In Case Of Actual Death

[N]o big break is going to make it easier to get up in the morning and write. What makes it easier is trusting your own instincts and noticing that you have giant ideas percolating in that herd-animal brain of yours, you just have to dig in and find them. After you find them, you have to write something terrible that eventually, through a lot of editing, over and over and over, becomes something great.

[Mark Duplass] said something about how he’s happy to release just okay/good enough work on a regular schedule. Where his brother Jay would probably prefer to work on one thing for a long time, and release only A-level projects every few years, Mark is fine with releasing B to B+ projects more frequently. Mark Duplass is a workaholic; he always needs to be making stuff. Some of that stuff will be great, but more of it will be “good enough,” and that’s fine with him.

Usually what happens is at a certain point in the piece, you [finally] know what the piece is about. And that can happen very close to the end. You’ll come to that place and say: “Oh, that’s what it is.” If you’ve done it for years and years, you can be confident in it. But if you’re younger you may not be confident about it. It can be very scary. It’s kind of like you’re waiting with a fishing rod in the water, waiting for the bite. And it’ll come! You’ll say “Oh, there it is.” But it doesn’t come if you’re not there waiting for it. You’ve got to do the work or it doesn’t come.

I was into innovative manipulation. I laughed at people’s dumb jokes using an obviously fake laugh so they would think I was uncomfortable not laughing at their jokes so that they would think I felt slightly-to-moderately inferior to them so they would attain a false confidence that I would convince them to use to flirt with the doorman so that we could get into places and meet the interesting people I wanted to meet.

He saw a boy of eight or nine walking with his mother. They were making slow progress, and it wasn’t until they were closer that Bertram realized it was because the boy’s eyes were closed. He seemed to be trying to impress his mother with his intimate knowledge of the street, naming every place they passed with his eyes tightly closed. In front of the bombed sites, he would throw his arms up and make noises with his mouth. She remained unperturbed. Bertram saw her pause only once, when she pulled her hand out of the boy’s to brush something from her cheek. Her boy’s eyes popped open then, and he waited.