The audio version of this post is available on the Building A World podcast
I had an idea. I’m not saying it’s a good one, but hear me out. I’ve always thought it would be interesting to see a behind the scenes look at what it takes to become a writer. We see this type of treatment for many of the art fields, don’t we?
We see lots of documentaries that go behind the music for some of our most beloved music acts…in the studio, on the tour bus, the creative process. We see it for movies as well, witnessing how the magic is made or how the actor prepares for their role…bonus features on the DVD. We see it for artists as we observe them draw or sculpt. We even see it for crafts people and fashion designers. There are singing competitions and dancing competitions and talent shows.
But there isn’t much content out there about the writers room and even less about the individual writer working on their next novel. I suppose it doesn’t lend well to visual media. The process of writing, after all, is nothing more than a person sitting in a room and writing. it’s not what you would call riveting television. The drama is what’s going on in the writer’s head, but that’s visible to no one but the writer themselves.
Only once the thing is fully written will the audience get any glimpse of what was really going on in that room…that room where the writer was sitting alone and writing. That process takes time, and I can’t imagine anyone watching someone write for hundreds of hours.
Actually, I did toy with the idea of starting a YouTube channel that films me writing…a middle aged guy that nobody knows on a couch with a computer in his lap. I won’t spoil it for you, but every so often I take a drink from my cup. It will be one of three things: coffee, ice water or scotch. I’ll get up periodically to use the restroom. I never eat when I write so you can forget about seeing that—I won’t be sharing any snack suggestions. Sometimes I’ll wear a sweatshirt. Sometimes I’m under a blanket. Sometimes I’m listening to music. Just hundreds of hours of that. What do you think? Should I start that channel?
Anyway, I would still be interested in a behind the scenes look at what it takes to become a successful writer. And since I’ve always heard that it’s a good idea to create the thing you’re interested in consuming, I think I’ll try my hand at this. It’s always been my dream to be a writer…whatever that actually means, I don’t even think I know. I mean, I just wrote that, right? You just read it. It was written through an act of writing. Boom! There you go, I’m already a writer.
What I do know is that it’s pretty much all I think about. It’s with me every moment of the day. There’s no shaking it. What I like to do is create…create a story that I can get lost in. And while most of what I create is through writing, I also enjoy making art or crafting music that helps support the story I’m telling. I like putting all of those pieces together into something that, if I did it right, means something. Even if I’m the only person who finds meaning in it, it would still be something I’d do. It’s whether you can do it professionally or not that will determine just how much of your time you really get to spend doing such things. I guess that answers my question of what it means to be a writer. It means I can afford to take the time to write.
And here’s the thing. I want to be good at it. I want to be the best I can be at it. And the more time I can spend on it, the better I’ll be at it. I want to put in the work. I’ve been at it for a good long while now but I never really shifted out of 2nd gear. I stayed in a comfort zone with it. No real structure, no real milestones other than long term projects I never finish and idioms of “I’ll try to get to it someday.”
The ideas accumulate and there are more and more of them and they’re so exciting but it seems so far out of reach. Like it’s less an idea than a wish. And then you survive a pandemic and a great drama of “life-stuff” and you realize suddenly that 20 years has gone by and what have you got to show for it? Have you made what you intended to make?
About a year ago I came to a crossroads in my life. I was in a deep state of burn out…with everything. My career, my relationship, the things I owned, the things I was doing. I had worked extremely hard for what I had and realized it wasn’t what I intended to make.
So I started to take steps to redirect my life and to really figure out what it is I thought I should be making. I was confused and tired and for everything I thought I knew about myself realized I knew very little.
My boss at the time had told me a story about a person he had hired once for a manger role. The stress of the job got to him and he had a mental break. The filing system that had been his mind suddenly had all of its drawers flung open, it’s contents dumped on the ground and scattered to the wind. It was a mess and the poor guy cracked, didn’t even know his own family, couldn’t find their names in the mess of files. He recovered but my God, how frightening that must have been. Could you imagine? Suddenly, the entirety of your life stopped making sense. Frightening indeed!
That started to rattle around my head a lot as I found myself totally lost. Were my brain files being dumped on the cerebral ground? It was starting to feel that way. As I really started to focus on what I wanted to make, there was only one thing that kept coming to my mind. I wanted to write.
I wanted to create worlds. I wanted to live in a flow state of creativity where I worked tirelessly to manufacture the ideas I had in my head. To make them as real as I could make them. It was the only thing I thought about and I began to realize that I wasn’t doing it enough. I was thinking it plenty, but I wasn’t doing it.
And that was the source of my confusion. I was starving a part of me and the unease I was experiencing was akin to hunger pangs. When you’re hungry, really hungry, is there anything else you think about but food?
That brings us to here. This will be my attempt to document that process. Here I will explore the things that bring me ideas and inspiration and from that I will start to make….stuff. I hope you might find that process interesting or engaging and I hope that you will enjoy some of the stories that I will give my very best in telling. This, in fact, is already a part of that story and you are invited on the journey.
My name is Atlas Sinclair and I’m building a world!
Atlas Sinclair 