My Protagonist's Internal Conflict: What to Write?

As young post-grad writers, we often find one another invited to the same pity party. It’s an ongoing gathering, one that Facebook pesters you about seven gazillion times a day. Officially, the event is called: What On Earth Are You Gonna Write About/Fulfill Your Lifelong Dream With/While Holding Some Shred of Dignity With Your Laptop and Cappuccino, held at Location TBD from 6:30 pm through eternity. And everyone in the written world is invited. There is also a 40 percent chance of rain.

I know I mentally receive these notifications on a daily basis. And with each red flag, I lose myself to an assortment of reactions.

My responses dance along the lines of:

When will I ever have the time to write?

What will it be about?

Is a lost-twenty-something still interesting?

How insincere will I sound if I fake it?

Will it take me anywhere, ever?

And more than that, I often wonder what I should be doing as a young writer. Do I go out and experience things? What kind of things? What will draw up inspiration? Will the thing that eventually boggles my mind be enough to intrigue a reader?

In effort to find some resolution, I downloaded the Scriptnotes Podcast, hosted by the delightful John August and Craig Mazin. I find it unbelievably comforting, as if each hour long session is a chance to sit and talk about films, writing, and the struggles of breaking into the industry with a couple of friends over coffees and croissants.

The first day I listened I picked Episode 272: The Secret Live Show in Austin. Sandwiched on the train between two middle-aged men and blanketed by silent 6 am air, I had a much needed revelation. In this podcast, Mazin hosts a panel of screenwriters at the 2016 Austin Film Festival. Following an extended happy hour, the writers spoke with the utmost honesty and laughter. When approaching the topic on how nobodies break into the screenwriting business, I felt as though my world had brightened a bit, or at the very least I could finally commit to a tattoo idea.

Tess Morris, a screenwriter on the panel (and we have the same first name, shout-out universe), referenced a pocket of wisdom as shared by the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman. In this context, she referenced how Hoffman once said, “that writers need to fill up.”

And with just that, it lit some sort of fire.

She goes on to say, in her fabulous English accent, how she has “always thought about that because I think often we can kind of run on empty and we don’t go and live our lives and we can start to think I don’t know what the fuck I’m writing about or what I’m doing. And I think sometimes the best thing you can do is actually step away and go and fill up a little and live your life and then come back and do some work.”

Now if that doesn’t make you want to fucking stand up and live your life I don’t know what will.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman was, and still is, my all-time favorite actor. As a friend of mine once put it, he was magnetizing. His versatility was astounding and he committed himself wholeheartedly to his characters by any means. I cried watching him in The Master and I laughed deeply as he played basketball in Along Came Polly. He’s been there from the beginning in Boogie Nights and even a storm chaser in Twister. The day we lost him I remember calling my parents, feeling broken and lost. He was a natural and I wished to have worked with him one day, and I’m certain I’m not alone in that.

And to hear him, this artist I hold above all others, say that it is our job as writers to fill up, to find things, to live our lives and return to our notebooks with something to say, well, it made me sit up a little taller. It’s opened my eyes. Perhaps it’s okay to have no idea what the hell I’m doing on a daily basis, and that with every decision a different universe is a new potential. That right now it’s my job to fill up on life, and return to my laptop with something to say. That we just graduated college and it’s okay we don’t know what we’re doing: fill up and figure it out.

Maybe this it’s how it’s supposed to be.

Maybe I’m just filling up till I have words bursting out of my skin.

And then I’ll RSVP, once I’m full.

Featured

The End of An Era: Saying Goodbye to Windrose

Hi friends,

Announcement (sounds so formal, doesn’t it?):

It's the end of an era.

I’ve decided that, after nearly 8 years of telling stories of navigating life, this season of Windrose is drawing to a close.

Even Here: Words for When You're Wandering

When I was 22 years old, I visited the desert for the first time.

A metaphorical desert, if we’re getting technical.

I was fresh out of college, starry-eyed and eager to begin my post-grad life. I had big ‘ole me-centered dreams: a shiny, brag-worthy PR job in the music industry! An apartment with an exposed brick wall that (somehow) would fit an upright piano! A committed relationship with a kind, goofy man!

I got exactly none of those things.

To summarize an entire year’s worth of emotion: I was devastated.

Witching Hour (or, Fighting Off Demons at 3 am with a Box Cutter)

Between the hours of 3 - 4 am, I find myself awakened by nothing in particular. The room is silent. There is no sound outside. No loud car horns. No dogs barking.

I’m upset.

I wish it was something other than just me. Then I could stop it. Nothing is to blame. It feels like moments have passed since I closed my eyes. The moments of a long dreamless sleep last about 4 hours.

A Song for Growth

A year ago, a friend of mine got a job at a well known tech company. He had been slogging through the interviews, and he finally got an offer. Obviously he deserved it. He was a hard worker, and his attitude for success and life was admirable to say the least. I knew he was beyond qualified.

But at the time, I was on a career path I couldn’t see myself being happy in. I had made the mistake of staying in the industry mainly for the money. Every month in the industry was a reminder of how much I did not want to stay. It created a nasty cycle of overthinking and career angst. Feelings of inadequacy and existentialism rooted themselves deep inside me. I couldn’t focus on anything and was utterly disconnected from the work I was doing.

I admit I wasn’t happy for him.

A Song for the In Between

It may be over.

Despite its nature, the concept is definitive. The body is better at preparation than action, so the concept invokes an uncontrolled reaction. The sweaty palms; the rusted coils in the stomach; the feeling of teetering on the edge—my body thinks I’m dying.

It tries to save me from myself. It transforms into a spring to weather elements. Or a boulder. I am hunched, prepared for the event.

But there’s nothing to save me from. My life isn’t in danger. I’m not being chased by a wolf. I sit on the couch. I sit in my chair, still. I am, in theory, perfectly healthy.

Yet my mind paces.

A Song for the Nocturnal

I woke up again and knew I wasn’t going back to sleep.

The alarm wasn’t even close to waking up. The cracked light through my drapes showed the indigo sky—a shade I’ve come to refer to as “you’re not sleeping tonight” blue. I looked at my phone but already knew what it would read before the screen turned on: 3am.

It was the third night in a row I’ve woken up at this time. In the past, options to tackle this insomnia were aplenty: I could go back to sleep after a drink of water. I could read and drift off. I could even play some video games until sleep lulled me back. But lately, my mind pulls the body along a joyride of thought. It starts and doesn’t stop. It has become loud and uncontrollable, like a child. In dead silence this time brings, my mind wakes before my body can at 3am.

3am. Historically, I’ve gotten along with this time.

One could say I’ve preferred the night in my life.

A Song for Embracing the Present Moment

Despite the sun’s rays and the heightened sense of joy in the air that wafted like perfume, I was feeling gray. Over the year, COVID-19 made me uncertain about my future. In my life, like most people, the pandemic revealed certain aspects of life that weren’t previously apparent. Maybe for some it was relationship issues. Maybe it was cabin fever or job uncertainty.

In my case, my career path was no longer clear. I was increasingly aware of this fact as the days dragged on in isolation. Throw in the economic flux of the job market, a splash of consistent restlessness, and you have a cocktail of underlying anxiety.

Caught in a web of thought and analysis-paralysis, I often spent more time pondering the future than acknowledging the present day.

Is This Everything You Wanted, Now That It's Everything You Have?

Is this everything you wanted, now that it’s everything you have?

This question haunts the intro of a song by singer/songwriter Noah Gundersen. At just 2 minutes and 16 seconds, the song is short but packs power like a summer thunderhead. I’ve listened to this song so many times in the last six months, and yet every time I hear it, it does that thing that all good songs do, making your heart feel like it just might burst from an inflation of emotion.

Is this everything you wanted, now that it’s everything you have?

On the surface, yes.

You Can Do Hard Things

“Would you rather be comfortable?” my roommate, Chelsey, asked me.

Work has weighed heavily on me these last several weeks, and on this particular day, I felt like I was on the precipice of a cliffside drop into a panic attack. As I boiled noodles and browned ground turkey, I shared my stresses with my friend as stray tears tried to make a quick getaway from my eyes.

Would I rather be comfortable or challenged?

Unwritten: Overcoming Fear and Doubt

You know that feeling when you first discover something and that something new-to-you suddenly appears everywhere? It happens to me a lot with words, the once unfamiliar expressions jumping from each subsequent page I read or floating through the air, only to rap on my eardrums.

Lately, I’ve felt that way about writing.

Keep Going: Thoughts on Celebrating Four Years of Windrose

I have given up on so many things.

Keep going isn’t exactly my life motto. I’m an instant-results girl, which is why cooking and 5-o’clock traffic bring me such mental anguish.

But today Windrose is celebrating four years of existing in this li’l Internet space—four years of stories told of navigating the challenges and triumphs of life in your twenties.

Waiting for Happy

For my entire life, this has been my dream. Freezing cold, sitting on the roof of my apartment, staring out at New York City in all its glory, at 2 o’clock in the morning, listening to Billy Joel. It really, truly does not get better than this.

But at the same time, it could.

Because there’s something that no one tells you about getting your dreams: Sometimes, it’s not what you thought it would be. Because sometimes, dreams change.

Career, Dreams, LifeTessa DukeNovember 27, 2016FeaturedComment

My Protagonist's Internal Conflict: What to Write?

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