Posted 9:13 AM by Blah blah

All Writers Are Born

From a set of talks between students and Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone and one of my favorite TV writers of all time. UPN just debuted a new version of The Twilight Zone on September 18.

Serling:

All writers are born, they are never made. The talent to recreate in language, the experience of life is, has to be God-given. On the other hand, we can sharpen the wit of a writer, we can point out style to him. We can use the criteria that is age-old, 3,000 years of theater, that he can utilize to make a judgment on the value of his own work. We can show him what can move people, what can move human beings. He can go to see a play of Diary of Anne Frank and that's Lesson 1 in the long facet of the human emotion. This kind of thing with this kind of heart and simplicity will move people. And that's a lesson. That's a great educative experience for him. This is not to say he must go out and write a story about a doomed child in an attic, but the level of emotion that he can learn from that film is quite an experience for him. But when you pose the age-old question, Art, "Can I learn to write? Can I be taught to be creative? Can I be taught further to analyze and dissect, and observe (because observation is key---this is paramount in the writer/the creator: to observe life)?" No. But you can say, "Those are where your eyes are." And you can say, "Use those eyes in that ghetto over there." Or you can say, "Take that typewriter and take it up to your room and spew it out, that gut-level feeling that you have." You can show him how that's done. You can teach them a sense of timing, a sense of discipline---which is paramount to the writer---you must be the most self-disciplined beast walking the earth. I don't think there's anything on earth as difficult as writing.