Last night I saw something that I hope changed my life. I don't want to say it did change my life. I've learned that I am far too quick to make dramatic statements like that. I guess it's better to say that I saw something that could change my life.
I saw a film called
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. The lead character is played by Forrest Whitaker, and is a professional killer for the mob who adopts the ancient code of the samurai as transcribed in a Japanese text called
The Hagakure.
It wasn't the greatest movie ever made. Could've been better. My biggest gripe was with all the annoying scenes where Whitaker drove around town at night listening to music. And my only problem with them is that they seemed to have no point other than to say "Hey look, he's bad-ass, and he listens to cool music."
Actually, to be honest I did have one other gripe. Ghost Dog has declared the mobster Louie his master, though it's made obvious that while he intends to always stay loyal to Louie, he neither trusts Louie nor likes him very much. In one scene he points his gun at Louie's head, and he actually shoots him twice in the arm (though to be fair, you eventually learn he did it more for Louie's benefit than his own). My gripe here is that, as far as I know, it was considered an unpardonable crime for a samurai to even
unintentionally point a weapon at his master, even if the master were too far away for the weapon to have any chance to cause him harm.
But again, to be fair, I know this only because I read the manga
Lone Wolf and Cub, and I'm not sure how much I should trust that info.
So anyway, throughout the film Whitaker reads the viewer passages from
The Hagakure meant to be relevant to whatever's going on in the film at that moment. The following passage is what got to me:
It is bad when one thing becomes two. One should not look for anything else in the Way of the Samurai. It is the same for anything that is called a Way. If one understands things in this manner, he should be able to hear about all Ways and be more and more accord with his own.Don't get me wrong, I don't plan on buying a sword and finding a daimyo (Japanese feudal lord). What got to me was the message that one should choose a path and, while walking it, not thinking the path will lead him to other things. I need to stop thinking that writing will bring me things, in other words, other than the stories I write. I need to stop caring. I need to write to write. I need to finally choose a path and walk down it, rather than allowing doubt to rule me as much as it has.
I have to mention - in order to prove what a ridiculous, automatic comic book geek I am - that upon reading "It is bad when one thing becomes two," the first thing that sprang to mind was the Hulk.
Immediately after watching the film, I jumped on my laptop and wrote myself a code.
I printed out multiple copies, and plan to nail it to every room in my apartment. I'll also carry one with me wherever I go. And I doubt it's finished. I'll probably be adding new rules forever.
Let me make something clear, particularly to anyone who reads this who also writes - this is MY code. I am not saying this is a universal code for writers. I know what is good for me. I know what I need to do. This IS a writing manifesto, but it is meant only for me. If you take some wisdom away from it, great. But I am not making an argument here for how people should write.
Oh, and it's okay to laugh at some of them. Some of them will probably seem kind of silly. Hell, most things seem silly to me. That's probably why I'm going to Hell.
I'm going to be 34 in a few days, so this might be some kind of mid-life crisis. But what the hell. Have I got anything better to do?
MICHILEEN MARTIN’S WRITING CODE1. WRITEYou need to write. A writer who has great ideas for things to write but doesn’t write them is not a writer. He is a dreamer. You must dream, but you also must learn to wake up.
2. WRITE EVERY DAYYou must choose a reasonable amount of story to write every day. You may gladly go past the minimum, but you must not fall short of it.
3. WRITE FOR WRITING’S SAKEYou must not write for reward. You must not write for money, respect, or the attention of women. You must not write to appear creative, intelligent, sensitive, insightful, or perceptive to others. You must not write to change the world or to rally the souls of others to a cause.
4. KNOW WORDSYou must know words. When reading, you should keep a notebook at your side at all times. If you come across a word you do not recognize or one to which you do not know the meaning, write it down. After you are done reading, find the definitions of all the words you have catalogued. Write the definitions next to the words. Not only can you keep the notebook for reference, but the act of writing the definition will help you remember.
5. READYou must read every day. Nothing comes from nothing. Writing does not come from not reading. The words do not come from a void.
6. ORIGINALITY IS A MYTHIt is not necessarily a bad thing to find yourself imitating another author’s writing style. All writers imitate. It is only bad if you are not mindful of what you are doing. Do it, but know you do it. If you imitate and know you imitate, you still help to develop your own style by incorporating what you like from the styles of others. But if you imitate without knowing it, or without acknowledging it, then it is theft and nothing more. Much of writing is theft. You did not create your own words – they were learned. You learned the art of telling a story. You learned the art of writing dialogue and describing things and places and people. They continue to be learned with each word you read that has been penned by hands not your own. But if you imitate without knowing or acknowledging, then it is nothing but theft, and you are not a writer. You are a thief.
7. MUSIC IS OPTIONALThe presence of music while writing or reading is not necessarily a good or bad thing. But if you listen to music while writing, it is perhaps good to listen to instrumental music rather than songs with lyrics. The words of the songs may invade your writing.
8. YOU WILL SUFFERIf you are a writer, then you will suffer for your writing. You will lose sleep. You will lose money. You may lose employment and lucrative opportunities. You may lose love. You may lose friendship. You may threaten your sanity and lose that too. Know this. Accept this. Do not be ashamed of it.
9. YOU ARE NOT JUST A WRITERYou do not need to neglect the rest of your life. You need to be healthy. You need to live to write. You need to stay safe and warm. If you do not make the money to clothe and house yourself with your writing, you must make it another way. You need friendship and love. Your writing comes first, but it is not all there is.
10. LIVE IN WORDSLive in words. Play games with them. Love them. To be a writer who does not love words is like being a carpenter who does not savor the scent of wood or who doesn’t gleam with pride at his many tools. Words are all you have. You build with them. You destroy with them. You do not have pictures. You do not have actors. You have words.
11. FICTION IS NOT THE SAME AS LIESAlways remember that truth is different from fact. There is always truth in even the most fantastically conceived story.
12. BE HONESTBe true to your story. Do not lie with it for the sake of effect. If, for example, you yearn for your hero to fall in a blaze of glory, but know a more genuine ending would be for the hero to fail miserably, to cowardly run from his enemy, or simply to do nothing, then write the truth. Drama for its own sake is legion. The world does not need more of it. Neither do your stories.
13. ALWAYS BE PREPARED TO WRITEAlways have something with you to write. Write while walking or eating or working if possible.
14. IF IT HURTS THE STORY, LET IT GODo not let your stories suffer from a line or a scene that you hold dear to your heart but that you know is not true to the story. If it is that precious to you, write it somewhere. Save it. Keep it for another story.
15. WRITE IN THE WORLDWriting can be isolating. Do not be afraid to write out in the world – to write in cafes or parks or wherever you are comfortable. You must know the world and its people in order to write about them.
16. DO NOT FORCE YOUR WRITING ON OTHERSDo not shove your work under the noses of those who did not ask for it and who do not want it. But do not be afraid of sharing it with those who ask. A writer wants to show his work. This is not a bad thing. But to feed an animal who is not hungry is to ask for nothing but a wounded hand.
17. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS NEGATIVE FEEDBACKIf a reader tells you they do not like your work, ask them why. Never shun it. Never hate it. Never allow yourself to be angered by it. Many of those readers with such feedback are trying to help. Some simply express themselves honestly without reserve. Others want to be hurtful. You can learn from all three. From those who want to help, accept it – there is no good reason not to. Those who simply wish to express themselves are gifts to you. Embrace them and their words. And even those who want to be hurtful are a boon. If they want to be hurtful, it is perhaps likely that something you have written was hurtful to them. Knowing what has hurt them is good. None of this means that you should change your words for the sake of those who do not like them. Open your arms wide and embrace all feedback. You can always decide what to keep and what to discard.
18. DO NOT BE ASHAMEDDo not be ashamed of what you do. You will find yourself writing in your head even your most mundane of actions, and sometimes you will feel like some paparazzi photographer discarding all morals and values for the sake of your art. A professor once told my class that at his father’s wake, as he approached the corpse, a single moth emerged from the coffin and fluttered away. He knew, even as he stood over his father’s lifeless body, that amidst whatever else he was feeling, he was thinking at that moment of how he could best describe the flight of the moth from the coffin later when he was writing. To be a writer is to know that, in the same situation, the same would be true for you. This is not a bad thing. It can feel like a bad thing. You can feel like a carrion bird picking the bones of life for your art. You are not a vulture. You are a writer. The professor who told the story honored his father with his words – honored him with the truth of his art. If he had not been a writer, if he had not mentally composed prose as the moth emerged, his father would be just as dead. The moth would still have taken flight. And the professor would be no happier or sadder for it.
19. READ YOUR WRITING ALOUDRead all your words aloud, even if no one else is around. It makes it easier to catch errors, and feel the rhythm of the prose and the story.
20. STRIVE FOR PERFECTIONStrive for perfection. Know you will never find it.
21. KEEP WRITINGIt is not always good to try to make every sentence perfect as you first write it. You may stumble and stop writing at a particularly troubling sentence. Move past it. You can always return and change it. Keep writing.
22. DO NOT CARE ABOUT BEING “GOOD” OR “BAD”There is no such thing as a good writer. There is no such thing as a bad writer. There are simply writers and pretenders. Be the former.
23. FINISH THE WORKDo not let work go unfinished. If you are in the midst of writing a story and are suddenly struck with doubt, thinking the story you are writing is not good, do not let this stop you. You will not love everything you write. If you are the most acclaimed and prolifically published author in the history of the written word – if you sell more copies than any other writer since the invention of the printing press – you will still not love everything you write. And no one else will ever love everything you write. Finish the story. Remember that even if you firmly believe it is the most horrible thing you have ever written, you can always go back and change it whether or not you are correct about its worth.
24. SEEK KNOWLEDGEA writer must know things to write things, even if what he writes is as fantastic as Tolkien’s monsters or Asimov’s futuristic epics. Asimov could not have convinced his readers of his futures if he knew nothing about the present and past. Tolkien could not have built a mythic world without knowing about the real one. Read non-fiction as well as fiction. Read history and science. Read magazines and newspapers. Read poetry and drama. Read textbooks and cookbooks. Read instruction manuals. If it is written, read it.
25. DO NOT BE ASHAMED AT YOUR MEAGER BELONGINGS AND CIRCUMSTANCEYou do not need much in the way of material belongings to write. And so you do not need much in the way of material belongings. If people shun you for it, shun those people.
26. DO NOT LIE DOWN WHILE WRITING OR READINGYou should never lie down while writing or reading, unless you are sick or otherwise physically incapacitated. This promotes laziness and sleep. If you are not comfortable sitting where you usually write, find a new place to write.
