Learning to go back to the essential is particularly encouraging while writing synopsis of novels, screenplays, or even events. In these terms, when the world is cut in half, without loosing its meaning, we may survive a great deal by turning to the middle of the wor-l-d, nevertheless causing a more profound impact.
While eating do you think more of the quality of the food you are absorbing or the calories you are adhering? It all claim to our good sense. The same goes on with literature, books and the movies.
When you just finish your manuscript try to look for what is in excess more than what is lacking. Also try to quit metaphors; although they are a good way to fill in the gap, it also may contain too many clichés to really make the text look like it is in good shape and the writing looking in a good taste.
For example, comparison is the best way to destroy the relationship between paraphrases. To say, “Don’t compare yourself, or you will sound just like a bell that rings incessantly in a cathedral” you simply cut out all possibilities limiting yourself to only one choice. Try to see a blank page in a kaleidoscopic perspective where you can shape the text in very diverse way. Watch out for antagonisms. When you start to ramble too much you get inclined to repeat phrases and ideas that were already overrated. Make it sure and make it short.
Finding your own rhythm may increase your chance of survival. But also make presence to the importance of pause and silence. If you worry too much over external turbulences you might loose your path. Copyright should never be the main issue, although it’s essential to the production. Yet, if Shakespeare were to be worried about copyright, he would copy, not write. Listen to your heart and see how it beats and which way it leads. You better keep you heart in shape as well. Rhyming may seem to work just fine. You hardly make a mistake when the words are just right and precise. Your text congratulates you for being more concise.
Avoid overcompensating. Your relationship with words must be a smooth, fun lovemaking play, and not a struggle. For you’d rather do it to justify yourself, than to satisfy a demanding audience. Writing a good story might be the only reward you can get in the end. But if your goal is to satisfy readers, satisfying yourself is a good start.
When all is so overwhelming you might as well go back to basics. It’s the same as the movie industry’s actual dilemma: So Clean West Stood.
The main pages of all newspapers would rather have displayed then:
“Clint Vest Good For Hollywood!”
For an audience, which has been bombarded by non-sense and hypocrisy, it’s favorable to keep a low profile. When we loose our discernment of what is or would be good, we’d rather keep it in one shot, give our best and spare the rest. But then…what’s or would be good or bad by such or such audience?
Clint IS to Would…
When you feel you have gone to the essence, cut it and paste, and then expose. For who said words are no more no less than a deadly fight between you and your audience? Still it is no piece of cake. But yet, if your head is an oyster, your world is your lobster, and you can eat and have it too!
Where was I thirty years ago?
In 1968, right in the "crux" of a revolution, there I was born in the Ana Costa Hospital. "Grazing in the Grass" by Hugh Masekela and "I Pretend" by Des O'Connor were number one on the radios that day. And I pretended that I really intended to make part of this crazy world. At two days of living in this planet I was in a mi(l)ca way predestined by the stars above, brought by my mother's arms to an apartment in the ninth floor in a building called Cineland, right at the corner of a major avenue also named Ana Costa, which translated into English will be something like Ana Coast. And I can still recall my first five years as I walked miles and miles of distance from the shore, running to the big sea(n), like a little turtle just getting out of its egg, eager to be swallowed by a huge wave from the warm and mellow waters of the Atlantic Ocean that gently bathes the Southeast coast of Brazil.
I remember very clearly that we were already in the end of a Dictator Regimen, and I saw myself obliged to sing the National Hymn, every morning at seven o'clock sharp and no excuse to be late, right at the patio of my dear American Primary School(s). We had to make a formation, touching each other's shoulders with our arms extended in a type of echelon. Wearing our uniforms in a neat way, we were armed only by our convictions that one day we would be allowed to laugh about all that. One or two giggled for stepping in each other's shoes, obliging the other to get off line to incorporate the foot back into position. Our heads and shoulders had to be maintained in a straight way. Then, an invited general from the Army with a quite often rumble and bumble speech with a full chest dissimulating a grandeur personality set a platinum disk over a Victrola which played the LP with a sharp niddle slightly touching the lines of a petroleum color. And after hearing him bloviating an hour or so, we had to sing our enormous Hymn out loud and in unison, or we were obliged to repeat it again until we got the tune. And I mimed my colleagues from my First Grade, for I always forgot the second part of the Epopee. I felt like a little ant among many big irrefragable elephants. Whether elephants make love or war, it is the grass, and ants, that suffer thus far!
But I also felt as if I were ensorcelled by the moments of inspiration given to me as a gift during my immemorial in-fancy time in Santos. And those are indeed the deeds and the treasures that I will keep inside my heart and soul. And my eternal gratitude for a city that gave me so much enticement beneath its ludic rays of freedom and happiness, that all make me keep on with the chorus of emotions that the enchanting shore still brings to me. And it motivates me to declare with plenty of enthusiasm and my lungs full of light air that "I am a santista, and sportiest, and an artist" to whom Santos is an ever-present praised unprecedented scenario.
Where am I going to be thirty years from now?
Probably, with the same happiness and sweetness in my eyes, with the same idealisms, perhaps a little bit wiser and just, but still with the same innocence: For life will never loose its subtle touch for those who remember their childhood with some glimpses of sublime experiences from wishful hearts. Maybe the innocence lies on each small look from a petit child who naively wishes to be happy. And the idealism inhabits the wistful thoughts of those who desirably fight and will never cease striving to bring happiness and freedom to all. It's simple as that morning walking contemplation of a matutinal stroll by the sun in a candent candor from the beginning of summer days at the shores of a roboranting beach city in the name of all Saints.
Check out my book "Many Lives to Love...and The Eternity to Live" with plenty of stories, one of them passed in a fructuous Harbor/Beach city called Santos:
Em 1968 eu nascia na Maternidade Ana Costa e aos dois dias de idade já estava como que predestinada no apartamento do nono andar no edifício Cinelandia da Av. Ana Costa, no seio de minha família praticamente toda santista.
Lembro bem das minhas primeiras cinco "aninhas". Recordo que eu tinha que caminhar o que, para uma criança como eu que sempre foi tamanho petit, eram intermináveis "mil léguas supra-marinas", a distancia da orla no meu percalço rumo ao mar.
Lembro que já estávamos no fim da Ditadura e eu me via obrigada a cantar no mais alto e claro tom o Hino Nacional inteiro, e eu que fazia de conta que sabia de cor a segunda parte, imitando com caras e bocas os meus colegas de escola.
Hoje a inspiração e a alegria que me trazem aqueles tempos de infância passados na Orla da praia de Santos vividos ao sol da liberdade em raios "lúdicos" e a minha eterna gratidão a tão saudável e saudosa Santos me levam a seguir em meu caminho ao mar de emoções que essas lembranças me trazem, e poder dizer com uma voz clara e feliz que sou santista, e sou artista e esportista dessa minha vida de Cinema onde Santos é cenário imprescindível.
Onde eu deverei estar daqui a 30 anos?
Provavelmente com a mesma doçura no olhar, com o mesmo idealismo; talvez mais sábia e mais justa, mas igual de inocente. Pois que a vida não perderá jamais a singeleza desde que rememoráveis anos repassem sob nossos corações sempre que assim almejarmos.
Talvez a inocência esteja no olhar pequenino de cada menino que esmera ser feliz.
E o idealismo seja o de alcançarmos todos a felicidade plena; simples, assim, como o caminhar num dia de sol na orla da praia de Santos.
(View the book "As Bruxas de Avignon", available in Portuguese on the link below):
"South Adagio"
"Saudade" it is a word that only exists in Portuguese.
It is from the heart, but it doesn't make it any easy.
(Although it can make it a little cheesy
to rhyme Portuguese so at ease...Please!)
It could be translated just as this:
I, Miss Ana, Miss You...
You could say, "I miss you" but it is in a different tone.
It is even more intense than the sense of missing someone...
You really feel your heart full of the existence of that person
And at the same time it is empty for the lack of that one.
Filling the emptiness...
It is about the way I wished upon a feather,
Just when I left a piece of my heart in that letter
where I said that my love for you wouldn't ever die.
And you thought that it was just another lie...
Like a little gust of a wind blowing,
leaving the earth and saying, "Saudades"
I feel the emptiness even knowing
that I still have the remembrance of us.
"Adeus" or, if you excuse me, "Adios!"