How to Vomit (with me, Bill Gullo)
Join me and Narratively next week
I just had a thoroughly inspiring conversation with
, NYT Best Selling Author, recent participant of my workshop, Six Weeks to a Vomit Draft, and a new friend. Our call ended with me feeling newly inspired and focused about my writing on Substack largely because Marya, like me, believes that writers should do whatever the hell they want. Maybe I just enjoyed hearing what I wanted to hear.In case you didn’t know, Substack can be an exhausting, miserable place for writers who don’t have clarity of purpose. The platform and our feeds are full of Growth Gurus advising writers how to get more followers which is an exhausting, miserable state of mind for anyone. I suspect if people spent as much time on their craft as they do reading about how to get followers we’d all be much better off.
Speaking of craft, this morning I read Marya’s Postcard From the Middle where she shares her observations and experiences traveling the country solo. The post was everything we talked about on the phone: authentic, creative, freewheeling, passionate, personal, and all sorts of things only humans can do. Here are her words about her project, Going Solo at the End of the World.
In 2022, with the fall of Roe v. Wade, I bought a camper, ditched my stuff, and took off to explore the many Americas that now exist. This newsletter is the result. Readers can count on nuanced, first-person reports on American life—and American lives—that explore our myths and truths, our hope and our heartbreak, our fundamental frailty and our strengths. Wander with me into truck stops and diners and dive bars, nightclubs and strip malls and ivory towers, into conversations with people who are angry, oblivious, frightened, hateful, helpful, hopeful, and—far more often than not—kind.
My talk with Marya, inspired me to revisit the purpose of this space; now that I’ve become so invested in the in-person meet ups of Storytellers Social Club I feel the need to revisit the focus of the online space. I’ll be dedicating myself to a renewed consistency on my posts for sure.
How to Vomit (with me & Narratively)
Next week I’ll meet a new group of writers who want to write a feature screenplay when I run my Six Weeks to a Vomit Draft for Narratively Academy. Maybe one of them will be you.
I’m excited to work with Narratively and proud to run their first offering for screenwriters and the screenwriting-curious. I’ve been a fan of theirs for years and that was before I met the founders - Noah and Brendan - in actual flesh-and-blood person. They could not be more authentic, hard working fellows pursuing a righteous mission. To inform the uninitiated, I pulled a paragraph from their website because it best describes their origin and because it’s faster than finding my own words. After all, I’m sure they went through quite a writing and revision process to craft this paragraph so it would be foolish of me to try to improve upon it especially when I’m on a family vacation right now and my kids are never far from disrupting me from doing anything but ping pong, swimming or board games. (This is the kind of authentic truth-telling people encounter in my workshops.)
Once upon a time, Narratively founders Noah Rosenberg and Brendan Spiegel had grown frustrated by their day jobs in big journalism. They were tired of hearing that their passion projects were too “quirky,” “complex,” or “in-depth,” for mainstream media. So they did something about it. With a remarkable team of editors, writers, photographers, illustrators and other creators, they built a platform that champions diverse, indie journalists and storytellers and celebrates humanity through the most authentic, unexpected and extraordinary true narratives.
If you’re joining me next week, you’ll experience the benefit of a workshop improved by the productive feedback session I had with my last cohort. Each class is only 2 hours long, but I’ll now provide a bit more live writing time among some other tweaks.
One thing that will never change about my workshops is the emphasis on you, the writer. (if you’re not a writer, don’t fret — I always talk about the audience too) To get the best version of a screenplay I believe writers need to tap their personal selves in multiple ways. For one, you need to break through whatever force field you use to successfully survive a day on earth. You also need to identify your personal connection to the story you’re writing; in some cases it seems obvious because you might be writing a story based on a personal event or memory. But the most important personal connection to the story comes from your confused feelings, irrational emotions, screeching fears, secret hopes and dare to dreams in you heart and mind. You will hand those to your characters so they’re not flat, uninspired facsimiles of characters we’ve seen before.
Ironically, while I emphasize the importance of the Personal You, writing also requires you to leave yourself behind because — let’s face it — you don’t actually wear yourself on your sleeve. So I encourage (demand) you find your personalized way to do that. I’ve mentioned this before, but when I first started writing, I stumbled upon the trick of visualization. Out of desperation to meet a deadline, I began imagining myself dropping into a giant, Harry Potter–style manuscript at the start of each session. That image helped me leave the muggle world behind to enter the one I was creating.
Speaking of entering new worlds, I’m off to swim now. I look forward to meeting some of you next week!
Ah, Bill, it's so great to have bumped into you! I feel lucky to have taken a class from you and will be signing up for another pronto - I was equally inspired by the call, and look forward to future conversations - and here's to writers doing whatever the hell they want!