Plot twist: I have never been very interested in writing books. I love books, reading them has always been a great source of joy and inspiration for me, but I do not seek to write them myself. That being said, I found Adaptation to be intriguing in the way that it blended and blurred the boundaries for writing books and writing screenplays. I took the theatre department’s playwriting class last year and it is astounding how each medium’s style is so different. I identified with Charlie in that regard on the process of adapting something read on a page into something to be visualized. In writing a book a narrator can go on and on for pages about different metaphors, personifications, theories and etc., but to do that on a screen would be utterly boring and the audience would lose interest very quickly. In adapting something for screen, and even for a stage, there are many boundaries that must be overcome. Metaphors have to be visual, inner monologues is lost without a voiceover, explanations have to be quick, and so on. I thought the way Adaptation brought everything together, even with the Hollywood tropes of sex, drugs, and car accidents, they were very well placed and smart about them. The satire throughout was hilarious and very fitting.
I also connected with Charlie, a little too close for comfort, with writer’s block and the inability of knowing where to begin and how to focus an entire story in order to make it great. Even right now writing this blog post I cannot help but have a sneaking feeling that my writing sucks, what’s the point, I can’t do this, “I’ll just work in my high school job for the rest of my life, and it will be fine.” I take “coffee breaks” on an hourly basis. I can easily use the “I’ve been sick for the past nine months” excuse, close my computer and sleep the rest of the day away, but there are deadlines to be met. In some ways I think writer’s block is a character in and of itself. It’s a shadow in the back of your head preventing sleep, happy thoughts or any thoughts of any useful kind. It makes the writer question their self-worth, their craft, the usefulness of gravity and just about everything else.
Taking everything being said so far into account, I must apologize for the terrible nature of this journal post. I relate it to the same feeling Charlie had when he looked at Donald. Donald didn’t have a care in the world, was passionate and inspired by everything. I can only hope that this even seems a third as inspired as Donald was about his screenplay. While the Donald’s of the world are busy being passionate and living life by the seat of their pants, I’ll be here on my couch full of angst, in the same place as the Charlies, hoping something in their dull minds that something inspirational comes out of the woodwork. Meanwhile, I hope my novella goes better than this.