Original subtitles

[MUSIC PLAYING]

You know, we live in the so-called civilized world,

where we have hot and cold running water and electricity

and airplanes and nuclear bombs, you know, all that crazy stuff.

But if you go to someplace, many places in the world today,

you'll find, as you find in Western Africa,

there are people who either right now

or only a generation away from it

would plan great feasts and great celebrations.

And in those celebrations, they would play things

like the talking drum.

They would build beautiful, very ornate masks,

and spend one evening, or two, maybe, dancing and celebrating

themselves, their lives, their ancestors, their gods,

et cetera.

And on the next day, after it's over,

the masks are all discarded because they were only

alive that one night.

They weren't a static piece of art the way we see art.

But there was something living, that we

imbued with our own spirits and then left to the side.

Nights like that, people like that, places

like that, you didn't have an audience and an artist.

You had the audience and the artist

as one, working together, creating, celebrating.

This is one of the reasons that I really

think that people should write novels,

because if you write a novel, whether you

get that novel published or not, you have created something.

You have made something.

You have started from the beginning

and gone to the end of something that is a transformation

itself, but also has transformed you in the making of it.

As a writer, which you are, and as a potential writer,

which we all are, there is a person who exists in your core.

And that person is more innocent than you are, smarter

than you are, more evil than you could ever imagine being.

And the more you write, the more that person

is going to gain in influence, in size, and ability.

And the more you write, the more you come in relation

to that internal person.

And as you do that, you become more and more and more

talented and capable.

And you're able to control things about yourself

that your whole life you've tamped down because they've

frightened you.

Writing about anything that you're really

trying to explain, that you're really

trying to get an idea across, a feeling across, a character

across, that is going to help you define who you are,

what you're thinking, and what you think of the world that

surrounds you.

The ability to stop and to think about something

in great detail, not having somebody else

tell you what it is, what you should be thinking,

how you should be thinking, but you're just thinking about it.

You're going, saying well, then he first, he went there.

And then he went that.

And that really frightened him.

But still, he did this thing.

No, he wouldn't have done that thing.

He would have done this.

The whole idea of going through that

is something that we never do in everyday life.

In everyday life, we worry either about physical details,

about what the plot of something is,

how I get from here to there, how I'm going to rob that bank

or whatever.

But it's not about the wholly human experience

of moving through a story, moving through a life,

moving through a landscape.

And the idea, the ability to do that

makes you, in my opinion, a better person, certainly

a deeper one.

And I'm very-- you know, I'm very

excited about being a writer.

And it's one of the things that I love about it.

It keeps your mind alive in ways that everything else

in this overly-organized society tries to destroy.

Most people in this life, they put the left-front tire

on the automobile on the production line.

That's what they do.

They do it in the production line.

They do it here trying to make a film.

People go this is your job.

That's your job.

This is what you do.

This is what you're supposed to cover.

But as a novelist, as an artist of any type,

it's a completely broad motion.

And I love it so much.

The discovery of yourself through your own work

is the best thing I can imagine.

People living a normal, everyday life live a kind of redundancy.

They wake up in the morning.

They go to work.

They work all day.

They come home.

It's just that day after day after day.

And they don't like it.

But that's what you have to do in order to survive

in this world we live in.

What do they really want to do?

They really want to run away.

I want to get in my car.

I want to run away.

And I want to have a wild affair.

And I want to rob a bank.

And I want to have revenge on that guy who treated

me awfully when I was a child.

All of that they want.

They don't do it.

But when you write your novel, you can do it.

You can say I got in the car.

And instead of getting off on exit 27, I just kept going.

I just went and went and went.

And I found myself someplace new.

And I ran into the guy who named me Sue as a boy and I shot him.

These may all be things you want to do.

But you can't.

You can't do it in everyday life.

Of course, I'm not just saying you should do it willy nilly.

These should really be things that the character

is feeling, wanting to feel, wanting to say.

I mean, even simple things.

You have two kids and one of them is your favorite kid.

You don't really like the other one.

Just to hear a mother say that would

be so satisfying to so many people reading

their books who know they feel like that,

but would never admit it.

Most people are afraid of the dark feelings in their heart.

They don't want to say it.

They don't want to write it.

They don't want anybody to know it.

They don't want anybody to know that they

hate their kids sometimes.

They don't want their husband to know that they

hate the way he chews his food.

They don't want their mother to know

that she was a terrible mother and raised her awfully

and she's had all this time to overcome it.

They don't want to know that sometimes they're driving down

the street and they just want to run over

that person who's sauntering across the crosswalk.

And that's a pretty good thing.

You shouldn't run over that person.

You shouldn't complain that your husband,

how he's eating his hamburger.

You shouldn't tell your children that you hate them sometimes.

But when you're writing a novel, you

should say all those things, as much as possible.

Say everything that you think that the character is doing.

Don't try to make the character some goody two shoes

person that is only acceptable in this very

limited, restrained world that we live in.

Write about a person who really has feelings, who is really

doing things, who really is not perfect, because if you start

off with a perfect character, how

are they going to transform into anything except something bad?

So you should say all the things that you

know you can never say in everyday life in your novel--

the good things--

I love you-- the terrible things--

I hate you.

What I'm saying is you have license

to say whatever you feel, whatever your characters feel.

You write that and you follow that.

And that will bring you to the story you want to tell,

not the story that some editor somewhere feels

will be acceptable.

Just remember two things--

number one, while you're writing your novel,

your mother is not reading it.

And number two, when she does read that novel,

she probably won't recognize herself.

And there's a third thing--

who cares?

Write your truth and believe in it.

And if your mother doesn't like it, too bad.