Be Sure To Write.

Every so often, when I need a little inspiration and motivation to help me remember what it is I want to be when I grow up, I pop in my "Finding Forrester" DVD, and get lost in the story.

If you haven't seen it, it's about a kid from the Bronx who wants to be a writer. Doesn't sound like an entirely action-packed movie, huh? Well...there aren't any car chase scenes, and no helicopters crashing into skyscrapers, either.

But I'm usually more impressed with movies that explore the human condition and delve into personal relationships than I am with movies like, "Die Hard 17: Die, Already...Die!" (funny, there's no IMDB link for this title. yet.)

Jamal Wallace, the teenager from the Bronx, is played by newcomer Rob Brown, who forms an odd but compelling relationship with a reclusive literary legend in William Forrester, played by Sean Connery.

I get totally immersed watching these two interact, but that may be in part because of the nuggets of writing wisdom sprinkled throughout their conversations.


One day in Forrester's apartment, he ponders aloud: "Why is it the words we write for ourselves are always so much better than the words we write for others?"

He sits down with Jamal, the two facing each other, a manual typewriter in front of each of them, and says as he starts to type...

"Go ahead."

Jamal: "Go ahead and what?"

Forrester: "Write."

Jamal: "What are you doing?"

Forrester: "I'm writing, like you'll be, when you start punching those keys."

(pause)

Forrester: "Is there a problem?"

Jamal: "No, I'm...just thinking."

Forrester: "No. No thinking, that comes later."

Then Forrester continues with his advice: "You write your first draft with your heart, and you rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is...to write! Not to think."

For those of us who just finished a month of writing, we learned all about that first key, didn't we? No matter what, put ass in chair...and write.

If somehow, "Finding Forrester" has slipped past you unnoticed and you haven't seen it, this writer gives it high marks. I can usually take or leave Sean Connery, but he and Rob Brown are great. And the verbal head-butting scene between Jamal and one of his professors is worth the rental fee.

Early in their relationship, Jamal asks Forrester, "What's it feel like?"

"What?" asks Forrester.

"Writin' something the way you did."

"Perhaps you'll find out," he tells the boy.

Perhaps.

"To be a writer, you have to first
stick your neck out and take a chance
and then be willing to make a fool of yourself
and give yourself away."
—Jessamyn West