Madness of a Modern Writer

In the Matrix Trilogy, Neo was not ready to know the truth until he understood one important thing… himself. In many ways this was foreshadowed above the Oracles door with the sign that read, “Temet Nosce.”

We are writers. We take the world and remold it into our stories. We take world events or established stories, and recraft them. Even if the story is entirely original, some aspect of life can be gleamed from your work. Especially that of your characters. Readers need to be able to see themselves and those they know in the characters we write… but how do we do that?

The answer is simple: Profiling.

I’m sure that is a dirty word for many of you. Profiling can be used in a number of ways, and yes, it can be used the wrong way in the wrong hands. But profiling is being able to understand people at their core, how they function and why. I’m sure many of you have picked apart characters to try to understand them better, and some of you have done that with friends. All good to do (just don’t tell your friends you’re doing this).

I tell my students that when it comes to profiling, the first step is profiling yourself. That is very hard to do. Why? Because we are liars. Most people lie to themselves as a way to feel better about ourselves, to believe there is nothing wrong with ourselves and the whole world is the problem. It’s called Self-Serving Bias.

When it comes to profiling yourself, you have to ask yourself the really hard questions, and you have to really search for the answer. The answer is hardly simple, and most likely more complex than the question itself. Why do we do the things that we do? Why do push people away, or are so clingy? Why do we insult other, or insult ourselves? Why are we introverts, or extroverts?

The first step is accepting that you are not perfect. You are flawed. The second step is accepting that through your imperfections, that doesn’t make you a bad person automatically. Eventually, once you start learning more of yourself, you will come to the realization that some things you can alter about yourself and something you can’t. Maybe you want to, maybe you don’t.

I learned that I used to be overly sarcastic (more than I am now). It pushed people away. So I changed it.

I also learned that I’m overly analytical. I prefer complexity over simplicity. For many, they would view this as a bad quality. I don’t. I like that I do. I like that I notice small details, even in a cartoon that isn’t supposed to make sense. It helps me be a better writer. The world looks so beautiful in a very complex way… why blind myself to that?

This is something that can take years, but it is one of things that you cannot judge others unless you judge yourself first, and really throw yourself through the ringer. You can’t be in other people’s minds, but you are in your own. And don’t be afraid to ask for help either. And I’m sure the prospect is scary, and so I urge you, only go as far as your comfortable with. And don’t be afraid to get a mentor (like I am with my students) or a therapist to help you along the path. Nothing wrong with getting help, only wrong if you outright refuse it.

An exercise I recently did (as you never stop learning), was to name my top 20 films of all time. Of course, being overly analytical as I am, I instead did 150. Why? It just made sense to me. Below is a list of the order of the 150 films I like. Each one of those I can tell you why I like it, and what I feel it says about me as a person for liking them. You may not like my choices, and that’s OK. We are different people, and this world is open for many different individuals. Some movies have a deep layer for me in which I love them, and others are simply guilty pleasures (I’m surprised how high in the list Waterboy is).

Putting them in order from favorite to least was the hard part. How do you decide that? I at first did it based on, which would I want to see more, but that got hard after awhile, so I stead chose it by which would I watch more if it were in the middle of the film (as in, I turned on the TV and it is playing). A lot of this list is highly dependent on my mood at the time of, so it will fluctuate. I can only guarantee the order of the top 20.

I challenge you to do the same. You don’t have to do 150 like me (I’m a freak), but try to pick out your top 20 favorite films of all time, and really ask yourself why do you like these films, and in what order. Mayhaps this opens up an avenue about yourself that you never truly thought about before.

NOTE: My true list of favorite films is likely closer to 2000, so this list doesn’t even represent 10% of what I truly love. So you might think it wrong of me that some movies appear so low in my rankings, but it is higher than all the other films I didn’t list. I had to stop somewhere.

If you do this challenge, please link it down below, I would love to see what your favorite movie is.