Muses: Stephen King and Paul Reubens

            Somedays I don’t feel like writing at all.  If pushed, I can always find something to write about if given a topic.  However, there are days when I don’t feel like finding a topic.  It’s pathetic, really.  I only have thousands of books here at home and hundreds on writing alone.  All it takes is opening up one book to a page, reading a little and writing in reaction to it.

            There are always, however, a thousand reasons for me not to start writing every day.  My most common excuse is that typing on the computer aggravates my back, neck, as well as some pre-arthritis garbage I have going on.  But, as like anything else, once you push through the wall, you keep going.  Today was one of those days again.  I am participating in Nanowrimo’s National Writing Month as I’ve done for the past three years.  I’ve been home most of the day as it is Teacher’s Convention weekend and all day long I’ve been avoiding typing up five pages of writing.  It shouldn’t be that hard;  twenty years ago I used to write 10-15 pages a day.  Most of it was garbage, but I still turned out a complete work every few months.  My filing cabinets are full of unsold work.  But now, with chronic pain and eight million things to distract me, it’s difficult for me to find the one to two hours I need to type five pages.  And when I hear that writers like Stephen King push out 20 pages a day, I just feel useless.

            But, that’s ridiculous thinking.  Nobody is Stephen King.  He makes $100,000,000 a book because of his ability to create fully flushed out, fascinating page-turners one after another.  (It’s important to note also that Stephen King has stated that he also has filing cabinets full of garbage at home.)

            What is important is that you write every day.  It doesn’t matter if it’s one page or one sentence.  Either way, if you are writing every day, by the end of the year you should have at least one finished literary work:  a novel, a screenplay, a stage play.

            The other day, I was scouring Youtube for interviews with Paul Reubens, a.k.a. Pee-Wee Herman, I think that many people who grew up in the 80’s have a special love of Pee-Wee Herman.  He made us laugh at our own silliness.  Reubens just spent over a million dollars restoring all five seasons of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse in a brand new boxed set. After watching one interview with Paul Reubens, I was interested to learn more about this lovely soul. 

            One of the interviews I found was surprising to me.  Reubens was talking about writing.  He hates it!  He would rather do anything else but write.  In fact, he started Pee Wee’s Playhouse out of a state of panic.  He had been turned down to host Saturday Night Live and in his distress and worry of never working again, he came up with the idea of producing his own children’s show.  This was a perfect example of making lemonade out of lemons.  He produced the show and the rest was history.  He is now a world-wide branded name.

            When it came time to write the first Pee-Wee film, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Reubens had no idea how to write a screenplay.  So, he picked up a How To book by filmwriting master, Syd Fields, and literally worked his way through the book page by page to create Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.  He said he did such a good job following Syd’s format that now film schools study the screenplay.  He joked, “On page 30 I lose my bike and on page 60 I find it. . . “ 

            Anyone can write, including those who hate writing, and if you don’t know where to start, pick up a book.   If Reubens, who hates writing, can write a film that grossed $40,900,000, then what can you do when you LOVE to write?

            Here’s a couple of suggestions that I’ve used and taught to writing students of all ages.  The first is the What If? Response.  What you do is take a few moments scouring a book or Internet issues and ask yourself What If?  What if the key to ending worldwide terrorism was in the minds of children and we’re just not listening?  What if evil didn’t triumph over good in the film Chinatown - -  how would it end then?  What if Pee-Wee Herman had an evil twin?  All you do is ask the question and suddenly you have a story to tell.  It doesn’t matter that it’s based on something else – as you continue to write, it will take on a life of it’s own.  Eventually you will edit out the question you started writing with and end with something entirely new and different.

            Another good writing technique is called Loop Writing.  You time yourself for ten minutes or so and just write anything that comes to your head.   Ironically, this is the technique I used to start this blog.  After ten minutes, stop, underline what you think is either the main idea or most important thing you wrote and write for another ten minutes on that idea.  You can keep looping your writing every ten minutes or so if you like until you finally hit a rhythm.  Once you hit on the right topic, you won’t want to stop writing. 

            The third is to type  “Writing Topics”  or “Writing Ideas” into an Internet search and see what comes up to strike your interest.  If you feel like spending a couple of bucks, head to the book store (or try the library) and purchase a book or computer program designed to furnish you with writing topics or outlines.  You’ll be surprised how many things are out there.  And it doesn’t matter if 10,000 people start writing on the same topic, they will come up with 10,000 distinctly different stories.

            There are many, many more ways to get started in writing, but the utmost rule is Just Write.  If you put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and just begin to write, then you’re halfway there!  Pull up your word processing program right now and get started!
        
            If you'd like to participate in November Novel Writing month, go to Nanowrimo.org and sign up.  It's free!
Please check out my new novel  Luke Aloysius:  Bloodline on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GD9X8BE

Peace!