Books are not Blueprints
Where do I download the plans for a successful life?
Don’t like reading? Allow me to read it to you here 👈
Books are not blueprints. They cannot lay out the square footage of your love or the thickness of your skin. They cannot define the placement of your empathy, nor—and this is important—indicate if you’re designed to be a multistory mega-mansion or a one room bedsit with a toilet in the shower.
Books are not blueprints. Don’t try build yourself from the contents of one.
Turn the page.
It’s tempting though, right? To grab at every book you can to find out all the secrets of how to make it. To discover the sequence of events that turn the tumblers one by one until they fall into place with that satisfying clunk that unlocks your manifest destiny. Where is the shortcut? Is there a back door? Do I really have to just keep on keeping on?1 Where is the VIP entrance? Look, can’t you see I’m wearing the special pants tonight?
Turn the page.
There is no path. Nothing stays the same from one page to the next. Situations are fluid, time is a wheel, people hold the word unpredictable in one fist, incomprehensible in the other, and the punches keep on coming. What worked for someone then might not work for you now. You get the drift. It goes on and on and on, and so must you.
Turn the page.
“Every line is emotional.”
This is the only thing I underlined in Bob Odenkirk’s memoir2 and I’m not going to give you any context for it. It’s got nothing to do with how to make it in comedy or as a writer or an actor. It’s got nothing to do with shortcuts or step-by-steps. It’s not even true. In fact—you should never start a sentence with in fact—I’m not even going to tell you what he’s talking about, because to build on his point, my point is this:
Every line is something, even when it’s not.
Some lines, you throw away, burying them inside something else. Something denser. Something bigger. Something transitory. Doesn’t mean they don’t do the dirty work and body burying. Some lines you write backwards or inside out—and ho boy, that can really get grammarians fired up—but those lines are working, too. Some are specifically cannon fodder so that bigger, brattier lines can swing their punctuation around like Bob Odenkirk’s fists on that bus in that scene in that movie3 that you should absolutely 100% watch immediately.
Point?
Some lines are every lines and every line has a role to play.
Every line, people. Every line.
Every line does SOMETHING.
Every line IS something.
Even when it doesn’t look like it.
Even when you delete it in the next draft.
Turn the page.
Every line is a soldier, a draft draft horse, a star, a diversion. Every line is fight or flight. Every line is a knife or a blanket. Every line, afraid or brave. Every line just is and will be and should do and so on. Life, story, movement, meaning. Every line is worth polishing and hugging and whispering encouragement in the ear of as you send it into battle. Go, you good thing, do your absolute worst. Or best. Make it your best worst or your worst best or your best best or whatever. Pulitzers or parental fridge fodder, just give every line a future to look forward to.
“Every line is emotional.”
Not to get all cosmically bent here, but Odenkirk’s little note to himself, which I’m taking completely out of context just so I may project upon it, might be the most brilliantly pithy tagline since, I dunno, Just Do It? It’s a battle cry. It’s a call to arms. It’s got layers, man! It’s an obtuse takeaway for sure, but by now you should have worked out I deal in the angles. All the weird angles. All the unloveable shapes.
Turn the page.
Books are not blueprints. Books are clues. Filled with Every Lines. They might not be the clues you’re looking for, but creative hunter gatherers must fill their baskets with something. Memoirs, how-tos, biographies. There’s no shame in seeking the secrets of the sauce from the sauciest sauciers.
“I don’t think anyone will publish it, but perhaps someone will Reflect on it.”
This is not from Bob’s book. It’s from Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead4 by Olga Tokarczuk, and is a line that strikes me as being a neat summary of the message—if there is any message—of Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama. Every line is emotional. Perhaps someone will reflect on it. That’s the most we can hope for. That and a good and fat memoir with lots of pages and lots of words set in Sabon because as we all know—Odenkirk especially5—the lights can go out at any moment and that’s not your sweaty finger on the switch.
Meantime, just keep turning pages ‘til your book runs out.
Yours in tiny thought,
Janeen6
This week’s amends…
“Recognizing that people’s reactions don’t belong to you is the only sane way to create. If people enjoy what you’ve created, terrific. If people ignore what you’ve created, too bad. If people misunderstand what you’ve created, don’t sweat it. And what if people absolutely hate what you’ve created? What if people attack you with savage vitriol, and insult your intelligence, and malign your motives, and drag your good name through the mud? Just smile sweetly and suggest – as politely as you possibly can – that they go make their own fucking art. Then stubbornly continue making yours.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, from the book Big Magic
Via Swiss Miss
On Rotation: “North By North” by The Bats
These are beautiful. Made by Larysa Bernhardt out of fabric. Tapestry moths. Lovely. These are just two examples, but you can see more at Colossal.
Via Colossal
Wait, what?
Via Kottke
Did any of this spark a tiny thought of your own?
Shameless Podcast Plug: Field of Streams
Yes
I don’t like writing in my books, so know that it both hurt and made me feel deliciously naughty at the same time.
That movie is Nobody.
I am reading too many books at the same time.
What must it feel like to know that you were dead? I’m excited to see what he’ll do with his bonus pages. And of course for the final season of Better Call Saul. Excited and filled with dread for that one.
I finished reading Bob Odenkirk’s book—which I do recommend, if that’s what you came here for—on a ridge line in Big Sur, which by itself added another DRAMA to the title. So add the heart incident and Big Sur locale, it becomes Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama Drama Drama. We have a bingo for the repress title!
I really love this piece! Thanks for writing it and allowing me to reflect, Janeen! I have to admit that Bob Odenkirk's book is on my TBR list, and it made it there because I had a fleeting thought that it *might* have all the answers. But I've had that thought plenty of times about plenty of books, so that thought really isn't doing much for me, is it? Still going to read Odenkirk's book, but going to try hard not to see it as a blueprint. Anyway, thanks again!