Say My Name [ Teacher-Student Romance -- Robert Downey Jr ]

Ch.16 - Lectures And Conversations

Second upload for RDJ's birthday! Thanks for the 15 comments :) next upload will be Thursday :)

Enjoy!

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"Confidence. A hard thing to come by, isn't it?" Mr.Downey sighs, kicking out his feet in front of him.

"It takes a hell a lot of time to achieve yet, two milliseconds and it's dispersed. Gone. Getting it back can feel much like trying to relocate a particular orange gold fish out of a swimming clump of them."

"Now imagine that difficulty and apply it to something as personal as writing. We'll start off with you already being confident, in the act of losing it, not having already lost it, okay? You work day and night perfecting something that means more than the world around you--or at least at that point it is. Anyways, you get it published and you're excited, you're stoked for your little baby to be a bun out of the oven and for the world to be consumed by your fictional land of thoughts. Reviews come out. It sucks. Like wind being taken from your sails. Ouch."

"Suddenly you find writing harder than it was the first time, because truth be told you were innocent, unmarked or tattered up by society. They chewed you up and spat you out. So your confidence takes a nose dive, you know how it goes."

"You stumble around in the dark looking for the light switch but there isn't one. It's hidden somewhere and no, you can't use your phone to look for it. Or, hm, here, another example. Maybe a little more relatable in age. Have any of you partied too hard, known you were a little tipsy, aka a lot tipsy, and the simplest task like trying to do your normal night routine? Usually easy, yes? Now burdened with this thickness between you and your brain. Is that not similar to losing confidence? Does your whole damn world seem like it's tilted?"

"And depending on what inflicted your wound, your change in faith varies. Failed a test? Different. Fired from your job? Different. Fought with a friend? Lost a pet?" Mr.Downeys focus subtly flicks to her for a moment, "Moved cities?"

"All those things affect you and everything that makes up you. You lose confidence you lose everything. Now imagine trying to write from that low down, trying to meet a deadline or whatever. It's hard. To be frank, I don't have a magic key that fits all the locks. We're all different, we all tick as different battery clocks running the same frame of time. I do find though that what helps getting back into things, is getting back at what your passions are. Start there and find your way. The things you love, the things that make you laugh, or cry happily. That's where you start. So when you get to publishing your book, your paper, your script, whatever, go back to that. Start from there, and focus on what makes you happy, not every asshole and there dog. Write for you, do what you want for you. So when that bad review comes, how many there are, remember that this is your book, your success. Not some jerk who failed at perusing his dreams and dropped to doing sh*tty reviews on people who made it beyond the level he did--unless that's your big dream, writing reviews. Then f*ck you." He jokes.

"See what you have to offer as a tester to people out there who are attracted to the same genre of interests as you. Be in writing, or dating, or whatever. You know how all these celebrities have fans? How a fan of like Ryan Gosling, could be head over heals for the guy, but not understand what's so great about Ryan Reynolds? Everyone has tastes, and I'm sorry if you don't like it but you will be slotted into certain categories in people's heads. Not ones out to hurt you, they just have opinions, likes, dislikes, and everything goes through that metre, even you do it."

"You're probably wondering where I'm going with this, but get used to it, this is how I teach. So anyways, after that big spiel, I'm going to let you guys write me essays after break about your categories, your likes and dislikes and what not. Don't come up to me complaining about it being a crap project. You cannot, and I repeat, you cannot write a thing if you the writer don't know about you. You have to be confident in at least one thing, and that's yourself. The relationship between you and every little other thing can be tampered with but you must fight hardest to make sure you like you or else you won't be getting anywhere."