Some thoughts on writing process and my love/hate relationship with talking about it.

So I’m not a quiet person. A normal person’s average volume is probs like a 2, 2½ on a my 10-point scale of normal volume. To make another arbitrary comparison, I think I can probably hit like sustained 70-90 dB for three minutes without pausing to breathe if I’m really hyped about a subject. Point being, if you haven’t heard me loud and you plan to pick my brain about something I like or hate, maybe bring earplugs.

My thoughts will often get ahead of me and my tongue is prone to volunteer the wrong syllable, word, or occasionally language such as the time I started replying to a Spanish professor in German. This is happening a bit more as I age and I’m not sure if it’s just straight brain damage or just a lack of verbal discipline, but it’s adding a fun new unease to public speaking.

I’ll also sometimes deliberately slip into niche slang, the wrong word/tense, or strange idioms for some reason. I think it’s for comedic effect, but sometimes it’s more like the word volunteers itself and I don’t catch up until I’ve said it. Sometimes it’s an homage to something that only tracks in my head, because I am pretty certain that no one anywhere is gonna catch on to me doing Daffy Duck’s impersonation of Humphrey Bogart in the middle of a conversation about why Henry Kissinger is human garbage.

All that is a preface to why writing things is usually a much more civil and coherent way for me to communicate. And yet I much prefer to be doing things rather than talking about doing things. (Except if it’s talking about things I love in a situation where 1, I can be loud af; and 2, I’m not supposed to be doing something else).

This preference of doing rather than talking is particularly acute with writing, which is why I don’t blog so much about writing or my process developing scripts these days. Words are wind after all. And I don’t know any fool-proof tips or secret magic formula to help you find the correct path.  To be honest, I think I lost the path a long time ago and any advice I might give would end up stranding people further in the woods. I’m more than happy to share thoughts in person, but experience has tempered my attitude such that ultimately I think everyone has to find their own path, acquire their own knowledge and internalize all those lessons their own dang self. And I doubt very much that my waxing poetic is a particularly helpful use of time. In earlier days the blogosphere was a helpful place to vent, to socialize with others on the same path and discuss theory and passion, but nowadays if I catch myself writing about writing, I’m compelled to just shut up and do the actual writing.

Because if there’s one thing I do know for certain, it’s that no one’s gonna write it for you.

So yeah, less talking, more writing.