Why We Write: Simon Nagel
Read reflections from one of our 2014 Black List Lab alums...
Why We Write is back with another new essay from 2014 Black List Lab alum, 2014 Hasty Pudding Fellow and 2025 Unpublished Novel Award recipient Simon Nagel. Simon has worked on a wide array of film, television and fiction projects since we first met him back in 2014 — learn more about all that he’s been up to here.
Take it away, Simon!
There’s this little trick I play on myself when I have a hard time explaining something. I’ll ask my 9-year-old self to take over. Kids have an amazing way of getting to the heart of the matter with very little fluff. So what I do is summon this imaginary 9-year-old version of myself and bribe him with a rice crispy treat in exchange for his wisdom.
The rules are simple. One take, no thoughts, just go. Kids are highly intuitive and get things right more than we give them credit for. I don’t double back on anything, and I’ll usually get the answer I’m looking for in about 45 seconds.
So, after numerous, headache-inducing false starts to answer the most basic question of “Why do I write?”, here’s what 9-year-old me in an oversized polo shirt with chocolate stains had to say:
I write to connect with people and to understand the world we live in. It’s very hard to say “I write” because my instinct is to say “we write.” Writing is a form of connection. It pulls us together like a patchwork quilt. Writing is the act of minimizing loneliness. There are lots of feelings that at first seem like we’re the only one experiencing them. But everyone feels what we feel at one point or another, maybe just not in the way we might expect. Writing is the great prism that refracts our feelings and projects them beyond our own internal journey into something much grander and more colorful —
I’ll stop it there. One, I caught myself doubling back and two, 9-year-old me somehow aged into 39-year-old me over the course of a paragraph. Now that’s character development!
It’s shocking to me that I’ve been writing for nearly 20 years. What does it all add up to? I go back to the ancient phrase: “As above, so below. As within, so without.”
Writing is balancing what we find within ourselves with what we experience in the world around us. Too much interior exploration and it becomes journaling. Too much external observation and it becomes journalism. There’s nothing wrong with either, but writing a dramatic narrative is a navigation between the two. It’s wild alchemy, both art and science, and in some ways neither.
The biggest danger that I’ve found with all of this is that it’s very easy for your own life to disappear behind the pursuit of writing. It’s a decent paradox — writing to understand your life experience but in the process not experiencing actual life. Fortunately, there’s a great way to bypass this problem and make your writing far more compelling:
Go do stuff. Live someplace that scares the shit out of you. Take a chance. Make your heart skip a few beats.
I don’t think I wrote anything worthwhile until I turned my entire life upside down and confused my friends and family by moving abroad… thrice. I’ve changed careers, forced myself to talk to strangers, given up everything I’ve owned, and gotten lost more times than I’d care to admit. The second I eliminated familiarity and comfort from my life, I suddenly had lots of things to say that felt uniquely me. And not just to say, but to feel, process, sculpt, carve, re-evaluate, and dream. I didn’t even know who I was until I started writing from a position of complete disorientation.
This brings a specific moment to mind. It was a cold day in London. I was standing outside the laundromat (dryers aren’t common like they are in the United States). A cold wind pierced my clothes. I usually recoiled at that, but for some reason I wasn’t bothered. The penetrating cold reminded me that I was alive. I looked over the gray streets and felt like I had been let in on some kind of secret I had yet to truly understand.
These are the moments that make me want to write. Maybe someone else has also felt that cold. Maybe they know what the secret is.
Simon Nagel is an award-winning writer and creator working across film, theater, and interactive narrative. His feature screenplays have been honored by the Academy Nicholl Fellowships, the Black List Lab, and the Hasty Pudding Screenwriting Fellowship. His thriller DESERT FLOWER is currently in development with Jason Bateman’s Aggregate Films. An avid (and occasionally lost) traveler, Simon has written around the world. His novel GATES TO NOWHERE took shape in Scotland, London, and briefly in California. GATES TO NOWHERE received the Black List's Unpublished Novel Award (Sci-Fi/Fantasy).
Thanks for contributing, Simon!
More Why We Write:
Jainaba M. Seckan on writing through loss and finding new purpose
Brandon Carbaugh on writing for his beloved brother
Kryzz Gautier on the tremendous power of genre storytelling
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