Over this past weekend, we watched The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Which was great. And I sat there imagining the moment Wes Anderson came up with the idea to adapt the Roald Dahl story into stop-motion puppet animation. And all of the things I would have said to myself, were I him. Like:
That sounds really hard.
I don’t know anything about stop-motion animation.
There’s not really a place for it on the market; it doesn’t fit into any viably marketable category.
No one will like it.
No one will back it.
People will think I’m weird.
I should just make Rushmore again.
But if he had any of those thoughts, he made the movie anyway. (Against obstacles.) And it’s delightful. It’s so totally out there in some ways, and in other ways so recognizably his work. You can see it in the way objects and music and even the puppets’ clothing evoke that Wes Anderson mood. Or maybe it’s the objects and music and clothes that are themselves the beginnings of what Anderson seeks to create. Definitely a Wes Anderson movie in any case. But still, it seems to me it was probably a big risk.
Which inspired me.
I want to be the kind of creative person who is not scared off by possibly-crazy ideas and doesn’t smother every spark and crackle with a host of “yeahbut”s and “ifonly”s. Now that I’m in my forties (or, as a woman I sat next to at a dinner recently said to me, “the [eff]-you forties”), I’d like the kind of creative nuts, rocks, balls, stones–and the accompanying work ethic–that lead to cool stuff like Mr. Fox.
And that movie is just one example of what I’m talking about. Same goes for anything that doesn’t fit into an obvious slot in “The Marketplace,” which sometimes can feel like the mortal enemy of true creative passion as publishers, production companies, record companies, and TV studios wring their hands over the bottom line.
Sometimes I wish we lived in the days when it was a given that artists and writers would not be making a living without a patron. You went into it knowing it was all about fingerless gloves, lumps of coal, and slaving over candle stubs as you contracted consumption before dying in obscurity. You knew you were doing it because you could do no else, not because you might be able to quit your day job and get more time to tweet.
But, that’s a bit ungrateful and distorted. Like wishing for “simpler times” when actually slaves and women were doing all the work and there was no such thing as antibiotics.
I’m very glad to be making my living as a writer, and know how fortunate I am to do so, and believe artists should be paid. I just don’t want to cling to my situation so tightly that I forget to make at least some choices based on passion and joy and the desire for adventure, growth, challenge. To take a chance now and then.
One piece of advice I got a lot when I was starting out was that I should treat writing like a job, like a business. I understand the spirit behind that advice, and there are ways it’s wise. And yet…I don’t know. Because after over five years of treating it like a job, guess what it feels like? Often the fearful, bill-paying, Business Minded Sara is in danger of completely taking over. And that makes me more than a little sad.
But – hope!
If there’s one unifying theme to the upcoming year, it’s that I’m working on changing things that I’d like to be different. (I know. Innovative!) Maybe there will be a kind of Mr. Fox in my future, in my eff-you forties, or my fabulous fifties. Or sordid sixties. Or sexy seventies. It’s never too late, or–as I more often need to remind myself–too soon.
