I have mixed feelings about fate. Mostly, I think it's a silly idea. You make the most out of your situation and try to pull all the good out of it. You work for what you want and make it happen. But where's the line between taking out obstacles and knowing when the world is telling you to give it a rest? I had a writing spot that seemed like a dead lock fall through. I'm actually not broken up about it, since it would be a series of 80-word reviews, which doesn't give much space to wow potential employers. But it would have been nice to get published, 80 more words in print than I have now.

When I did NaNoWriMo, we got pep talk emails from published authors. Here's what Neil Gaiman said:
"You write. That's the hard bit that nobody sees. You write on the good days and you write on the lousy days. Like a shark, you have to keep moving forward or you die. Writing may or may not be your salvation; it might or might not be your destiny. But that does not matter. What matters right now are the words, one after another. Find the next word. Write it down. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat."

I love the line about the shark. But I think that for me, even though my initial response was 'Wow, that's really cynical,' Julianna Baggot's advice was more useful:
"Polish your jealousy to a high shine - like the chrome of a well-loved Mustang.......Ditto the chip on your shoulder. Treat it well. Feed it crackers, and maybe it'll turn into a blue parakeet - one of those blue ones who knows how to cuss."

I am a jealous person. It's the real reason for my deep loathing of people like Kiera Knightley: she's famous, gorgeous, doing what she wants to do, and is my age. I can't stand that. It's just so infuriatingly unfair. I was jealous of the really talented people in my writing classes, two boys in particular. They were the department darlings: professors loved them and their work. One ran the literary magazine and the other had already published a successful novel in China. I hated them both a little. I'm not proud of that facet of myself, but at least it's not so crippling that it ruins my friendships or totally paralyzes my own ambitions.

I guess that's where the fate thing comes in. Are the Kiera Knightleys of the world sent out just to make the rest of us berate ourselves and quench our delusions of grandeur? What's the line between blind ambition and blind foolishness? I don't really expect answers; it depends on the person, the situation, etc. Honestly, though, I really don't think that people are ever destined to be one certain thing. The word 'destined' doesn't quite encompass how much work goes into reaching a goal, achieving a dream. If your desires just appear without your trying, then you are very lucky. And yes, I am very jealous of you.

I was talking with Jasmine a week or two ago, and she said that she thought writing was the only creative endeavor that is painful. "You never hear an actor say 'Oh god, I have to go act now,' or a dancer say 'Dammit, I have to go dance.' But any time you talk to a writer, they're like 'Ugggghhhh!'" (Rough paraphrasing of her words, but you get the point.)

I thought about this on my walk home today, and came to the conclusion that there are two types of artists: creators and interpreters. The interpreters include the aforementioned actors and dancers, and also musicians. Their craft is physically demanding and requires practice and rehearsal, then usually is performed live for an audience. It's an art that you turn on and off. Now you're performing. Now you're not.

And then there are the creators: the writers, the composers, the singer-songwriters, the painters. The ones who tend to be depressed or mildly insane. The ones who lock themselves away with the tools of their trade, often groaning "I hate my life! I hate doing this!" as they force themselves to make something concrete out of the ideas in their mind. The pressure on a creator is different than on an interpreter. The creator has a steady steam of stress rather than the short, impassioned bursts of a live performer. That's not to say that I envy what the performers go through. They, poor souls, have to try to get into our heads and figure out what the hell we were trying to communicate.

As you might guess, I've had a rough couple days for writing. Because the actual process of writing is just as frustrating as the not writing, the thinking and planning, the desperation for inspiration. It's infuriating. So why do it? Sadly, this is the question I ask myself, more often than I'd like, every time I can't come up with an idea or receive another rejection. What's the point of doing something that is such a bloody pain?

I don't know.

I have come to the conclusion that I don't like Wes Anderson's movies. Granted, I've only seen two - The Royal Tenenbaums and just finished Rushmore - but I've gotten a pretty good idea of his style and it drives me insane. It's probably a bad sign when the best thing I can say about a film is "Well, I liked the soundtrack."

His visual style is certainly distinct. He's got a thing for using paintings and big block print, and there seems to be a strange yellow glow over each scene. I'm not a huge fan of text in film, but I did like when Rushmore went through all of Max's many extracurriculars, although now that I think about it, there was a similar sequence in The Royal Tenenbaums that showed all the places Gwyneth Paltrow's character cheated on her husband.  I guess the biggest thing that bothers me is the way he writes. It's too glib, like he's tried so hard to make them sound real but wants every line to be saturated with some deeper meaning. Or maybe I feel like I should be reading more into the script because I get nothing on the surface, just detached banter. In one of my writing classes, a girl said in workshop that she thought every line of dialogue should work to advance plot. I hold a much looser view of what it can or should accomplish, but the Anderson's scripts don't do much for character either. It's just so...fake.

I apologize if I'm maligning your favorite writer/director, but I take my dialogue pretty seriously. I write a lot of it. Most of my stories start out as conversations in my head, and once I'm rolling on a scene, I tend to play out everything that the characters say to each other and have to go back later and add in whatever might be happening around them. It's a little different though when that conversation is happening in your mind's eye and isn't a concrete presence on the screen. You don't need to sketch out a character or add in a note about their quirks; you see them live. And that's what I like in movies, seeing a real spark between real people (or at least real people playing imagined ones).

There was one scene in Rushmore that I really liked: the kite-flying, when Margaret Yang comes up to him and says that she faked the results of her science project. "Why?" Max asks her. "Because it didn't work," she answers. That was the best character connection, when you could see why he finally gave her a chance. Finally I was okay with just a silent shot of Jason Schwartzman's face, because finally I knew what he was thinking. But for both this movie and The Royal Tenenbaums, I find that as the final credits roll, my overall reaction is just, "Huh? Why do people like this?" My friend Amanda had lent me Rushmore, saying that she was so excited to be writing about it for a class on film and childhood, and I know I've heard other people mention Wes Anderson's movies as their favorites. It's just not my cup of tea, I guess.