The Situation Around My Writing

 The Situation Around My Writing

By: Asa Montreaux

Sometimes I have heard people wondering aloud about my writing. In Coffee shops, or in the background of news sets, or concerts. I write some news, a lot of music. The reality is, they seem to have a hard time realizing I would hear this. As a normal guy, I sometimes watch tv as well. And in person, it seems to be the case no one has recognized me.

This can be a frustrating experience. But I don't want to write about that. It is something related. Why were they talking about the writing, or my ideas, anyways? It is all the tv shows, movies, and songs I have written, and it is all the compliments you can hear about them. But there is something I have to say. I was not paid for any of those works of art. In reality I was not the originator of these art works, and I was not the main voice. I think when people start treating me like a product, which would be the case when they feel they can talk about you whenever, it means they think you have been a cog in the machine, and it means they think you took a cut of the profit. I had not. And the reality is I am not a ghost. I had not meant to call myself James DeWille, or James Mangold, Andrew Watt, or anything of the sort. In reality I have only offered my help to get my start in these industries. What people need to do, is stop talking about me like a product, stop judging my work so harshly, and stop talking about me like someone they can step over to get somewhere. What you need to hear is you won't get somewhere. I am not really someone in the film industry or music industry, but a volunteer that was taking advantage of over and over again.

Which brings me to my next point. I only performed a service. Sometimes people laugh and laugh about how cheesy my songs were, but they were only love songs! I just wrote what needed to be written. I had created a product. I really want people to see that's not my work, but just something I contributed to. When we are supporting another writer, we can only help them shape their idea, we can't change the ideas. 

And the same thing essentially with Film. I sometimes have thrown zingers in a bad script. And sometimes I threw in some kind of cheeky lines with some good ones. But in reality the script wasn't my idea, it was someone else's work, and I can't change the meaning of the work. I can only help them express it, and the style can't be much different from theirs, or there will be no cohesion.

Sometimes people in my hometown do wonder why I don't have a bunch of money. Well, this is why. I have almost never been paid anything for writing as a job. I have almost made more from writing as myself. Writing all these things as a job has only resulted in earnings in the thousands of dollars, not even in the tens of thousands of dollars, and certainly not any higher.

I guess I love art. And bad art is a pet peeve of mine. So I'm always correcting things. Or at least I was. It was so easy for me I could do it on the fly. But if I'm not getting something more out of it, at a certain point I do just need to stop helping. So if my writing has affected you at all, if you liked it, I hope I can turn you onto my actual writing. In my own name. If you found it cheeky, if you found it flat, I write seriously in my own name. So maybe one day you'll listen to that, or watch that. Hopefully one day there will be a market for the stuff I am the writer of. For my own work.