Don't Worry. Be Happy

Here’s a tip on how to write happy: be like Francis Ford Coppola who says he does all his writing very early in the morning because nobody else is up, nobody calls, and no one has hurt his feelings yet.Pretty sweet little insight into this giant of American cinema, eh? But also a good insight into what we all need in order to create or even just do our work: we need to feel unencumbered in our spirit, free from self-obsession, ready to stop focusing just on ourselves and start focusing on what-all is around us.I love hearing writers of fiction say that they’re as curious as anybody to see what will happen next in the stories they’re writing. They almost all say it too: that they invent these characters and the characters just start talking... That must be so nice, to feel that you’re just the stenographer in a way. It must be very freeing.I write only non-fiction and find that I'm happiest when I wake up early enough to work for a good two hours before the 'real' work day starts. I go right to my laptop at 6:30 with that first cup of coffee and feel as if I’m just opening a wide window onto the world. Today I felt even happier than usual knowing that it would snow all day, and here it is a Saturday so we can just relax and watch it fall.We’re meant to love our time here. We’re meant to love our work too. Many people hate it when their work involves deadlines but what can you do? Deadlines come with the territory in life.I used to fret so over this column that I've been writing since 1980, because it goes all over the country and that’s a lot of people to let down if I write something glib or half-baked or inauthentic.I also used to get all whiney about how hard it was to write once a week. Then, three years ago, I decided to try writing every single day, and now I never feel whiney at all but only happy. A paradox!Francis Ford Coppola once said, “It’s ironic that at age 32, at probably the greatest moment of my career, with The Godfather having such an enormous success, I wasn't even aware of it, because I was somewhere else under the deadline again.”Maybe we all do that early on: fret over the deadlines in our lives. Then slowly, over time, we learn to enjoy life more and fret about it less - and hopefully check our fat little egos at the door.Here's a great short interview done when Coppola was only 36. I really love what he says a minute and 20 seconds in. The great ones are often humble like this, ever notice?[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJhTWBl4EiU]

The Kids are Reading My Diary Part Two

So far only my oldest kid has begun reading the 30-volume diary I offered them all last week. She's really enjoying 1980, she says. She loves meeting our whole same cast of characters younger. It's how we all felt 20 years after the first Star Wars when all of a sudden here came a prequel with this hot Obi Wan Kenobi all  young and wrinkle-free. Or like when Godfather Two came out and instead of Mumbles Marlon as the Don  we had Bobby DeNiro, fresh from his bad-boy role in “Taxi Driver.”I know they're a tad worried about what they might learn there but they shouldn’t be. Everything I was ever writing I was writing for them, before I even met them or saw them in my dreams.Plus there's no whining in these volumes - except maybe about the time their dad just went to CVS for my birthday and got me jumper cables and a can of 3-in-1 Oil. I still remember sitting on the back stairs at midnight that night, sobbing and pulling my own hair and ah the drama of the young!  Still, how would any young mother react when her husband said in the course of the fight that really it was silly to make a big deal of birthdays?Today I'd be able to see that he was just feeling defensive and on the ropes.  Also today if he said something like that I’d laugh right out loud and quick as a wink reach into my handy memory-pack for some nice vintage example of his own emotional vulnerability. Then he'd laugh too.  We’re such pals now we've grown almost fond of one another's foibles and blind spots.So “Relax,” I would say to my kids.  “The diaries are just a series of funny tales with you guys at the center” And also, “Remember when you were small and it was just us five,  in that little 'house' we called our family? Remember a few years down the road when we began adding 'rooms' to that metaphorical house and the family started really growing?”Yeah. I'd say that. And I'll say to you guys now that when I look at these lively young faces above and below all I can think is I wish I had written down more.