1. What do you write about?

Here’s an interesting exercise for any writer with at least a small handful of work: Reread through everything you’ve written and look for common themes, stylistic devices, narrative choices, characters and subject matter. Don’t worry about the quality or success of what you’ve written. This exercise isn’t about how good of a writer you are; it’s about what kind of writer you are.

I did this several years ago and was surprised at just how many similarities there were. I’d written five screenplays and a number of short stories, and while each artistic decision is made to serve the individual piece, I didn’t realize how often I was making similar choices. That could hint at some of my limitations as a writer, but it also says a lot about who I am as an artist.

Here’s just a few of the things I found:

• My prose style focuses on action, character and story. This is opposed to description, metaphor and stream-of-consciousness. (Part of this comes from my training as a screenwriter, but there’s evidence of it beforehand; this style is present even in first-person narratives.)
• Most of my stories are about families. Spouses, children, relatives. There’s a few friends, but not a lot of coworkers or acquaintances or strangers.
• The men in my stories tend to be the goofballs, fuck-ups and weaker characters. The women tend to be more dependable, wiser and less capricious. However, the women also tend to be more stressed, dealing with a fraying household while the men focus more on their own concerns and interests.
• There’s a lack of technology in my stories. This is partially strategic, since technology ages quickly and can prematurely date an otherwise timeless story. Especially in film.
• I avoid product placement. My characters might have a beer, but they rarely would drink a specific brand of beer. This might be a missed opportunity for character development, but it’s also a thematic decision. In a similar vein, Monet often removed signs of industrialization from the landscapes he painted. His goal wasn’t fidelity to his subject; it was capturing fleeting moments of light in scenes of natural beauty. For me, eschewing brands in story is a way of focusing on what’s really important. (It may seem ironic then that I work in marketing, but consider, for example, that rarely should the logo be made bigger; you’ll do much better by focusing more on what’s important to the customer. Good marketing is storytelling.)

Do the exercise. You might be surprised by what you find. For me, identifying the similarities helped explicate what I had been trying to do with my stories.

2. What don’t you write about?

During the above exercise, I noticed that I rarely wrote about work, especially in the modern business sense. For me, the marrow of life, of story, is found elsewhere. I find it in art, relationships, adventures, family, nature. And yet I spend over 40 hours a week at work, much of it in a half-cube surrounded by half-sized modular walls covered in a dreary gray fabric. As much as I enjoy work, cubicles are not the setting of the stories I find most compelling.

Sitting in my cubicle, I thought about this discrepancy. I’ve been slowing reading All of Us, the collected poems of Raymond Carver, and noticed that he mostly writes about alcoholism, writing, fishing, love and the loss of love — the stuff of his life story. Even in seemingly mundane events he finds meaning. I admire this and have to wonder if I’m being myopic. Maybe there’s more meaning to be plumbed in my day-to-day activities, including work. It’s certainly subject to the same passions and frustrations present in the rest of my life.

So I set a new side project for myself: Write some poems and short stories that take place in a modern office. Not overtly comic — this isn’t Dilbert — and see how my style, voice and characters act in this new setting. If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.

3. What about you?

How much of your life do you bring to your art? And how much of your art do you bring to your life?

What if brought more?