Kevin Strange's Blog: Strange Sayings - Posts Tagged "the-writing-process"

I'm not sure when being prolific became a goal for me. Growing up, even after high school when I first fell in love with cinema while managing a chain of porn shops, I never paid attention to the fact that some of those filmmakers had made dozens of films over long decades.
Sometimes my partner, D.F. Noble, jokes about writing some shitty young adult novel so we can retire.

I have no interest in retiring.

So when did that become a thing for me? When did the idea of creating continuously until my body breaks down and prevents me from creating anymore come about?
I'd been aware of Stephen King's long career. Of Woody Allen's insane work rate. Of Bob Dylan. But none of that meant anything to me until I sat down and wrote my first script.
I hated it.
I sucked. I felt like a kid trying to draw a full color comic with crayons. So I bought a bunch of books on writing. I learned what everybody learns. To be good at writing, you have to write. A lot. All the time. And you have to read. Everything. So I wrote another short film script and actually produced a short film. Hated it. So I made another. Sucked, but not as bad. So I wrote a feature film script. God awful.

As of today, I've written and directed nearly 20 short films. I've written and directed 5 feature length films with another half-dozen film scripts that remain un-produced. I've written a short story collection, three novellas and two novels. And I still learn every single time I sit down at my computer and start a new story.
My friends who grew up with me --the blue collar, small town folk who think people like me are just stubborn idiots who won't grow up and get a real job-- slowly started to notice there was something special going on when month after month, year after year, I was still churning this shit out.

I've never had writer's block. My biggest enemy is staying focused on one project to completion before the next movie or book jams its way into my brain and takes over my focus. And I had no forethought or intention of creating in this way.
I know filmmakers who are still selling a movie they'd made five or six years prior. I know authors who wrote one book, one time, and that was it. They were done. That's crazy to me. Maybe it's about self doubt. The idea that I still haven't made “The Movie” or written “The Novel” that defines me as an artist, that will live on beyond my natural lifetime. Maybe these folks have and did.
But I don't think that's the case.

I think George Carlin wrote a new comedy album every year because he was always endlessly trying to find new ways to communicate his ideas to people. The whole notion of quitting any form of work once you've acquired a certain amount of money is a nasty idea to me. It's loathsome, it's the product of lazy minds, or of people who choose to do work they hate, just for a paycheck.
Carlin didn't need the money, Steve Jobs didn't need money at all when he was dying and still worked at Apple until three days before his death. Stephen King has famously sold the movie rights to his manuscripts for a dollar. That's not wealth motivation. That's a personal yearning for communication.

And somehow, completely unbeknownst to me, I possess it.

As I push forward through my third novel, I'm already outlining a fourth and fifth. I've already come up with a title to a new short story collection that may not see the light of day for another year. I'm bouncing ideas for new anthologies off my partners. I have unfinished business in my film making life that keeps me up at night. There are still scripts that beg me, deep into the long dark hours, to be shot and edited into real movies.
When does that stop? Does it ever? I hope not. I hope that overwhelming monetary success (should I ever be fortunate and lucky enough to see such a thing) doesn't kill the hunger inside me to create better, stronger art, faster and faster.

The list of prolific authors is endless. There's no way that, at 32 years old, I'll ever catch up to, or match the output of authors who've been at this for twenty years longer than me.
But I can work every day, every month, every year at becoming a better author, at putting out more books than the previous year, of topping my fastest novel turnaround. These things drive me, they excite me, and they exist inside me without my permission.
Being prolific isn't a choice. You either are, or you are not.