Writing

My daughter is sitting on my lap. Eating apples and cinnamon. I can't make it like my wife can. As I was approaching the office door, clearly to write, my daughter, as always, pipes up: "Can I play on the computer?" (knowing damn well I don't want her to). She then sits on my lap, my Amy, as I write, and busies herself with something. Eventually, I relent, and connect to Barbie or Nick or some other site that has caught her interest. I leave, she plays. I return. And if she's already off the computer and see's me walking in the direction of the office?

Yup.

So, I'll take a little break here. Save a draft; just return later. I want to talk about writing. I want to talk about FIGHT CLUB and "Fight Club" and I want to talk about Chuck Palahniuk.

(LATER)

Ah. Much better. Snuck around her.

Chuck Palahniuk.

I , like most, was introduced to Palahniuk through Jim Uhls' script and David Fincher's translation of said script in the movie FIGHT CLUB. Super film, with the right combination of subversiveness, storytelling saavy and commercial appeal to even get made in the first place. Uhls did a brilliant job in adapting Palahniuk 's work, even improving it in some areas -- most notabley the "end" project of Project Mayhem. Uhls was committed to the themes and tone of the book, as well to the general plot, and his adaptation is one of the most successful book-to-film movies in recent history.

I love Palahniuk's writing. His sentence structure, his... timing. Most importantly, especially in his non-fiction, I love his honesty, his fearlessness. I just finished "Stranger Than Fiction", a collection of essays, editorials and insights published last year. Palahniuk is afraid of nothing. His words sear. What could be offensive is poetic. What could be incendiary, is, but is also calmly dour. He writes of things beautiful and things ugly on the same terms, the same plane. Defecation and ejaculation are one in the same; spit is the same thing that's swapped in kissing and sprayed in disgust.. and they both emanate from a wound in the face.

I don't know if I have a style. A consistent voice. The vast, vast majority of my writing in the last 10 years have been in screenplay form... a form whose strength is the short, declarative sentence; in writing exactly WHAT you see, and exactly HOW you see it. It's an inherently compromised form of creative expression. It's not a bad thing, mind you, the screenplay form. Just not the same as prose. Not as elegant. But it's one of the only ways I know to tell a story.