Re: On My Disgusting Attitude (Was Good Will Hunting Before I Was So
Susan Pearson (susanp@ou.edu)
Thu, 08 Jan 1998 14:00:23 -0600
There's a
> general feeling, I've found, that writing is *easy* to do. That
> everyone's not only got a novel in 'em, they've got a damn *good*
> novel, too. People have no respect for what an really huge achievement
> a good piece of fiction is anymore ...
I think that this is an interesting point and something that I have
noticed a lot while taking writing workshops. Think about the prose that
you read on a day to day basis. Most of it is good even if it is the
paper or a novel or whatever. I think that we read so much good prose
that we forget how damn hard it is to write the stuff. Sit down and try
to write a story. Where to begin? What to include? What to say? It seems
natural when we see Salinger or Ginsberg or Matt Damon or whoever do it
and we sit around and critique it without ever trying it ourselves. Why
is it that we learn to critique as critics and not as writers? I don't
know what kind of tangent I'm getting on, but there it is.
And as for literature and film not being the same, I agree. You cannot
judge a movie script by literature standards in the same way you can't
judge song lyrics by poetry standards. Movies do not rely on script
alone. I became very aware of this watching Titanic last night. It was
an unspeakably beautiful movie, but the script pretty much sucked. An
all-time low was when DiCaprio says, "When you've got nothing, you have
nothing to lose" or something like that. Oh so original. But an amazing
movie nonetheless.
Susan