Hello my friends —
While you process the deluge of coronavirus advice and guidance, (and the anxiety, and the chaos), remember this:
As writers, you possess skills that will prove useful in the coming weeks and months. You’re good at listening. You’re good at synthesizing information, and sharing stories. Continue reading “Reaching Out”
Last month I wrote about winning, how it applies to life and stories. But now let’s talk about the flip side of winning: losing. Perhaps it’s more important because most (all?) of us spend more time losing at things than winning.
One of my favorite stories about losing is the film The Cooler. The protagonist is Unlucky Bernie Lootz, and he’s as sad as the name sounds. A real nowhere man. He works as a “cooler” in a casino, which means he’s so unlucky he infects everyone around with him bad luck, so he is paid to wander the casino floor making those around him lose their money.
Writers, as I compose this note to you all, I’m listening to a trivia contest about celebrity micro-marriages, unions that lasted all of 72 days or nine days or even just 55 hours. Love, it seems, can go spectacularly wrong.
As can our writing about it. You know what I mean—the over-flowery, purple, cringe-inducing paeans to amore; the clinical descriptions of looks or worse, body parts. (Quelle horreur.) The clichés.
We trip ourselves up when our focus is too narrow, trying to evoke a single feeling, where love is ephemeral, and when you’re in it, it’s a state of being. Maybe, what we need to do is think of love as an environment. Continue reading “Writing About Love”