Write what excites your imagination not your wallet.

Kurt Sutter on what to write. (The Commonplace Book Project)

The Commonplace Book Project is a daily post based on Ray Bradbury’s advice to aspiring writers: read a poem, a short story, and an essay every day for 1000 days. These posts start with a quote and go wherever the rabbit hole leads. Follow The 1000 Day MFA publication so you don’t miss a thing.

“Write what excites your imagination not your wallet. Find something that inspires you, that makes you feel something, that pushes your primal buttons” — Kurt Sutter, Sutterink.

Kurt Sutter is most well known for creating The Sons of Anarchy. He worked on The Shield before that, and he wrote the screenplay for Southpaw (which I loved.)

Sons of Anarchy is incredible. I’m pretty sure it’s nearly universally well-loved. I do not, generally, like tragic stories. Everything can be hell all through, but I need a happy ending. I watched the first six seasons of Sons of Anarchy in a feverish binge, as the seventh and last season was airing. I had to take a break until the last season went to Netflix.

And I couldn’t do it. I found out how the story ends and the fever broke. I just couldn’t watch the last season. Last year I re-watched the entire first six seasons again, and loved them just as much, so I thought I’d finally finish — but nope.

Apparently, I have no problem whatsoever with deciding that in my little world, stories are not tragic.

So, I struggled with the end of The Sons of Anarchy, but I was so excited for Sutter’s next project. An historical series called The Bastard Executioner. I watched that one as it aired, one episode a week. It was beautiful — shot on location in Europe, a full-on costume drama set in Medieval Wales.

If I ever meet Kurt Sutter, I’m sure all the other fans will be swooning over Sons of Anarchy and I’ll be the one standing there going . . . but The Bastard Executioner. (That happened to me once. I met Stephen Chbosky at a writer’s conference. Everyone else was losing their minds over The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which I adore, but I was like . . . I just have to tell you that Jericho changed me.)

I’ve just finished re-watching the 1987 Beauty and the Beast series and decided to revisit The Bastard Executioner next. It’s interesting to me to compare the two, to try to understand what draws me to them.

And also, I think I love the Commonplace Book Project the most because it gives me the chance to do something as weird as compare Beauty and the Beast to The Bastard Executioner.

Anywho.

Both have main characters who are men with brutal natures who want to have quiet, conventional lives, but can’t. I think I just am drawn to tortured characters, despite the fact that I can’t stomach a true tragedy. I love the broken people.

Both have beautiful, lush settings that are intensely inspiring to me.

Where Beauty and the Beast spends nearly two full seasons managing to tell one of the most romantic stories I can think of without a single kiss, much less a sex scene, The Bastard Executioner (which aired on FX) has scenes that border on pornographic right from the first episode.

The Sons of Anarchy is one of the few shows where its creator is well known to the public. I mean . . . Shonda Rhimes, Kurt Sutter, and . . . who? I’m not sure I can name another showrunner.

That probably led FX to be willing to produce an expensive period series, shot on location in Wales. The world wanted another Kurt Sutter vehicle.

The show was cancelled after only one season, when ratings weren’t high enough to justify the cost. But he got to develop and bring to life a passion project. That’s pretty damned cool.

One of Sutter’s most recent projects is a comic book called Sisters of Sorrow. I’ve added it to my reading list.

I’m not sure if I’ll watch the Sons of Anarchy spin-off, Mayans M.C. It’s weird, but I have the same feeling I did when I just couldn’t make myself watch the seventh season of the original show. Like the story has taken root in my own imagination and I don’t want anyone to tell me the way I want it to be is wrong.

We’ll see though. I might change my mind. FX renewed it for a second season.

I enjoyed this interview, where Sutter gives some advice about screenwriting.

The best advice I ever got as a writer was from a guy who’d had some success as a screenwriter when I was trying to figure it out. And it was: If you want to be a writer, you write every day. At the time, it kind of sounded like a brush off and oversimplified, but as I got into it, I understood what he meant. The truth is — and I don’t mean this to sound brash or disrespectful — there are a lot of people on the right and left coasts who claim to be writers or screenwriters, and they’ve written one screenplay, and it’s sitting in the back of the car. They spend more time trying to get people to read their script, get a job, and make money, than they do writing, you know what I mean? And I think that’s a mistake. It’s not about selling the script; it’s about writing. So, if you’re a writer, you write every day. And if you do that — if you put in at least four solid hours of writing a day towards what it is you claim to be and aspire to do — you create a body of work. Yes, you can’t just lock yourself in a room and write scripts and think someone is going to knock on your door and buy them; there’s definitely a business component. But I think the mistake people make is that they generate one project, and then spend all their time and energy trying to sell it, rather than move on to the next project and write.

Here’s a Rolling Stone article about Sutter that I thought was interesting, too.

“I’m way too hypersensitive. I’m not the kind that can let shit roll off my back. I can be in a room where 999 people love me and I will focus and obsess about the one dude who doesn’t. I did not get filled as a kid. I am forever hungry. I want to find that one guy and find out why he doesn’t like me. But it’s not about changing his mind. I wanna fuckin’ chop his head off. But then afterward, if I was wrong, I have no problem apologizing.”

Today’s Poem:

A Small Needful Fact by Ross Gay

Is that Eric Garner worked for some time for the Parks and Rec. Horticultural Department, which means, perhaps, that with his very large hands, perhaps, in all likelihood, he put gently into the earth some plants which, most likely, some of them, in all likelihood, continue to grow, continue to do what such plants do, like house and feed small and necessary creatures, like being pleasant to touch and smell, like converting sunlight into food, like making it easier for us to breathe.

Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She is an out-of-place Nevadan living in Northwestern PA with her husband, three superstar kids, two dementia patients, a good friend, Alfred the cat, and a yellow rescue dog named Maybelline Scout. She’s on Twitter @shauntagrimes and is the author of Viral Nation and Rebel Nation and the upcoming novel The Astonishing Maybe. She is the original Ninja Writer.