Look around. Everything you see, other than nature’s creations, was conceived, designed, developed and finally, manufactured by humans. In the beginning, it was one of these artists that began the process.

The hunters and the gatherers, to stay warm and feed the family, are driven to find the best hunting grounds and must see over that next hill. The need for shelter drives them to find a better cave or invent a better shelter. The instinct to survive creates group support and encourages communication and language. They literally wrote on the walls!

I’m saluting the people that communicate through the written word. Painters and sculptors communicate in their own style. A writer’s creation reflects their interpretation of something on his or her mind. This makes finished item original and easily distinguished from other writer’s creations.

So it is with writers.

If someone is needed to describe a pre-historic shelter or explain a painting or sculpture, a writer is found. If someone wants to sell a painting or statue, a different kind of writer is needed. What about the story of the artist’s life. Maybe it needs a novelist? How about a story about the knight and the dead dragon in the painting? A fiction/fantasy writer would be required.

A genre has specialists with their own recognizable styles. The variables of talent, sense of humor, timing, and more, take the scale of variables “to infinity and beyond!” Now compound this by the number of genres and you would think that the number of outstanding reading creations would be so large, we would never have to read the same book twice, see the same movie over, and Hollywood would have scripts lined up for the next fifty years.

Not so! Movie marquees constantly advertise a redo of The Three Musketeers, Robin Hood, Frankenstein, or Journey to the Center of the Earth for instance. There are many, many more. Redoes work sometimes because new minds have never seen the original of these classics and, if they don’t read, never get to know these stories unless they go to the theater. But, the remakes are being marketed to these people for the second and third time. Why?

With the economy struggling, and the cost of making a first rate feature so high, movie companies don’t want to take the risk and spend a bundle of money on a loser. They believe the tried and true will make a buck without rolling the dice. They just don’t get those ‘knock your socks off’ stories anymore, so they have no choice.

I maintain there is a shortage of imaginative writers in that industry. That industry is a closely knit group, and as I mentioned, follow extremely rigid formats.

I salute the author that can break those barriers, and become successful in that industry. The time is ripe for the skillful and imaginative writer to submit the next Toy Story, Star Wars, or The Princess Bride.

Okay, so I have high aspirations!

If you are a writer that does not have these “high aspirations”, and your words are a release of some sort, I salute you also. What an inexpensive cathartic! You have discovered that creating satisfies a primal survival instinct.

Could it be the hunter maybe? A gatherer for certain!