A Level Of Performance

When I was twenty-seven years old I quite unexpectedly found myself writing a screenplay about Joan of Arc. I had always loved to write, but now I was engaging in the craft of creative writing with an intensity and a seriousness I had never known before.

I researched the life of Joan. I researched the lives of her judges. I researched the Hundred Years War. I even researched the kinds of shoes people wore back then (those of the royal class got to have long points on theirs which actually flapped when they walked). My journey took me from the Silas Bronson Library to the exact spot in France where Joan came to her tragic, fiery end. By the time I was done penning my interpretation of Joan's story I had dedicated every ounce of my being and three years of my life to a project that had little chance of ever selling.

Which, of course, it didn't. Yet it did get me on a flight to Hollywood, where it eventually wound up in the hands of a successful director. For a guy from Waterbury who had never taken a single class at a four year college, much less gone to film school, it was heady stuff.

I've never been able to reignite the inner fire I had during that time, though I've certainly tried. I realize now, though, that my Joan of Arc script symbolized a relatively brief period of my life where I was actually able to utilize all my faculties at full force. I'll always be grateful for the experience.

What separates most of us who write from those in the pantheon, though - the Shakespeare's and Joyce's, the Morrison's and Rushdie's - is the fact that those individuals can reignite their inner fires over and over again, sometimes for decades on end. It's an amazing feat and one that should be well admired.

Teachers and lovers of literature are familiar with the question of what differentiates good writers from great ones. Hemingway believed it was the longevity of a writer's work. That's certainly true, but consistency (of the kind Hemingway employed throughout his career) is of equal importance.

Literature, then, isn't just styles, eras and schools of thought. It's a celebration of certain people's ability to drive to themselves to a particular level of performance. Which, if looked at in a certain light, is a celebration of ourselves.