How Losing My Library Card Ruined My Life
In December of 2005 there were six things in my wallet besides money: my driver’s license, my social security card (why the hell was it in my wallet?), two library cards, a picture of playwright Neil Simon and a Spanish flashcard showing some kind of salad dressing.
Then, at a showing of Peter Jackson’s King Kong, the wallet slipped out of my pocket. I can’t remember if I noticed in the theater parking lot or when I got home, but it was too late either way; I never got the wallet back. I also never got another library card, due primarily to my nonsensical social anxiety issues. While I had no problem taking a book up to the counter, handing it to the librarian and mumbling “Thank you”, the idea of anything more than that, such as requesting a new card, seemed unbearable. This feeling only got worse with each passing year, as I became ashamed of how long it had been since I’d gone to the library. I imagined the librarian looking at her records, frowning, and saying something like, “Hmm… It looks like we had you declared illiterate. You’ll only be able to check out videos from now on.”
They wouldn’t have been wrong, either. I did a lot less reading after losing my library card, and it had a direct impact on my writing. Experienced writers always advise aspiring ones to read a lot, and they’re not kidding. When I stopped reading I spent a lot more time watching TV and movies, and it gradually became easier for me to write in those (lazy and unimaginative) mediums than in traditional prose.
This change would affect not only how I was writing, but also what I was writing. When you’re writing screenplays, marketability becomes more important. A book only has to be sold to a publisher and to the customers, and if you self-publish you only have the customers to worry about. A screenplay, on the other hand, has to be sold to a dozen producers, a distributor, and the entirety of the cast and crew, all of whom you can only access through an agent. With this in mind, I’ve wasted a lot of time trying to figure out how to get movies made rather than actually writing them. One of my frequent schemes was to try and anticipate which book/comic/cartoon/game Hollywood would want to adapt next and start writing the script. This, of course, was a ridiculous idea, seeing as I had no way of contacting producers. It also took time away from developing my own original stories, doing permanent damage to my creativity.
Luckily, Hollywood moves faster than I do. I usually don’t get to spend much time on an idea before it’s announced that someone else has been hired to work on the same project. The only adaptation I’ve ever gotten past an outline is Super Smash Brothers, and even that was only about halfway finished before Nintendo started moving forward on movie adaptations of their own.
Then, at a showing of Peter Jackson’s King Kong, the wallet slipped out of my pocket. I can’t remember if I noticed in the theater parking lot or when I got home, but it was too late either way; I never got the wallet back. I also never got another library card, due primarily to my nonsensical social anxiety issues. While I had no problem taking a book up to the counter, handing it to the librarian and mumbling “Thank you”, the idea of anything more than that, such as requesting a new card, seemed unbearable. This feeling only got worse with each passing year, as I became ashamed of how long it had been since I’d gone to the library. I imagined the librarian looking at her records, frowning, and saying something like, “Hmm… It looks like we had you declared illiterate. You’ll only be able to check out videos from now on.”
They wouldn’t have been wrong, either. I did a lot less reading after losing my library card, and it had a direct impact on my writing. Experienced writers always advise aspiring ones to read a lot, and they’re not kidding. When I stopped reading I spent a lot more time watching TV and movies, and it gradually became easier for me to write in those (lazy and unimaginative) mediums than in traditional prose.
This change would affect not only how I was writing, but also what I was writing. When you’re writing screenplays, marketability becomes more important. A book only has to be sold to a publisher and to the customers, and if you self-publish you only have the customers to worry about. A screenplay, on the other hand, has to be sold to a dozen producers, a distributor, and the entirety of the cast and crew, all of whom you can only access through an agent. With this in mind, I’ve wasted a lot of time trying to figure out how to get movies made rather than actually writing them. One of my frequent schemes was to try and anticipate which book/comic/cartoon/game Hollywood would want to adapt next and start writing the script. This, of course, was a ridiculous idea, seeing as I had no way of contacting producers. It also took time away from developing my own original stories, doing permanent damage to my creativity.
Luckily, Hollywood moves faster than I do. I usually don’t get to spend much time on an idea before it’s announced that someone else has been hired to work on the same project. The only adaptation I’ve ever gotten past an outline is Super Smash Brothers, and even that was only about halfway finished before Nintendo started moving forward on movie adaptations of their own.
Comments
Post a Comment