What Would Wertime Do?
January 21, 2007When things get tough, we all turn somewhere. Some people turn to Buddha. Others to Shiva. Me, I turn to the teachings of Dr. Richard Wertime, professor extraordinaire.
In between counseling apprentice writers to avoid disembodied dialogue and scolding them about their blatant information mongering, Wertime will get a gleam in his eye and say, “We wish to understand our human experience, even if we understand it wrongly. An explanation of what we perceive and experience is, all in all, better than no explanation.”
And when you stare at him blankly, he will look you right in the eye and urge you to “Write this down!”
In the midst of a discussion about ordering the elements, which morphs into a lecture on inadvertent objectification, he’ll drop a jewel on you like “What people are consciously concerned about and unconsciously concerned about are not always the same.”
Write that down.
Because you’ll remember it. You’ll have a fucked up night and some Wertime-isms will dance around in the back of your mind. Because above all, he reminds you that just like the characters you create, you’re constantly reinventing yourself. At any moment, you can step out of the muck and choose differently.
So when you ask What Would Wertime Do, the answer might mean that instead of falling into your usual role, you might find yourself flying down 95 at 1:30 in the morning, heat on, windows down, blasting the Pixies and doing your very best Frank Black imitation. “If the devil is six, then God is seven.”
Choosing differently feels really good.
