Taking Inspiration from the Masters

I was suckered into Masterclass at its launch — Aaron Sorkin teaching a writing class was hard to resist, I’lll admit. That’s not something easy to come by. You couldn’t get it without attending a rare in person lecture or watching a PBS interview even a decade ago. Yet lately it seems we’re surrounded by opportunities for this level of expertise. So the question I have to ask: are we taking enough advantage?

The Black List recently launched a series of live online video interviews, called Word by Word, with some of the best writers — primarily screenwriters, but also other types — thanks to Ed Solomon, an expert in his own right. Ed started reaching out to writers with the idea of interviewing them for charity, raising funds for the entertainment workers who can’t work due to the strike, along with other reasons. To their credit, many have jumped on board to help.

So I found myself today engrossed in watching Ed along with Tony Kushner and Mark Harris chatting from their apartment in New York about their writing habits. I was immensely comforted by the knowledge that Kushner takes to Instagram when he’s procrastinating writing. He may be surrounded by vast shelves of books, steps from Central Park, but he still doom scrolls like the rest of us.

A few weeks ago, it was Meg LeFauve interviewing Jodie Foster on “The Screenwriting Life” podcast that blew me away. Earlier this year, I finished Martin Scorsese’s Masterclass. I look forward to finishing Spike Lee’s and Mira Nair’s. So much brilliance. If you don’t know any of these people’s names, look them up. You know their work. These writers and directors have no doubt influenced the cultural zeitgeist in the past few decades and likely in those to come.

Each time I find myself listening to or watching one of these lessons, interviews, panels, I habitually take furious notes. I bask in the intellectual high from the experience. I file my notes away like a good little student. But then what?

Recently, I wrote a pilot script and I watched most of the Shonda Rhimes Masterclass while working on an early draft. I don’t know if I took anything specific from what she imparted in the lessons and put it to use in my script, but I did notice parallels in how she works that I had already developed for myself, and that alone was comforting to know that I’m on the right track.

Today, I decided to try something different. I took what Kushner and Harris said about writing about real people and real events and turned it into its own set of notes, and I started a new file just for that topic. Then I went through all the notes on my laptop from similar interviews and put them into the folder — and — made a link inside the new project I’m researching that would be based on real events if I decide to take it on. Creating a real link for myself — a way to put the words into action. “The spice is the worm!” (That’s a Dune reference, for those who haven’t read the book or seen the David Lynch film — he also has a Masterclass, of course.)

Here’s the thing: I don’t think Tony Kushner or Mark Harris said anything I hadn’t heard before from other writers. Whether they were talking about plays, journalistic pieces, nonfiction books, or screenplays, I’d heard a version of each piece of advice before. And I didn’t necessarily go into the session expecting to be blown away by nascent nuggets. There’s plenty to be said about just being in the (virtual) room where it happens.

Therapists like to say that it takes us hearing something three times to fully absorb that information. (This is why you see so much repetition in TED talks.) Whether this was the third time or whether it was the presence of these iconic writers, who’s to say, but as a person who strives to be a lifelong learner, I plan to continue finding ways not just to absorb but to use this knowledge in my own work.