Motivation

By: Brian Fleming

Over the years, people have often said to me, "Wow, you’re a writer. That must take a lot of discipline; I could never get myself to sit down and write." And for years, I didn’t have an answer. I might say something like, "Um, I don’t know, I just sort of do it, I guess," and quickly order myself another beer and change the subject. Truth be told, I had no idea myself why I wrote, what inspired me, drove m, etc.

Once, I thought I’d pinned it down. I was twenty-seven years old and working at Borders Bookstore. Now, I want to address a misconception about working in bookstore: no, you don’t spend all your time reading, contrary to what most people think. In fact, you spend most your time shelving books and being told not to read. Or else you spend your time at the cash register, scanning one book after another and wondering how you ended up with such a lousy job with such lousy pay ($6.25 an hour at the time—and that was union pay). When you’re not at the cash register, you’re at information, helping people with requests like, "I’m looking for a book, it’s about a woman. I don’t know what it’s called, but it has a yellow cover."

"Ah, yes, that would be in our yellow book cover section in aisle three," you respond.

Alas, no, reading is the last thing in the world you do at a book store. In fact, working at a book store is hands down one of the most boring, brain dead jobs I can think of. All you really need to know how to do is alphabetize. No matter how much I tried to envision myself as a Literary Consultant, a purveyor of taste and sensibility, I could get around the fact that I was making as much in a year as my friends were making in a month—and working the same hours, no less. Things were made worse by the fact that I had yet to publish or sell anything and I was beginning to wonder what I was going to do with my life (something I still wonder about now that I am a published writer).

Once day, a friend of mine at Borders, who also aspired to be a writer and who was in the master program in creative writing at Boston University, asked me how I got myself to sit down every day after work and write. "All I want to do when I get home is turn on the TV and crack open a beer," she said. "I don’t have any energy to write. How do you motivate yourself?"

This was easy. I looked around the cavernous expanse of the store and said, ‘Look around. I’m twenty-six years old; I have a college degree—you think I want to work here for the rest of my life. That’s all the motivation I need."

And it was this belief I worked under for the next couple of years, even as I published my first story, went off to the writers workshop in Iowa (more about that in another article), published my first book, got some good reviews and moved to New York with the belief that everything else would be gravy. Well, it wasn’t gravy. Hell, it wasn’t even au jus.

My first three weeks in New York I lived in flop house with alcoholics and drug addicts and the occasional gun play while I got myself a temp job at a law firm. I finally moved into a an apartment with a roommate I met through an online roommate service and turned my temp job into a permanent gig in order to support myself while working on my novel. When the novel was through, I told myself, everything would be gravy—I’d be swimming in cash; the chicks would be lining up by the truckload; I’d be making movies .

That didn’t happen either.

What did happen is that I finished my novel. What else happened is that my agent and my publisher didn’t like it. Four years of work and they didn’t like it. Nothing was gravy: I still worked at the law firm; I still had a roommate I didn’t like; I still made less then my friends, and now, on top of that, I had no future. And it wasn’t like my agent and publisher were right and I was wrong. It was simply a difference of opinion—but after so many years and so much effort invested, I didn’t have the energy to battle them and told them I’d let the novel sit, which is what it’s still doing. Sitting. And with nothing else to do, I turned to film. And it was in turning to film (and not just writing, but directing and producing as well), that I have finally discovered why I write, or, more accurately, why I feel the need to create and produce: because I’m bored.

I get bored easily, that’s what it comes down to. Nothing more. That simple. I get bored, and when I’m bored I’d rather sit down at my computer and make something up, or get on the phone and make something happen, than to watch TV. Hell, even tonight as I write this article, it was my intention to watch a movie, but instead I saw this e-mail asking me when my next article would be forth coming and suddenly, here I am. Writing. Thinking, I write because it’s more satisfying than any of the other options open to me at the moment that will kill the time—aka, boredom.

Now, if you asked me what my inspiration is, well, I’d probably order another beer and change the subject. But if you pinned me down and forced me to tell you where my inspiration to write comes from, the honest answer would be that it comes from the gigantic, hole of empty boredom inside me that has a continual need to be filled.

Oh yeah, that and the belief that if I write just one more word, one more story, one more script, everything else will be gravy; I’ll be swimming in cash and the chicks will be lining up by the truckload.

Brian Fleming is the author of the short story collection "Curves and Bends and Cars That Won't Come Fast" , as well as a forthcoming novel and several screenplays.  He has recently acquired the film rights to the German play "Bombenstimmung" by Dietmar Wolfgang Pritzlaff, which he plans to direct and produce.  He lives in New York.

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