Silence? Not always golden.
by
William Womack, June 2nd, 2008
Misery, if you love company then get your scrawny ass over here. Both of my loyal and astute readers may have noted my switch to a new minimalist style of blogging. This vastly more efficient technique works thusly:
- Think up good ideas
- Analyze them to tatters
- Stuff the shredded bits in the trash
- Repeat
And the best part is, all of this can be done without once striking a key! I’m proud to announce that I can now have 100% of the anguish of writing while completely doing away with the pesky actual writing part.
Fortunately, this new strategy covers not only my blogging, but my novel-in-progress too. Every morning, I wake up with a well of ideas like a jar of creamy, delicious peanut butter. Mmm, look how perfectly even and brown, so smooth, so inviting. I just want to drag a spoon through it and watch it ripple and curl. Then I sit down to feast, and all I can find is a straw. So I suck until I’m blue in the face. When it’s all over, there’s peanut butter everywhere, I have a raging headache, and I’m still hungry. Also, I’ve ruined a perfectly good straw.
Maybe my inner critic is acting up, or perhaps the moon is in the seventh house, but Jupiter is not quite aligned with Mars. Maybe I’m just in a blue funk and all these words I’m trying to put down will look better tomorrow morning. Whatever the case, I’m not dead, just temporarily offline. You know what would make me feel better is to hear from some of you intrepid writers. I’m sure you’ve never dealt with this sort of unproductive nonsense, but you have friends who have. How did they overcome the “I hate everything I write” blues? Regale me. Tickle me. Make me write bad checks.
| 3.0 |
Well, I haven’t tackled a novel per se… But for my current film I’ve had to wrestle mightily with script-writing.
The trick that worked for me: ignore quality altogether, just go for quantity of ideas. I set myself the challenge of writing 50 pages of story brainstorming in a week.
I like the numbered list format, because it makes it easier to go back and find things — and it gives a profound sense of progress. So I’d write “1.” and a paragraph about an idea, then “2.” and a paragraph or so about whatever idea came next to mind… Ad infinitum.
Don’t pause to tweak what you’re typing — just get everything you can possibly think of out of your head as fast as possible.
I figured if I explored *all* possible options, the *right* option would ultimately make itself known. I liked the process so much, I repeated it several times. Then, 180 pages later, I knew what I had to do for the script.
On a related note, a maxim that’s helped me in numerous situations: Whenever I find myself stuck or procrastinating, it’s not because I’m weak or there’s something wrong with me — it’s almost always because there’s some step of the process in front of me that I simply don’t know how to accomplish.
The block is not mental, it’s practical. When I’m able to remember that, I’m often able to figure out where the step is that confounds me… And then I can apply better tools to the problem than berating myself for not doing the thing I *seem* to be avoiding.
My blocks all come from one of two things: the inner critic getting the upper hand or a type of low-grade depression that can be alleviated by doing something physical and non-work related.
If it is the former what is called for is “play” - quantity instead of quality as the last commenter said. Just let it rip and have fun with it.
My cure for the mildew of too much work is a trip away from the scene of the crime; go to a coffee house, stationary store, park, wherever people gather and your mind can refresh.
See you Thursday, bright and early!
wow, sounds like me! (but without thinking of the good ideas first.) i keep hoping i feel more inspired when the sun comes out. in the meantime, i find a good bike ride often helps.
Those are good pointers. I have read somewhere too, that one must write while the inspiration is there and to h_ _ _ with the editing. The rationale is that when the thoughts/ideas of a writer has started to “flow”, it is likened to a water from a dam that could not be stopped. Stopping the flow would be tantamount to destroying it.
Good posts . Thanks for sharing.