. Actually i am a seriously wounded perfectionist who counts thinking about writing as writing! I sure hope that counts! Love you tons Alvaro! Meow!
I agree with Annie… working on a 2 projects that I love/hate depending if the sun raises. Both has producers waiting far too long. Pushing is the only answer if I want to be an overnight success… after 20 years. Thanks again for your continued inspiration and CAT support. Whoohoo as Blake would say.
Thanks, Alvaro! Excellent advice as usual. I give myself impossible deadlines. I rarely completely make them, but it pushes me to work hard and fast. It also keeps me from over analyzing in the first draft or new piece. So I’ll keep pushing!
Just a note from one of those odd people: a novelist. I took the STC seminar and talk about a push in my ability to produce! There are two types of novelists: the sit arounds who wait for the muse to hit and the organizers. The organizers use structure and outlines to get the process going. They sit down and go to work. That’s what STC did for me. I have A 100,000 word novel now completed. A little editing is underway. All I need at the moment is an agent. A local Texas writer told me the only requirements for an agent or a phone and a desk. The desk is optional.
JTR
Push, dammit, push. Can’t top those brilliant words which say it all. They apply to every part of life, writing especially. I was privileged beyond measure to share Blake’s last seminar in Austin. He was a master teacher and true gentle-man who helped me push through with the heavy lifting for my work. You reinforce all he said, plus more proven by your own successes, Alvaro. Push regardless, that’s what moms hear during the hardest part of giving birth, right before the baby is born. Just like sitting down, writing, editing, re-writing and sending are the hardest parts of giving life to any story, any form. Think I need to refer to you as Story-Doctor Alvaro from now on. Thanks for such a boost, and wishing you even greater successes!