Nicholas Freilich was born and raised in and around Los Angeles, and has earned degrees from Brown (BA), Georgetown (JD), and Northwestern (MFA). As a writer, his fiction has appeared on This Recording and JukePop Serials, his poems in Brown University's Clerestory, and his plays have received staged readings with Chicago Dramatists. His senior honors project, a feature-length fictitious documentary, Skeeter Hammond: Handles, Hops, and the Fourth Dimension, was an official selection of the 2004 Ivy Film Festival. Though he primarily identifies himself as a writer, he enjoys working in several media, including music and film. He has scored numerous student productions, released an album of groove-oriented electro-pop in 2007, and his 2010 experimental film -- which he wrote, edited, filmed, and scored -- From Here We Elevate, received a Festival Incentives Grant from Northwestern. Additionally, his 2011 film, Surrender the West, was funded by a grant from the Regina Taylor Project.
Nicholas on...
The Process
My favorite story about the writing process is one my father tells about Christopher Trumbo (The Don is Dead, Brannigan, Trumbo), who was sitting on the beach one day. His girlfriend, I believe, came out and asked why he wasn't inside writing. Trumbo pointed at his head and said "I am writing." Then he pointed at the house and said "that is typing." It's an important distinction often lost on non-writers, but also something that many writers sometimes use as an excuse for procrastination. I find myself doing both the good kind of "writing" and the bad kind. As far as the "typing" to which Trumbo referred, I have one place I particularly enjoy doing that: my car. I have two places I will park -- one blocks away from the house I lived through the age of six, the other right on the Pacific Coast Highway, just where it meets Topanga Canyon. I stop the car, lock the doors, crack the windows, and hop into my passenger seat, which I tilt back, and then start pecking away at the keys. I generally do this after eating a restaurant meal, usually a late lunch or early dinner, during which I'll read some fiction on my Kindle to get my mind spinning. The last several months I've been slowly working my way through the entire oeuvre of Haruki Murakami. I'm not a fan of a lot of his magical realism, but he writes human moments -- and Japan -- so well.
I also take every moment where some form of writing is required as practice for Writing with a capital W, especially emails. I will look for ways to turn phrases artfully, to make sure that I'm utilizing good habits. Even in text messages I'll adhere to rules of grammar, punctuation, and I may even incorporate a literary device or two. When it's business time, I'm generally pretty easy on myself when it comes to which project I pick up. I usually have three or four open at any given time, so that if I'm tired of one, I have others I can get into. I tend to measure progress using quantity, with "1000 words" being the basic standard for any sitting if I'm working in prose, 5-10 pages if I'm writing a screenplay or play. Once I get to those numbers, everything else is "free basketball" as NBA writers would say. I'm also big on using broader measurements, too. "Did I write a story this month?" "What did I write last month?" Etc. And because I work in several media, I sometimes will give myself some slack in writing if I did some significant filming or composing. To me, the key question is: "did you create today/this week/this month/etc.?" If I can write in the morning, that's great. I love accomplishing something before noon. But most of the time, that's not how things work, and I end up waiting until sunset or later to get my work done. Not a procrastination thing, really -- it's just when I function better.
Satisfaction Moving people. If I write a story and someone reads it and says "wow, that was great -- it really moved me/made me think/haunted me/etc.," I feel tremendous. If someone likes a work of mine so much that the person feels compelled to share it with friends, all the better. While I prefer gut punches, I also get excited about belly laughs.On par with that -- and really similar if you think about it -- is exorcising ghosts/solving my own problems. A lot of the fiction I write -- though it's through the eyes of a much darker, more cynical version of myself -- incorporates 90%-real people. I figure that through the mask of this darker narrator, whatever issues I may have lingering with these people in reality may be addressable through including them as guests in my stories. I carry around a lot of guilt with me, and the time I spend with these people in these fictitious worlds helps alleviate some of that guilt. Finally, I love to travel, and writing allows me to do that, to a certain extent, in much the same way reading does. If your imagination is strong, you can insert yourself into the room with your characters and be there with them and exist in that moment, apart from the constraints of reality.
Knowing I don't know that I've truly gotten to that point yet. I am happy to self-identify as a writer, but I don't know about "viable career." That makes it sound as though I could somehow support myself through writing alone. I don't know that I will ever accomplish that. But I do know that I'm good, at least in the sense that people who read me get something out of it. And I know I enjoy doing it, and that, to me, is the most important thing. I feel as though the most fundamental thing we owe ourselves as human beings is to do what we love to do. Because when else are we going to do it? All that said, I've been listening to a lot of podcasts lately, especially those with actors and comedians I really respect. I listened to Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad, Malcolm in the Middle) on WTF with Marc Maron, as well as Michael Emerson (LOST, Person of Interest) on Chris Hardwick's Nerdist, and both said the same basic thing in terms of pursuing a career in the arts: do not measure success by "if I get this series," or "if I get this movie," etc; and don't give up. Both of them acted for years before finally making significant, livable incomes. I found both their discussions on the topic inspiring, and ideas I need to keep in mind.
As far as writers are concerned, I would say it was when I first read Don DeLillo (White Noise, Underworld) that I actually thought "you know, maybe I could do this, too." It was because I felt as though I could write like DeLillo. Not as good, but in the same headspace, the same emotional space. And I figured, if he can get published and make money writing stories like this, perhaps I could, too. I think that's what most artists need before they can say "yes, I'm going to do this because I can do this" -- an example of someone with a similar skill set who has already succeeded. Of course, then there are people who are absolutely fearless, the super-innovators, people who don't need permission from anyone. They just go out there and kick ass. I was like that when I was four or five, I think. But peer pressure really got to me. So I'm trying to get back to being four or five again, at least in terms of my fearlessness.
The First Time
The first "performance" of my work was my senior thesis, a feature-length film I wrote, directed, edited, and scored. So when I finally watched it, with 500 other students whom I had coerced into coming to the screening, I had probably seen it a million times. I'm exaggerating 1%. But feeling the energy of people in the audience respond to it was something special. But in terms of something that doesn't really have life until it's on a stage, the first time I can recall that was at Northwestern, when I saw a play of mine (Countertransference) performed by students. While the "I liked your play" sort of praise afterwards was nice, the only thing that really motivated me was the laughter. It's funny, I write some seriously dark shit. Some of it's funny, but a lot of it is, as I described above, a stomach punch for people. But the thing that really makes me feel great is hearing laughter. I'll take that over anything.
Advice Don't go to law school! No, seriously, I don't think there's any advice that would have made a difference, because I got all the good advice. I had a disciplinarian teacher who admonished us to read everything, to have respect with where we came from, and the historical context of our work (Michael S. Harper, former Poet Laureate of Rhode Island), and I had a teacher who told me to just keep going, dispose of the outlines, just see where the text takes you (Thalia Field), and I had both those teachers before I was 21. But it doesn't matter what people tell you, really, especially if you're a person who lives and dies in your creative pursuits. You have to experience it, and sometimes it means experiencing the opposite. What happens if I don't take this person's advice? What happens if I touch the hot stove? And then you touch the stove, and you learn. Don't touch the stove again. Or wear gloves. Or turn it off before you touch it. Whatever you need to do, you learn. Experience is everything. But I think the best advice is "you can't please all of the people all the time." It's so easy to get caught up in "does EVERYONE like my stuff?" Think about it this way -- for a movie to gross $100 million, only 10 million Americans need to see it. Not LIKE it, just see it. 3% of America. The vast majority will not see it in theaters, and it can still be a box office smash. Where artists -- and several networks -- get into trouble is this false dream of capturing EVERYONE. You can't do that. Not even the Beatles did that. And if you go out there intending to do so, you'll capture no one. And to take that advice a step further, I'd reference Mitch Hedberg's great line: "you can't please all of the people all of the time, and last night, all of those people were at my show." Sometimes there are nights like that. Sometimes nobody is going to like what you do. Doesn't matter. You can't get good at being you if you aren't you.
Follow Nicholas on Twitter and check out his Indiegogo campaign at savenick.net