25 Mins

Lessons from Pixar, the messy middle, and more.

I set myself a 25-minute timer to write a Substack post because I’ve been lacking for a couple months now.

I have a Q&A I’m going to release to you next week with the extremely funny and insightful Chris Duffy about his new book Humor Me. It’s great, but I didn’t want to just drop that on you out of the blue.

That feels mad rude. I wanted to at least say what’s up.

What has been keeping me busy is working through another draft of my novel. I got back some notes on the previous draft that I’m setting about addressing, but also trying to shore up bigger questions before I get down into the nitty-gritty. Structural stuff, stakes stuff, character stuff. I know the story I want to tell, I know some of the core pieces and the core players, but I’m trying to twist that Rubik’s Cube around to make sure the spine of this thing is right before I go in and get busy on the line level.

One of the things that has been helping me lately is Pixar movies.

Over the last few months we’ve been on a bit of binge at home. Mostly because I’m trying to keep my kids away from a lot of these new shows full of jump cuts and things happening every five seconds like its Michael Bay for toddlers and more toward actual narratives they can follow. We’ve watched all the Toy Story movies in preparation for Toy Story 5 coming out in June (which I’m probably the most hype about in my household). I also watched WALL-E and Up for the first time and both blew me away.

I’ve been so impressed by the story telling of these films and also, more importantly, how well they hold up.

Take a movie like Toy Story for example, which came out in 1995. The other day my kids, my wife and I, and my in-laws all watched it together and found so much enjoyment out of it for various reasons—whether it is admiring the animation, the plot, the depth of the characters, or even the theme song (which still bangs). Three generations of people entertained by a film is incredible. That’s art. I know some of you are cinephiles and go to the NYC theaters and watch the black-and-white films with the sparse dialogue. But trust me.

In any case, I’ve been thinking about these films a lot and thinking about what it means to make art that can hold up that long. What goes into it? What is the creative process behind it?

In addition to watching the films, I’ve been listening to some good podcast conversations with the main creators over at Pixar, such as this one with Andrew Stanton who has written and directed WALL-E, A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo, and more. He shares some great insights about the purpose of play and about treating your work in progress like a child you’re raising. You have ideas in the beginning for how you’d like the story to turn out. Who the characters are meant to be. What is meant to happen and so on. But at a certain point, as the story grows and develops, you have to get out of its way and let it be who it wants to be. Just like how you have to let kids dress themselves and have their interests and develop, whether they like what you want them to like or not.

Then there is also this conversation with Pete Docter, the chief creative officer at Pixar who has played a hand in writing and directing Toy Story, Monster’s Inc., Inside Out and more. Docter, similarly, talks about an essential part of the creative process being discovering what the thing is as you go along, and how a place like Pixar inspires that process by pushing people to try new ideas out, write crappy versions of them, and “fail fast.” He also expands on one of the main maxims at Pixar: “story is king.”

These conversations have been extremely valuable to me as I remind myself to trust the process with this new thing, and also, to keep pushing until I find the right container that fits the story it’s evolving into like a glove.

I’m getting close, might have even cracked it in the last couple days (let’s see how the writing progresses from here) but also trying to remind myself to take my time and focus on quality—which is something I’ve gotten loud and clear from the Pixar folks.

There’s a reason why a movie like Toy Story still holds up, and will continue to hold up for years to come.

Future of the newsletter

I wanted to let you all know I’ve made it a goal to write more consistently here, and I plan on getting back to my twice-a-month cadence that I used to have when I first started this in 2022. Even if some of those posts are more styled like this—just giving you an update on where things are, writing some notes about process or what’s happening week to week, or setting a timer and going with what I got at the moment.

To be honest with you, time is only part of what has stopped me from writing more frequently. The other part is worrying about contributing to the amount of noise out there. There are so many newsletters and podcasts and articles and so forth. Every day my tabs grow and grow and there’s never enough time to get to even a fraction of them.

And while I love Substack—and in particular the community that has assembled around this humble newsletter over the years—Notes is also beginning feel noisy in that algorithmic social media way. Like OG Twitter, including all the infighting and drama. That’s not a game I’m really interested in, so I’ve been re-evaluating the time I’m spending on Notes, and you’ll see me less there.

Because of that, however, I find myself wanting to show up more here. In this space. This feels healthier, and more meaningful. So that’s why I’m renewing my mission to post some more.

Since I’m not on Notes a whole lot these days, I invite you all to reach out through email (by replying to this newsletter or hitting me up on my website for example) if you have ideas or thoughts or questions or just want to say hi.

Email gets a bad rap, and I hate spam as much as the next person. But when I get an email from someone with a genuine question or thought or just a human pulse (which these days feels rare!) I appreciate it—even if I might take a while to respond.

In any case, I’ll be dropping that Q&A with Chris next week. So please be on the lookout!

NYC event

Finally, I also wanted to mention that on April 21st I’ll be back in NYC to help celebrate the launch of Erin Van Der Meer’s debut novel, The Scoop. We’ll be in conversation together at 7pm at Books Are Magic in Brooklyn (Montague Street) and you can get your tickets for the event here.

Erin sent me a copy of her novel a while back and I raced through it on a flight, mad stressed because she brought me right back to an experience both of us lived through in the past: working in newsrooms that—often out of sheer survival—chase clickbait and lean into outrage and gossip and the worst of human tendencies because they want to attract those goddamn eyeballs. It’s a fun, propulsive read about a desperate woman caught up in this wild business, trying to find clarity as the lines between ambition and morality blur. Honestly, it feels like a cousin to Victim.

If you’re around, I encourage you to come out for what I’m sure will be a fun conversation. I plan to find a place nearby to get a drink or two after, and I’d love to catch up while I’m out here.

Aight. Timer’s up. More soon, and more frequently.

Peace,
Andrew