The Block! The one writers fear...
October 3rd 2006 13:05
Some people says writer’s block is a figment of the imagination. Some say it’s like Winston Churchill’s ‘black dog’, his name for depression, which often visited him, never leaving his side. You sit down to type… and stare at the screen. You know what you want to say… but there’s a curtain between your thoughts and the impulses that drive the muscles to tap the keys. You’re desperate to get it out… and it sits there like a lump of unfermented dough in the middle of your head. And then there’s the internet, if you’re silly enough to have your work PC hooked up to it. It’s like a library and newsstand combined, and open 24/7, even longer. And as a writer, there’s all the research you need to do. It’s easier to research.
Two hours later, you’ve trawled through Japanese ceramics, the ancient gates of Bukhara, the coming uses of robotic warfare, new developments in computer science, read a dozen short articles on English towns… and still haven’t written a word. Because it’s easier. You can sit at your desk and pretend you’re writing. Act. Simulate. Pretend.
In case you hadn’t guessed, I’ve had a bit of it lately myself. And on its bad days, it’s tough. Because you wonder if it’s All Gone Away this time. When that day comes, you’ll be a boat left waaaayyy up a tidal river, stuck on a mud bank. What will happen to you?
My advice: don’t force it. If you really can’t do anything, well, don’t. get up. Walk away. Give it a rest. Do that research anyway, watch movies, all the stuff you didn’t do when you were committed to churning the stuff out. For me, it was catching up on all the library books I borrow, thinking “This’ll be good, I’ll read this”, but never find the time to actually sit down with. After the interval of your choice (a few days/weeks/months), sit down in front of the keyboard, but don’t expect anything. Just type. A letter, a blog post, a shopping list, a short memoir. Doesn’t matter what, see how it feels, which will either be, “yep, I’m back” “that wasn’t easy, but I think I can start”, or… probably a big blank – you don’t feel connected to it. If so, stop and go away for that interval again.
Another method I find useful is the sifting of ideas, as I mentioned in an earlier post, combining different story ideas to see if I can come up with something that will spark the imagination. Sometimes an idea so overwhelmingly good comes along that I spend days on the net and Word and notebooks pouring it all out, all the ramifications, all the stories that spin off the central idea, all the unearthing. I could share a dozen of those… but then, they might just be a bit too good to resist.
Okay here’s one. I’d still like to do it, but it’s hard going making it work, and I’ll explain why.
Before ‘O Brother Where Art Thou?’ came out, I was thinking about ‘The Odyssey’, and how it had been co-opted by the likes of James Joyce and the literati on one hand, and the archaeologists and the deep study and in some cases outright fantasising of what they thought happened back then, on the other. Between them they had drained a vital story dry, that an ordinary person in the street thought it was too lofty for them to read. It’s about a guy who can’t get home! What’s not to understand? So I set myself the task of writing an exact parallel version of the story, set in modern times. But with its elements of long journeys, gods, fighting and giants, how?
Then, a few weeks later, I overheard a conversation, and the words are still burned into my head to this day. Two guys talking, football fans, about a mutual friend:
“Mate, when his team won the Grand Final, he didn’t get home for four days!"
BOOM! Trojan War = Grand Final. Fan = Odysseus. His other friends = the crew of Odysseus’s ship. Then I hit a snag. Who are the gods?... I mean, they have to be aloof, unreachable, as they look down and manipulate events according to their whim… much like… much like… the very rich do! The richer you are, the more godlike you are. A fictional Rupert Murdoch = Zeus. Circe and Calypso = Paris and Nicky Hilton. A TV presenter (former sportsman) = a hero on the lines of Hercules. The journey took Odysseus ten years. Let’s lengthen the fan’s journey from four days to two months, to cover a relatively short distance, given modern transport, that should take half a day at most. And what of Penelope, and all her suitors. Uhhh… she inherited the family working-class business (say, building company) from her dad, but isn’t actually married to the fan. and all these other guys want to move in, she’s pretty well off, y’know.
Research. I reread ‘The Odyssey’. Made lots of notes. Character outlines. Locations. Plotted the journey on a map. Changed some locations. Figured out who the bad guys were (Rupert’s brother). Came up with a cool way to portray the Underworld, where the dead are. Wrote an outline. Rewrote it. Started in on the script. Modified the outline. It was going great…
And then it wasn’t. Only after I had started the script did I discover one of the flaws of ‘The Odyssey’, and when I say flaw, only from the perspective of modern storytelling. It’s like this. Odysseus and his crew, call them Odie and The Guys, sail somewhere and get into trouble, Odie reacts, and gets them out. Then The Guys sail somewhere else, get into trouble, Odie reacts, and gets them out. Then The Guys sail… you get the picture. The key word in this is ‘reacts’. Your protagonist has to act, preferably first, not react. I couldn’t make it work, that these Guys kept getting into all sorts of shit, and Odie has to bail them out. After the fourth time, it got too hard. They work in the outline, but it was getting harder and harder to make Odie believable as a person, and The Guys acted so dumb! I’m sure I’ll find an answer one day, but for now, it’s reluctantly consigned to the bottom drawer.
And that was about… eight months all up (between all the real world stuff like work). A long time, but no writing is wasted. I’ll return to it at some point, and it was good practice.
But the point is, you can see how this project fired me up. It got me thinking about our society and how to transpose the Greek mythological hierarchy onto it. Where the story was set. What kind of people they were. What parts of the story we can relate to today. It really was fun. And will be again.
So trawl, find that story that acts as the spark for the imagination that will drag you out of the despair, and kick on! Anything and everything has the potential to be a story. Just look at a situation and say, "If this were a film, what would happen nerxt...?" You may be surprised.
Two hours later, you’ve trawled through Japanese ceramics, the ancient gates of Bukhara, the coming uses of robotic warfare, new developments in computer science, read a dozen short articles on English towns… and still haven’t written a word. Because it’s easier. You can sit at your desk and pretend you’re writing. Act. Simulate. Pretend.
In case you hadn’t guessed, I’ve had a bit of it lately myself. And on its bad days, it’s tough. Because you wonder if it’s All Gone Away this time. When that day comes, you’ll be a boat left waaaayyy up a tidal river, stuck on a mud bank. What will happen to you?
My advice: don’t force it. If you really can’t do anything, well, don’t. get up. Walk away. Give it a rest. Do that research anyway, watch movies, all the stuff you didn’t do when you were committed to churning the stuff out. For me, it was catching up on all the library books I borrow, thinking “This’ll be good, I’ll read this”, but never find the time to actually sit down with. After the interval of your choice (a few days/weeks/months), sit down in front of the keyboard, but don’t expect anything. Just type. A letter, a blog post, a shopping list, a short memoir. Doesn’t matter what, see how it feels, which will either be, “yep, I’m back” “that wasn’t easy, but I think I can start”, or… probably a big blank – you don’t feel connected to it. If so, stop and go away for that interval again.
Another method I find useful is the sifting of ideas, as I mentioned in an earlier post, combining different story ideas to see if I can come up with something that will spark the imagination. Sometimes an idea so overwhelmingly good comes along that I spend days on the net and Word and notebooks pouring it all out, all the ramifications, all the stories that spin off the central idea, all the unearthing. I could share a dozen of those… but then, they might just be a bit too good to resist.
Okay here’s one. I’d still like to do it, but it’s hard going making it work, and I’ll explain why.
Before ‘O Brother Where Art Thou?’ came out, I was thinking about ‘The Odyssey’, and how it had been co-opted by the likes of James Joyce and the literati on one hand, and the archaeologists and the deep study and in some cases outright fantasising of what they thought happened back then, on the other. Between them they had drained a vital story dry, that an ordinary person in the street thought it was too lofty for them to read. It’s about a guy who can’t get home! What’s not to understand? So I set myself the task of writing an exact parallel version of the story, set in modern times. But with its elements of long journeys, gods, fighting and giants, how?
Then, a few weeks later, I overheard a conversation, and the words are still burned into my head to this day. Two guys talking, football fans, about a mutual friend:
“Mate, when his team won the Grand Final, he didn’t get home for four days!"
BOOM! Trojan War = Grand Final. Fan = Odysseus. His other friends = the crew of Odysseus’s ship. Then I hit a snag. Who are the gods?... I mean, they have to be aloof, unreachable, as they look down and manipulate events according to their whim… much like… much like… the very rich do! The richer you are, the more godlike you are. A fictional Rupert Murdoch = Zeus. Circe and Calypso = Paris and Nicky Hilton. A TV presenter (former sportsman) = a hero on the lines of Hercules. The journey took Odysseus ten years. Let’s lengthen the fan’s journey from four days to two months, to cover a relatively short distance, given modern transport, that should take half a day at most. And what of Penelope, and all her suitors. Uhhh… she inherited the family working-class business (say, building company) from her dad, but isn’t actually married to the fan. and all these other guys want to move in, she’s pretty well off, y’know.
Research. I reread ‘The Odyssey’. Made lots of notes. Character outlines. Locations. Plotted the journey on a map. Changed some locations. Figured out who the bad guys were (Rupert’s brother). Came up with a cool way to portray the Underworld, where the dead are. Wrote an outline. Rewrote it. Started in on the script. Modified the outline. It was going great…
And then it wasn’t. Only after I had started the script did I discover one of the flaws of ‘The Odyssey’, and when I say flaw, only from the perspective of modern storytelling. It’s like this. Odysseus and his crew, call them Odie and The Guys, sail somewhere and get into trouble, Odie reacts, and gets them out. Then The Guys sail somewhere else, get into trouble, Odie reacts, and gets them out. Then The Guys sail… you get the picture. The key word in this is ‘reacts’. Your protagonist has to act, preferably first, not react. I couldn’t make it work, that these Guys kept getting into all sorts of shit, and Odie has to bail them out. After the fourth time, it got too hard. They work in the outline, but it was getting harder and harder to make Odie believable as a person, and The Guys acted so dumb! I’m sure I’ll find an answer one day, but for now, it’s reluctantly consigned to the bottom drawer.
And that was about… eight months all up (between all the real world stuff like work). A long time, but no writing is wasted. I’ll return to it at some point, and it was good practice.
But the point is, you can see how this project fired me up. It got me thinking about our society and how to transpose the Greek mythological hierarchy onto it. Where the story was set. What kind of people they were. What parts of the story we can relate to today. It really was fun. And will be again.
So trawl, find that story that acts as the spark for the imagination that will drag you out of the despair, and kick on! Anything and everything has the potential to be a story. Just look at a situation and say, "If this were a film, what would happen nerxt...?" You may be surprised.
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Comment by CarolineTigeress
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Comment by Australis
The Scriptwriting Blog
Personal Blog - A Writer's Life
apologies for not replying before now. It's all bneen a bit... something.
You reminded me of the time I was out for lunch on a weekday one time, and the table we were at was near a small group of what is sometimes called Ladies Who Lunch. You know they type, who have nothing better to do with their days but meet with friends and talk about whatever theitr lives are revolving around t that moment, usually something dfrom the shallow end of the phiolosophy pool.
The conversation was so fascintaing (and so loud) it prompted me to get out my notebook and write three solid A4 pages about these people, what their lives must be like, and how they filled the day. Since then, I always keep an ear open for perople's passing conversation, because you'll never know what you'll hear (which may be a subject for another post!).
Thanks again,
A
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Any problems I've had have always been to do with not having anything to say in the first place.
Maybe sometimes being overwhelmed by the quantity of research and ideas, but that's more a matter of laziness than block...