The Writes of Passage

I know I intended to use this blog for more fictional expression ongoing. But such a wonderful burst of thought and emotion came upon me this evening, and poured out the following sentiments, that I felt an old familiar inclination to share them here. So hope you don’t mind this temporary divergence from the fictive freeway I’ve recently begun accelerating, and enjoy a moment’s pause for my real life.

~

As pre-production ramps up on my exciting new indie action film, Death Grip, the little wheels inside my writer’s brain have launched into high gear. The result? I’ve begun writing a new script of my own! The goal is to eventually turn this into another action screenplay, for a potential future The Stunt People project.

But for now, it’s just an idea in the earliest infancy of development. As it matures, I will share bits of it here for your amusement and my assessment (in the best attempt at screenplay format I can manage on this blog). So now to kick it off, here is the opening scene of…

FLASH BLACK
by Rebecca Ahn

INT. SMALL ROOM

The sound of a gun cocks.

A VOICE from the darkness: ‘Any last words?’

A black sack is pulled off of BRYNA BLACK’s head and the scene slowly comes into focus. Bryna sits in the middle of a small dark room on a dingy metal chair, her hands tied behind her back. The rest of the room is empty, except for one hanging lightbulb shining straight down into her face, making her squint. Through the light’s bright beam, she can barely see the outline of a dark figure in a long cloak and top hat. As Bryna stares at the figure, her face adjusts to the light, and her features settle into an indifferent expression.

BRYNA: ‘Nothing clever comes to mind.’

MAN IN TOP HAT: ‘That’s a first. Nothing you want to be remembered by?’

Bryna cocks her head to the side, looking away from the light to scan the empty darkness around her.

BRYNA: ‘There’s nothing here I want to remember. So why should it remember me?’

MAN IN TOP HAT: ‘Interesting choice of words. I’ll just count those then, shall I?’

The figure in the top hat turns and nods to someone next to Bryna, off screen. A fist comes flying in from the side (off camera) and punches Bryna across the face. She whips her head back from the impact and spits blood at her unseen attacker.

Lately, I’ve been noticing my own increasing hesitation to write on this blog, and subsequently longer delay between posts. It made me stop and think: why might I be feeling this way? I don’t think it’s for lack of content – I still have plenty to say about my journey’s progress – nor do I think it’s for lack of wanting to share it with you all.

So what is it then?

Perhaps, I thought, it goes beyond the content itself, and beyond the concerns for the audience or the writer… perhaps it’s something even simpler and broader than that.

Now as with all truly intriguing questions into oneself, it took a great deal of introspection for me to answer these above. But the truth was ultimately found out, to my great relief, and here’s what I found.

I realized that I don’t actually enjoy writing non-fiction… any of it. I don’t enjoy writing about the humdrum details of real life, be it mine or someone else’s. Yes, true I did find it very valuable to post to this blog early on in my journey. But the motivation there was much more about using writing as a means to process my recent growth, to get it all out of me into something more concrete, and less about having a record of it for others to absorb.

In light of this, I have now in retrospect considered that posting such personal thoughts on a public online blog was perhaps not the best choice. Given the purpose I’ve realized this self-non-fictional type of writing serves me, the posting of it anywhere but where I alone can read it seems superfluous now. It now seems rather silly to have shared it with so many other people, when really the value of the writing itself was merely only in the act of writing it, and thus loses its appeal and importance once written.

I realize now the decision to start this online blog may not have been made for the best reasons, fueled more by a hope of gaining others’ acceptance and recognition than of giving others a window into themselves (as previously mentioned). Perhaps it was a selfish decision to create this blog, and share all my self-indulgent scribblings with all of you.

Perhaps it was… but then, here we are anyway.

And here I am, realizing my dislike for non-fictional writing style. Yes, we are going back to that now.

You see, coupled with that new realization is also the understanding that I quite enjoy writing fiction instead. I love creating stories in my head about the people I see, the names I hear, or the characters I encounter. I love testing my imagination when presented the opportunity to take a story and just run with it. And most of all, I love the freedom in writing fiction to be original and really say something worth reading that hasn’t yet existed in its entirety in reality.

I think I even often imagine my own life as if it were a fictional story, dreaming up scenarios and events that haven’t happened (and likely never will happen) that seem far more significant and exciting than the real thing. Whatever that may say about an inability to face my own truth is besides the point – at least for the purpose of this post – and the bottom line here is that I simply prefer creating and writing fiction from within rather than recording and retelling the non-fiction around me.

Oh, and I can’t tell you how glad I am to have uncovered this. I keep saying how much I need to develop my own voice as a writer, if I want to progress in that adventure. And here is indisputable proof that I am moving forward, slowly narrowing down what kind of writing I want to pursue, what I have to say in that style, and how I want to say it.

So the question now remains, what to do with this blog? Now that I’ve made this discovery, it would seem inappropriate to continue using it as originally intended. However, I feel it would be a shame to abandon the whole practice altogether.

My thought here is then to maybe shift the focus of this blog ever so slightly to allow for a greater deal of fiction in my posts. Perhaps I could use this as a means to practice that developing voice as a fiction writer, and share with you all the fruits of my labor there for further review and feedback.

After all, there are Passages to all matters of life, real or imaginary, and likewise benefit to writing about all of them. So the Writes of Passage title of this blog would still absolutely apply to the fictional writing I would now begin to post.

It also continues to speak to the Passage I am exploring of becoming a better writer, and the necessary writings that must demonstrate such growth. So it’s almost as if the blog title now has a double meaning, and therefore even stronger significance. Funny how that happens, isn’t it?

It’s a fictional life I dream of – dream of living, and (better yet) dream of writing. And I look forward to sharing more of that vision with you all as we continue through all such Passages of our lives.

I am a very passionate person. Ask anyone who knows me, and good chances are they’d say the same thing too. It’s something I’ve been proud to say I am for as long as I can remember.

Yet throughout this recent self-explorative journey, I have been attempting to take that inner ‘passion’ and figure out what I really want to be doing with myself. I guess I figured that since I’m such a passionate person, it would be easy to alight on my next productive path befitting such. But as you can expect, that has turned out to be a much harder question to answer than I anticipated.

For starters, I found that I don’t even really know what I am passionate about. I honestly don’t think I have ever known. My whole life, I’ve just been passionate about everything, and nothing at the same time. And as a result, I’ve been sort of good at everything, and really good at nothing in particular. I wanted to be everything, because I never knew (or tried to figure out) what one thing I actually wanted to be or be doing.

Instead, I have developed too wide a range of interests that attract my attention and energy. Even the job I just recently left was working in a field I could say I find interesting.

Each time my boss and I would sit down to brainstorm and strategize, I would get very passionate about each topic in discussion. Each initiative brought out the passion in me, whether about revolutionizing the K-12 education space, or developing engineering research at the university level, or addressing the organizational issues underlying our own management system… I became engrossed in each of them.

Then beyond my former work, there are even more areas that warrant my passion. As an Economics major in college, I fell in love with economic international development, particularly the challenges facing each corner and community within the massively diverse, corrupt and complicated continent of Africa.

After college, I found the subject of psychology more and more interesting (as will happen) as I began exploring my own mental and emotional hurdles. I felt a particular partiality for how the psychology of a professional group can shape its productivity, as I witnessed and tested first hand at my old job.

Beyond academics, I love being active and outdoors, lifting weights and working up a good sweat. And I feel no greater thrill than when I’m pushing my physical limits, and bringing out the fighter in me.

Then there’s the artist in me, who wants to capture the beauty I see in everything around me. Whatever the medium – be it a camera, pen and paper, etc – I revel in packaging the world’s wonders, virtues and vices for others to consciously consume.

Expanding on that, the writer in me is fascinated with words, and how the choice of them can change how a vision or opinion is received and understood. I am drawn to the challenge of capturing the true essence of a thing in seemingly too simple words, and then how both individuals and communities alike can be inspired and matured by their content.s

I love the way my art and writing have already inspired people, and am encouraged by the possibility to further touch the hearts and lives of others through such. It speaks to my love of storytelling, and the joy I get out of taking someone along on a journey with me.

But here comes the rub. Though all of these here foretold (and many more I’ve omitted) may be passions of mine, I am still uncertain of what next professional direction to take based on them. Naturally, I can’t pursue all of these at once, nor would I wish to. But to simply just pick one and run with it would be to miss the whole point of this exercise, and what I’m trying to accomplish at this juncture in my life. No, the goal now is rather to find where within my ‘passion’ I will feel the greatest reward for my work, and would like to contribute productively to the betterment of society.

So first things first: I need to start by identifying the core values common within each of these passions, and within my core self. And with the help of some very near and dear friends and family, I have finally taken to whittling this list down to two core elements that I truly feel must be at the center of whatever work I take on next.

In short, I must feel that what I am doing is artistic and creative, and also that it has a functional purpose in society. I do love art for art’s sake, but that alone would not give me the satisfaction of practical impact I am looking for. That said, I have also worked in many fields of functional value in the past, and felt they lacked a fundamental element of the arts that I need in my work.

So Art and Function it is – that’s what it comes down to for me.

Now how that manifests into a career is still beyond me. But armed with this new narrowed knowledge, I can continue my journey onward and upward with increased confidence that I will soon find the right next occupational adventure for me. I’ve only just begun, so it would be foolish to be discouraged by any lack of progress thus far, and far wiser to instead look to tomorrow with bright eyes.

So forward I will journey on, into the heart of me. And if you care to join, I’d be pleased to have you travel with me, and share in such experiences as the merging of Art + Function may forge.