I had a birthday since we last met. A round number birthday. I'm not just a year older than a week ago, I'm five years older.
One thing I did that day, apart from thinking about the subject of age, was to pick up a newspaper my wife had left lying around untidily for the past month. Glancing at this piece of trash, I realized it was a paper I had asked her to leave lying there.
I'd been interested by a feature in it: an interview with writer Frank McCourt. He said, "My book hit the best-seller lists and catapulted me onto television. The world was shocked to learn that I was 66. Wow!"
Is it coincidence that I picked that neglected paper up on my five-year birthday? Maybe. Or if you believe in the unconscious mind, then you'll think part of me knew all along what was in the paper, what I ought to do about it, and when.
Part of creativity is the bringing together of things that nobody had previously noticed we could combine. On the other hand, coincidence and synchronicity happen when the world puts things together that are related but that it's still surprising to see together. Maybe that, too, is sometimes the operation of your own creativity.
Frank McCourt's meaning to you and me is that even at 66 you can write a best-seller and see it become an Oscar-nominated movie.
So we can't all be child prodigies like Mozart. What of it? How many people can? Seriously, how many?
The answer is none - not even Mozart, whose father lied about his age. We can't all become major screenwriters in our mid-twenties like Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.
Who cares?
We can look instead to Larry McMurtry, who has been writing movies since Hud (1963) and finally got his Oscar more than 40 years later. We can look to Alvin Sargent, who just wrote Spider-Man 3 at age 75.
A problem for the actors I meet out here is knowing when to quit. When to leave California and explain your foolish adventure to the folks back home. Or when to quit waiting tables and accept the reality of a well paid Los Angeles office career. What if you quit and your big break was going to come next day? But what if you don't quit and it never comes? A terrible, impossible puzzle.
Do you know who Peg Entwistle was? The first actress to jump off the Hollywood sign in despair. On the day she took her life in 1932, a job offer was in the mail.
But it's not that way for writers.
Something you can try today: make the decision never to give up, and see what difference that makes. In your life, is writing mainly a way to become rich and/or famous? I don't care if you answer yes or no. If it's no, then lack of sales is no reason at all to quit. If yes, then it's even more important to persevere.
David
David Jung McGarva
+1 (818) 707 1871
Write me: david at todayiwrite dot com
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