I have a friend that is a post-grad literary student at Columbia University. She once said to me that what she loves about reading books is that it saves her from having to sit with her own thoughts. Reading was an escape from the fatigue and emotional fallout that was created by haunting thoughts about her self and her life. My experience has been different. I’ve always found it difficult to read cause I, some one, also that often is trapped in my head with a heavy interior monologue, found it difficult to read a page with out the over whelming power of my own thoughts interfering with my concentration to extrapolate what was on the page before me. But I always had this idea that I would like to fashion my self a person who is well read. And of course the only way one could do this is by reading. Also, I’ve always wanted to make films. And the foundation for most all filmmaking is a story and the written word.

In the mid 90’s I had an idea for a screenplay called “Pool Hall,” but I didn’t have the courage to write it. Growing up through my experience in school, it was brought to my parent’s attention that my reading and writing skills were very poor. I was taken aside, which felt more like being singled out, and put through process of having to meet with all sorts of professionals and take a few diagnostic tests. One test was an IQ test that included a Rorschach inkblot test. And if you have ever taken one of those, you would understand the kind of alienating experience that it could be. I thought I was retarded at the end of the whole experience. And I was left with profound feelings of inadequacy about my writing skills that haunted me through the rest of my checkered educational career. So now you could imagine the confounding barrier that I had to over come in order to succeed in actually completing a feature length screen play. But I’m not stupid and was not going to do it alone. So I enlisted the help of a person that I met on a job that quickly became a friend and his name is Drew.

Now Drew being about 10 years older and having been a post grad American lit student brought many things to the table. Beyond the discipline I had to muster up to keep up with him, he taught me many things about writing. But even more importantly, over the years he has helped me dispel the myth of my in inadequate literary skills. He’d often say, “Dylan, I don’t know why you think you can’t write. It takes just takes practice.” Or “Dylan you often like to claim that you can’t verbally express your self but you tend to be able to articulate your thoughts better than most people I speak to.” Drew over the years has become somewhat of a mentor when it comes to my issues with reading and writing. He loves books and is always willing to discuss the complexities of characters and their relation to a writer’s interest in creating them. He also will often encourage me, expressing to me how I might find the value and satisfaction in my own development in any endeavor of writing. For example, this blog.

It has been 10 years past since the completion of “Pool Hall.” And still I’m somewhat haunted by this demon that holds me back from writing the scripts that I’d want to make into films. However, recently I’ve just started and am just about completed the first draft of a short film I want to make. And I have to write what a wonderful experience that it has been. What I’ve found that I really like about writing is that it provides an alternative remedy to being trapped inside my head with thoughts and feelings of fear, failure, boredom and, loneliness. I find my self envisioning a whole world filled with characters, plots and images that are so powerful that I can be sitting with my eyes opened but lost in this dream. And the first step to share this dream is to write it. For me it seems a perfect. And now I must return to finish it.