The Lot of the Writer

Last night, I turned off the TV since there isn’t much on that I was interested in watching. We have all these information channels and I can’t find anything to watch. So I turn, instead to my own imagination for my entertainment. That’s often where most of my ideas come from. I start telling myself a story and it usually grows into a full-fledged story or it just fizzles. Sometimes I do fan fiction in my head, even to the point of writing a short story or two that will never see the light of day because of copyright infringement. I don’t want to be sued over using characters I have no right to use. I can still write the stories because I have no intention of even letting friends and family to read them. they are strictly for my own entertainment.

I pity people who can’t entertain themselves. There are people in the world who have little imagination and can’t entertain themselves. It must be horrible to sit with the remote in your hand and not find anything to do with it. Maybe they don’t notice it, but I would find it purgatory to be unable to tell myself a story even if it is never written down in any form.

What did they do for entertainment before there was TV? They read books, magazines and newspapers. Before those things, people listened to storytellers and minstrels. We, as a species, have always had some form of entertainment to amuse ourselves. It’s where most of our greatest legends come from; someone told a story and passed it along. The story always gains in the telling. That only ended when we started writing the stories down. Maybe we lost something when we started writing our stories down, but we didn’t lose any of them. Oral story traditions are good to keep up, but writing them down ensures that the stories don’t die with the story teller.

We consider storytelling to be an art form, and it is, but we don’t seem to value it as much these days. The majority of us prefer movies and TV to a good book, forgetting that often our movies and TV shows had to be written down. We pay exorbitant amounts of money to actors to act out roles in a story, but forget that without the author, an actor wouldn’t have much to do or say.

It’s a fact of life that the actor, as front person, gets the attention while the author is often ignored. It’s just too bad that the writer gets so little recognition in the movie industry. Even directors and producers get more attention than the person whose creative energy made the actorss, producers’ and directors’ jobs possible. Think about who wrote the scripts for the movie or TV show that you watch next and thank the writer whose creativity made it all possible. It’s the least that you can do. If you think they are not worth it, try to tell yourself a story in your head. You will quickly learn that it isn’t as easy as you think it is.

About pebblepup

I am not one who is comfortable talking about myself but here goes. I enjoy writing, family history, and reading. I decided to do this blog because I wanted to try something new. I decided to make it a weekly blog because I wasn't sure that I could keep up with a daily one, and monthly seemed like I was writing a magazine. I think I did ok with my choices. You'll notice that there are not a lot of graphics on my site. That's because there are graphics plastered everywhere on the Internet and those sites sometimes take forever to load. This blog is a place where you can kick back, relax and be ready to be amused. At least I hope I willbamuse you. This blog is on a variety of subjects from my ficitional cat agency, the FFL, which is monthly, to instructional blogs to editorials, which are my opinions only. I admit that I don't know everything and could be wrong -- I frequently am. Now, stop reading about me and read what I have to say!