Writers Are Assholes

I question what I am doing, not constantly, but often. I just don’t want to run the risk of one day waking up on a conveyor belt being pushed down a path I don’t remember choosing. I take the time to ask myself, “What am I doing with my life? Why do I do the things I choose to invest myself in? Are my choices and practices moving me in a direction that I want to be traveling?” I’ll pose these types of questions every so often on my solitary evening walks. Some nights the questions find no answers. Some nights they do, like they did last month. To my great discomfort, a series of introspective questions led me to this conclusion:

Writers Are Assholes.

I began with the deceptively innocuous question, “Why do I write an article every month?” which led me to the larger question, “Why does anyone write anything?” Though we could talk about the substantially different motivations that animate authors to take up their keyboards and clack, I’m not going to. I am not going to point out that E. B. White’s impetus to edit and add to Strunk’s original publication of The Elements of Style was undoubtedly different from the inspiration Steven King drew from The Lord of the Rings and The Good, The Bad & The Ugly to write (and then re-write) The Gunslinger. It goes without saying and yet, I would argue that every single person who fixes a sequence of alpha-numeric sigils to the page shares one common motivation:

Writers want to be read.

It’s pretty simple on the face of it. We are not just hoping that someone will read our prose, we all secretly hope to find an audience that wants to. As I interrogated this desire, I began to find weirdly intimate and egomaniacal. It was upsetting and it made me feel like an asshole. I began to I wonder if I was. Then I wondered if we all were…

What kind of person would want to be read? Do we think we know better than the audience? Do we have some deep wisdom to impart? Do we need the ego boost that comes from thinking what we say matters to anyone? Or (& better yet) Everyone??

I kept asking questions, but the answers made me feel ill. The harder I thrashed against these implications, the tighter their bind grew around me. Is there an escape? Yes, but only in surrender. Please read the following statement and then stop: 

To the best of my knowledge, all writers are assholes. Do not listen to what they have to say.

Start Now. Stop Reading.

The End.

Are you still here? You’re not seriously hanging around, just to listen to what some asshole has to say, are you? 

All this cheeky, “breaking-the-fourth-wall,” shit aside, we both know why you’re still reading. We both know this article isn’t over. It can’t be. We’ve got a problem here. Well actually, you’ve got a problem. Not to put too fine a point on this, but if you take what I have just presented to you (don’t listen to writers, they are assholes) at face value, and if you plan to take my advice, I would suggest that the first writer whose advice you should ignore is my own. “Don’t take advice from writers, they are assholes,” is my advice if you’ll remember. Rejecting this directive requires you, by strictures of logical necessity, to listen to what writers have to say.

You can not reject all of us without following some of us. What a pickle.

So what do we do? We know all writers are assholes AND we will inevitably listen to some of them. If we are to live in such a terrible world (and we do) then we need to figure out who, among all of these assholes, is worth listening to. Who’s work consistently edifies your heart and mind on consumption? Have you noticed some stories seem to resonate with something extra? They move from the page through your being with an animating momentum. They propel you forward. You feel like you’ve been given something, and that something is going to help you make it. 

Have you ever looked up who is writing these stories? Most of us know the authors of our novels, but do we also keep track of who writes our favorite TV shows? Movies? Plays? Comics? Podcasts? Music? I am not good at this. For example, I was attending a panel discussion (Writing For Animation) at Light Box Expo 2023. I was mostly there because Peter Ramsey was on the panel. As he graciously shared the mic with the other panelists, I kept really liking this one guy’s contribution to the general conversation. Who was this guy? After the house lights came on and the applause died down, I whipped out my phone and googled, “Phil Lord,” because I had never heard of him and I am utterly embarrassed to admit it. This guy, Phil Lord, wrote both The Lego Movie and Into The Spiderverse. I just thought, “Of course!” The heart beat of each film bears the mark of a storyteller that cares deeply about giving the audience that extra something - that thing that makes a story resonate. I had the joy of seeing The Lego Movie in theaters before I had kids, and then, years later, I experienced the joy of sharing it with them. I did not catch Into The Spiderverse in theaters, but watching it at home with my kids in 2018? That shit made me tear-up. My family’s love of that film landed me in the theaters for Across The Spiderverse’s opening weekend sitting in between my five-year-old and fifteen-year-old. This writer has given my family and I the occasion to laugh together. He has given us things to look forward to, outings to enjoy and there is always something in his work worth talking about later. All of these credits can not be found on his imdb page. Up until last year, I didn’t even know they belonged there.

Writing this ending required me to take a mental inventory. Of all the stories I am taking in, which ones are sticking with me? Which are giving me things to think about? Things to talk about? Maybe even, asshole that I am, things to write about? Here are a few of the storytellers from recent years that I have come to love. With all the faux-provocative swagger of this article’s title, all it’s ever really been about is answering this question: Whose stories are healing the world? What narratives bring light and life into my home? It is a question as warm and sincere as my title is cynical. Writers may be assholes, and yet, for whatever the reason, some of them choose to take their inner fire, which could burn cities to the ground, and use it to illuminate the places we inhabit. 

Charlie Covell is the writer/actress who wrote the 2-season limited series, The End of The F***ing World.‡ This is a show that I almost stopped watching in the first act due to how unpleasant both protagonists are. I am oh so glad I stuck with it. Nothing in this story goes to waste, including the initial disposition of the protagonists, James & Alyssa. The attitudes given to and the actions taken by both individuals early on are necessary to prove the story’s ultimate conclusion: You can not make another person your reason for living. Within the story, the characters who learn this truth are able to find solace and maybe even redemption. In contrast, the characters who continue in the belief that their happiness is contingent on another person’s love do not fare well.

‡It is worth mentioning that the source material for the show was a comic by Charles Forsman. I have not read the book so my treatment of this story is restricted to the show.

Cole Cuschna is the writer/creator of the podcast, Dissect. This podcast is the exegesis of hip-hop, pure and simple. Each season takes an iconic record and, in a 1-epidsode-per-track format, moves through the album from beginning to end. The themes and story present in each song are unpacked within the wider context of the album, the artist’s personal life and the wider world at the time of release. Through his thoughtful treatment of the source material, Mr. Cuschna has led me to the conclusion that hip-hop is the most information-rich artform we have. Period. We are talking about more than musical motifs here. We are talking about literary references. We are talking about film references. We are talking about audio samples laden with historical weight woven through sprawling narratives of life, love, hate and struggle. Power, poison, pain and joy course through hip-hop’s DNA and it is dazzling to see. I am beyond thankful for this writer and his work. If you are looking for my quick recs, Season 8 (Kanye West’s Yeezus) made me love a record that I had only just liked before and Season 5 (Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN.) took a record I loved, and moved me to tears over it. Shit, am I crying again? Dissect is now in its 12th season, examining the life and work of MF DOOM. I do not want it to end.

Joe Brumm is the writer/creator of the Australian animated show, Bluey. This show needs me as a hype man like a fish needs a bicycle. I could totally analyze the consistent and powerful use of story structure within these 7 minute episodes to demonstrate how this show consistently lands its emotion-laden conclusions episode after episode, but if I did, I would risk diluting the show's true impact. There are tons of pedagogical shows that parents put in front of their kids so they can use episode references to instruct them later. I have literally done this with Daniel Tiger, but Bluey? Bluey is something else. Let me show you what I mean…

I have struggled with clinical depression from my adolescence to adulthood. Learning how to effectively push back against this darkness it takes all kinds of support: Chemical, Physical, Dietary, Communal, Familial, Spiritual, etc. I do the things I know will keep me stable. I do the things that help me see the world as it is, not as I feel it to be, and yet, at times the darkness still swallows me up. There was one particular day where it fell thick and heavy. My wife was at work, my older kids were gone and I was home with my 2 and 5-year-olds. As I made them lunch, I quietly wept for the utter hopelessness that had me in its teeth. Think intense, stifled ugly-crying. It was bad. At one point, my 5-year-old came into the kitchen with a, “Hey dad!” that died on his lips when he saw my tears. He didn’t say anything at first. He just gave me a tender hug and rubbed my back. After a minute or two he pulled out of the hug, took my face in his little hands and said, “It’s ok, Dad. It’s ok. Sometimes it is really hard being a dad.” His kindness kickstarted a new torrent of tears from me. These tears were different than the first. These tears were pushing back the darkness. Now, you might think, “What an incredible kid. 5-years-old with the insight of a grief counselor? Where did he pick that up?” I can tell you. Bluey Season 3, Episode 50. The name of the episode is, “Surprise.”

I’ll catch you next month on the 3rd,

-JT⚡

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