The Best Writing Lesson

The best lesson I ever learned about writing I got from running.

When I was in my early 30s, I realized that drinking five or six days a week was not a particularly promising health regimen, so I joined a gym. There was one in the building where I was working at the time, in Jersey City, N.J., and it offered a corporate discount. It was a fine, modern gym,with all the fine, modern features. But I realized pretty quickly that I had no interest in weights, or spinning classes, or personal trainers, or much of anything there. The only I really like was the treadmill. I enjoyed running on the treadmill.

That realization led to another one: What did I need with a gym if all I was going to do was run? I could do outside for free. I quit the gym, and started running on the streets of Jersey City.

What's this have to do with writing? I'll get there.

Writing is Not Hard

Writing is not hard.

Writing well is very hard.

Writing so well that every single word is not only in the perfect, correct place, but every single word is the perfect, correct only word that could work in that exact, specific spot, so much so that the words become a moving image, the entire story becomes this living, breathing thing that burrows in your mind is so difficult that to my knowledge, the only man who's ever achieved it is James Joyce.

I Know How to Write the Screenplay for Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I know how to make Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance into a film. At least, I think I do. If you're not a fan or the book, this is not the post for you. If you are a fan, or haven't read the book but are supremely bored just about now with what's trending on Twitter, well, maybe this is the post for you.

Robert Pirsig and his son, Chris, 1968.

There's a scene in Lila, the follow-up to Zen, where Pirsig has a meeting with Robert Redford, who had, I believe, optioned the first novel and wanted to make a movie of it. Redford's idea was to start with a scene where Pirsig, as a college professor, was sitting in front of his class, at his desk, not saying a word. From there, Redford planned to tell the story through flashbacks.

It never went anywhere, obviously, and Zen remains one of those kinds of books that Hollywood, I think, hates: popular, but unfilmable. There is a standard narration that carries Zen, but the meat of the book, what really makes it such a classic, is almost all the first-person thoughts that the narrator presents as he's making his cross-country motorcycle trip, and it's all very heavy on philosophical exposition. Avatar this ain't, Hell it's not even as accessibly as The Great Gatsby. Nobody could make a film out of ZMM.

But I think I could. Not only that, I think I could do it well.