I’m a YouTube video essayist born and raised in Montreal. I sold my first short story for 25 cents at the age of seven and haven’t stopped writing since. When my Spongebob fan fiction phase ended, I played around with the fantasy genre—leading me through my high school and Cegep days. This year, I experimented with sci-fi and was invited to attend the 2019 Writers of the Future Award Ceremony for my short story “Darker than Black.” In recent months however, my focus has shifted from short stories to something entirely different.
My goal of improving my craft took me to some interesting places on YouTube, and my newest project seeks to craft something out of that learning experience. I’ve created a YouTube channel called “The Manic Pineapple” whose purpose is to explore the artistic value of weird and interesting content that isn’t conventionally deemed worthy of artistic analysis—this includes ASMR videos, obscure documentaries, and reality TV shows, to name a few.
While analyzing something like Ru Paul’s Drag Race for its artistic merits might not be the first thing that comes to mind after initially watching it, I think there can be a value in questioning what makes it so engaging. I’m trying to put a comedic spin on what could be a rather dry and academic analytical process, so aiming for a blend of education and entertainment has been the most daunting aspect of this project. As opposed to short story writing and traditional script writing, you can get a lot of immediate traction on a platform like YouTube if your content resonates with people, so the prospect of the channel in any way becoming successful is slightly terrifying. While I’m admittedly nervous, I’m excited to see how my work will be received. My first video is up on the Manic Pineapple YouTube channel, and I plan on uploading two videos a month.
My other plans for this Autumn involve taking steps to improve my cooking skills and finishing Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman series. I see this channel as an opportunity to challenge myself, and while I intend to remain anonymous, I see it as a great outlet for expressing the ideas I’ve had on my mind as of late. If you find yourself curiously scrolling through the interwebs for new content at some point in September, kindly stop by The Manic Pineapple on Youtube.
Who/what inspires you?
I’m inspired by other video essayists on YouTube. HBomberGuy, Lindsay Ellis, and Patrick H Willems come to mind.
This is a loaded question, but where do your ideas come from?
My script ideas come from a place of wanting some sort of medium to express my thoughts on the media that I consume. I can talk someone’s ear off about the stuff I like, so this is just a way for me to get all of my ideas out there without all of that pesky human interaction I’m normally forced to engage in.
What’s your editorial process like?
I’m a huge fan of storyboarding my ideas first and then gradually adding information to the layout until it becomes a final project. It used to be that I’d edit the same draft dozens upon dozens of times until the first paragraph was exactly the way I wanted it, but in recent years I’ve gotten better at just letting go, moving forward, and knowing that I’ll be able to make the earlier parts better once the skeleton of the project is complete.
Are you more of a gardener or an architect? In other words, do you prefer to outline or see how the story unfolds?
Definitely architect, though I’ll go the garden route to jazz it up a bit. I don’t choose a more rigid organization style out of dogmatic necessity—I just do it because it works for me. If I could just freeform all of my work, that would be preferable. Sometimes I’ll mess around with a more on-the-fly style of creative writing just to see what happens. Who knows—maybe I’ll even try that kind of style for a YouTube script someday; time will tell.
Who is your dream collaborator? (Any creative—artist, poet, writer, etc.)
HBomberGuy or Aaron Sorkin. They’re both ridiculously creative forces, and the Sorkin course on MasterClass has been exceptionally advantageous for my creative process. As for HBomber, he’s the best channel on YouTube at the moment bar none, so he’s the gold standard for what I’m currently striving to achieve.
The Manic Pineapple is a colourful little pineapple who likes big ideas and explosive art. He uploads video essays to The Manic Pineapple Youtube channel bimonthly, and some people have been saying that they’re quite spectacular (thanks dad). Follow him on Twitter for updates on all his cool stuff and track his fruity exploits by subscribing to The Manic Pineapple Youtube channel.
