It seems there was a bit of a rumpus this week surrounding what should be done for free or not.

Looks like it started when Oscar nominated screenwriter Josh Olsin (“History of Violence”), threw down a tiny gauntlet with the following rant:

“I will not read your fucking script.

That’s simple enough, isn’t it? “I will not read your fucking script.” What’s not clear about that? There’s nothing personal about it, nothing loaded, nothing complicated. I simply have no interest in reading your fucking screenplay. None whatsoever.

If that seems unfair, I’ll make you a deal. In return for you not asking me to read your fucking script, I will not ask you to wash my fucking car, or take my fucking picture, or represent me in fucking court, or take out my fucking gall bladder, or whatever the fuck it is that you do for a living.”

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Apparently this created a whole new cottage industry for what folks will not “fucking do”.

See Mark Lisanti’s response over at Movieline:

“I will not help you pick out your fucking headshot.”

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Now, I actually found all this funny. Especially the part about picking out headshots (everybody hates that).

I was all ready to add my own tiny rant, “NO, I will not look at your fucking edit!” and then I came across this…

“Where grit must always be hidden, though, is in art. Art is by nature about hiding the struggle: the wrestle with words for the writer, with time and sound for the composer and performer, with the stubborn materials in the hands of the visual artist. Art is about emerging from that struggle victorious and showing not the least sign of strain, which is to say grit, for having done so. The artist in effect says, Look, Ma — you, too, World, look! — No hands! Art is about making things seem effortless, or so at the least is the art I most enjoy.”

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Via Joseph Epstein over at Incharacter.org in his post “Blood, Sweat, and Words”.

Yeah. I’d probably say I find writing tough. And I’d probably agree it’s sometimes a burden to “have” to read someone else’s work. And I promise you it’s equally a burden to look at someone’s edit of their project and give them “notes”.

But after a week where we all had to listen to this…

I’d have to agree with Joseph Epstein:

“I have never liked to suggest that writing is grinding, let alone brave work. H. L. Mencken used to say that any scribbler who found writing too arduous ought to take a week off to work on an assembly line, where he will discover what work is really like. The old boy, as they say, got that right. To be able to sit home and put words together in what one hopes are charming or otherwise striking sentences is, no matter how much tussle may be involved, lucky work, a privileged job. The only true grit connected with it ought to arrive when, thinking to complain about how hard it is to write, one is smart enough to shut up and silently grit one’s teeth.”

Or… just keep your cakehole closed.