The Green Lantern: Thinking vs. Doing

I don't want to spoil it for you if you haven't seen it -- not that I think I could. Like Thor, also recently out, I was underwhelmed. Note to filmmakers trying to make a fast buck on comic book heroes: Develop your characters. Please! Think Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson. The reason Spider Man is my all-time favorite comic book hero is because I care about Aunt May and Mary Jane and Spidey's best friend/sidekick Harry Osborn. I can't even remember the name of Hal whatshisname's girlfriend, let alone his dweeby sidekick--and I saw the movie LAST NIGHT. I can't even remember the (minor) evil dude's name, and the major evil dude is not even a character really.

But that's not what I want to talk about. Aside from the fact that Ryan Reynolds actually does make a perfect superhero, the only thing I got out of the movie is the premise behind the Green Lantern story. I didn't read the comic books, so I hope it won't spoil it for you if I talk here about the green energy that powers the green lantern and the green ring.

SPOILER ALERT! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK:

Okay, so here's the jist of it: The source of the green light is the human will. Fear, represented by the color yellow, is the enemy of will. Ryan Reynolds' character, Hal Jordan (I had to google it), is the first human lantern. There are lots of other alien lanterns across the cosmos fighting fear with their green lights of impenetrable will. The minor evil dude on earth who is, what else?, a scientist is a sad-sack whose pathetic life, we are to assume, is the result of succumbing to his own fears. He comes into contact with matter from the major evil dude out in space and his fears begin to grow from his own thoughts. He can hear the thoughts of other people calling him names, which further feeds his fears.

Bear with me. I'm getting there. The minor evil dude is the son of a handsome senator played by Tim Robbins who is embarrassed of his son. During a party, he draws a comparison between the hero and the villain. The hero is a man of action, a do-er. The villain is a thinker. As the minor evil dude's fears grow, his head becomes larger and larger.

What has this to do with writing? Just this: Sometimes we think too much.

Before I take a long plane ride across the country or across a vast ocean, I google airplane accidents. When my husband is away on occasion, working out of state, I gravitate toward television programs about serial killers and home burglaries. And when I sit down to write a novel, I google my idea until I find another book already out there exactly like it only better, or else I conclude from my research that I'll never get my head around it all.

I am the queen of self-sabotage. I am my own worst enemy. Sometimes I can hear other people's thoughts about me, and they're all bad.

The Green Lantern is not much of a thinker. He's a do-er. Do-ers just do it. They feel fear like the rest of us, but they don't think about it.

Here's what I found out recently when I sat down to finally at last once and for all finish my short story collection: Don't think! Do as my friend Susan Woodring advises and just make it all up, everything, even the stuff you know is going to be wrong. Save google for your second or even your third draft.

Here's something else: Move your body. I know -- this is me talking, self-made physical antithesis of all things exercise. But I mean it: Move it. Every time you have the urge to google or check Facebook or submishmash or Zoetrope, get up and do something, anything. Just move away from the computer and DO. There's a freaky cool connection between the body and mind (you know this stuff) that makes doing laundry and making beds as much a literary practice as sitting down to outline a 400-page novel or reading a book. You don't need Freedom. Okay, maybe you do need it (I know I do--Thanks again, Susan!), but even so, writers should move their bodies more often. Henry Miller rode a bicycle. Hemingway walked the quais of Paris. He hunted the plains of the Serengeti, for criminy's sake. (And wrote "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" about it, among other things).

My husband is a marathoner. I like to make fun of him about it. I send him YouTube animations like this one that parody runners as mindless droids. We share a laugh at the truth of them.



But there's a truth behind the truth of my making jokes: I'm afraid. Or rather, I'm intimidated, which is the same thing. Running a marathon truly is an act of will. So is writing a novel. To do either one takes superhero-level courage, not your ordinary "I think I can" courage of the little train that could, but all out I WILL DO IT! courage of the Green Lantern.

Jump up right now. Stop thinking. Go do something, and then WRITE!!!