I'm on the cusp of starting a new play
and I've been blankly staring at my screen for two weeks.
I know the
trajectory of the piece, I know the characters, I know that it's
titled “Rebecca Hall Saves the World”, it's satire ( though not on Ms Hall as I happen to have a major crush on her ), I know that
every single day something new and funny hits me, a new situation or
idea – I'm walking home from Tesco and something hits, something
so funny to me that I'll crack a smile in front of strangers. I
rarely smile in front of people I know, let alone strangers. This
will really work, I silently state in absolute confidence. I smiled
in front of strangers.
Then I get home and stare at my screen.
It's not block. It's fear, a weird kind of buyer's remorse, a terror
that even though no one will see this until I am thrillingly happy
with it, everyone already hates it and by extension me.
I think every writer goes through this
at some stage. Usually half way through a piece. Toward the end, when
suddenly you realise that your arcs aren't arcy enough, your
characters all sound the same, and worst of all – no one speaks
like this! I haven't even started yet and I've become crippled by a
peculiar panic. A cold sweat, a hovering, shaking hand, the knowledge
that I could go and play Tetris Battle or Angry Birds instead. I
can't write, I tell myself, because it's already written in my head.
I can't write because people won't find it funny. They'll hate it. I
can't write because I have to get past Hero Level 48 in Tetris. I
have to.
In the spirit then of compromise, I've
decided to challenge myself. I've decided to take part in a set of
exercises guaranteed to keep me away from starting my play while
simultaneously allowing me the pretense that I'm doing this to help
me rid myself of the fear and finally start what will no doubt turn
into my masterpiece. While diddling around on the interweb last week,
I discovered a near-tongue-in-cheek, twelve-day set of writing
exercises I have decided to indulge, and document.
As this is my first real blog, however,
I'm kind of flailing in the blogosphere darkness. So I've sought
guidance in writing this from a set of twelve blogging Do's and
Don'ts I also found online. I'll try to adhere to them as I work.
Oh yes, and I'm working through the
original twelve steps for addiction, too. Partly because it amuses me
to mock, and partly because I recognise I'm suffering a kind of
subversive addiction, that of beating myself up for not being able to
write. I am indulging in a painful self-loathing which I have come to
regard as my pal. I now place myself in front of the computer simply
so I can hate myself, so I can tell myself I'm useless and agree.
Will the addiction steps work? Help? No, probably not, but why not
give them a whirl all the same...
“Number one do when writing a blog -
find your focus. To do this, you must first ask
yourself this question: Who are your target readers? Once that’s
settled, you can home in on a niche category and be the expert on
it.”
Writing exercise Day 1 – write ten
potential titles of books you would like to write.
I'm not sure how this can help me, you
or Dan Brown to write but I'm trying to hang my cynicism on the hat rack for now. It'll still be there on my way out to the pub.
The fun of this particular step should
be, not in sitting down and studiously furrowing my face at a blank
piece of paper until titles come - that won't work – but in taking
my time. There's a reason this is a day-long exercise; and the fun of
it is taking the day to take part and allowing your sub-conscious to
do the work for you. The thrill is in the creation, the spark, the
spontaneous collision of creativity and pretentiousness that comes
with it. So I'm keeping a piece of blank paper on the dining table,
next to my laptop, and only when an idea comes to my mind will I
make the trek from the couch to write something down. Only when the
spark ignites.
This exercise starts off as relatively
fun and self-informative, and quickly descends into hell. Ten titles.
Easy. Right? To start off with, sure. The first three titles kind of
make sense in context, and though the exercise does not ask you to
come up with plots, notions or ideas for each title, I decide at the
start to see what I can come up to contextualise it. You never
know...
1. Rebecca Hall Saves the World -
9.00am, this was always going to be my first title. Rebecca
Hall is an actress I admire, who
has graced some decent enough movies, most notably The
Prestige, The Town and Iron Man 3.
Generally speaking she does not play action heroes so my
conceit for this play is simple –
have her caught up in a situation, in this case a zombie-
apocalypse – whereby she must
become an action hero despite only being an actress. Not an
original conceit but one rich with
potential for satire and broad comedy-horror. Can't wait to get
started on this one but I have a
list to complete first.
2. The Worm That Turned - 9.35am,
I don't know, I was watching the end of Star Trek into
Darkness and it came to me.
Possibly a play or a story, a put upon fellow who finally snaps. This
one appeals to me as a male,
something that could allow me to explore self-loathing and yet
allow me to rant at the world in
the same breath; a have Taxi Driver and eat it situation.
Shit. This is piss-easy this exercise.
This'll be done in no time. I'm awesome. I start thinking about my
target audience; who am I aiming these pieces for? What kind of
audience? Then I stall. Who would want to read my crap?
3. Um. Okay so despite myself I'm
actually concentrating now on the titles even though I should be
enjoying Fantastic Four:Rise of
the Silver Surfer. Relax. Stop thinking, allow your subconscious
to do the work for you. Yeah,
that's just like you isn't it you lazy prick. Let someone else do the
work for you. Don't actually sit
down and work on something yourself! Nah, that would be too
much like work, you unemployed
bum, you long-haired greasy oik. You just sit and watch a
kid's movie and wait until someone
else does the work. 10.30am, come up with “101 films I
Hate and you Should Too.” A
light hearted book about movies I hate that everyone else loves,
like Schindler's List. Hmm. Could
work. Maybe. It's very negative though. Still, three down!
4.1 The Sting – 11.15am, at first I
think, YES! That's a damn good title, that could be really cool,
that could be about a heist or,
like it could be a sort of Reservoir Dogs after the heist kind thing,
or it could -
4.2. 11.20am, I realise my mistake. I
am annoyed. I think okay, but it could be a play or a book
about a swarm of killer bees
that attack a small town like Wexford, the swarm could – shit.
It's already a movie, a disastrous
Irwin Allen disaster movie. Called The Swarm. I come up
with “Acid Trax,” because I'm
listening to a rave music compendium. I don't know, this
could be an Irvine Welsh thing about Irish clubbers, or
drugs, or it could be a poem or
something. Shit, this is hard. This is stupid and hard. I'm hungry
but I can't have lunch yet
because despite three years of redundancy, I'm still locked into the work-day mentality.
That means I have to wait until 1.00pm precisely before I eat.
So 12:00pm comes around and I only have
five titles and I'm thinking well Jesus five titles in three hours
isn't bad. Four, actually. The Sting is that movie with the tinkly
Marvin Hamlisch score. Right, right, but four titles in three hours
man! I don't know, is Acid Trax REALLY a good title? For a poem it
is, sure, why not? The poem could be about anything and everyone will
just think it's about drugs. It's layered. Job done. Move on.
But already I'm beginning to flounder.
I decide to put my mind off the exercise until after lunch. I'll have
a tuna sandwich at 1.00pm and maybe a packet of crisps and a yoghurt
and by then something will have come to mind. I'll watch Rise of
Silver Surfer, no that's a kid's movie, I should watch something a
bit more adult-oriented. Irreversible maybe.
By 12.30 I'm staring at the blank piece
of paper on my kitchen table with a studiously furrowed face, chewing
the pen lid ( fun fact, did you know the hole at the top of pen lid
is to stop you choking should you swallow it? Totally true ) and
desperately thinking about titles to plays, books, poems, articles,
anything just to get this stupid exercise over and done with before
lunch. I've forgotten that the whole point of this exercise is simply
to come up with titles for things I'd like to write. Focus damn it,
focus on what you're doing. Stop furrowing and start focussing.
What's the difference? I don't know. I decide to check what I look
like in the mirror, furrowing, and then focussing. I can't tell the
difference, mostly my expression is somewhat neanderthal, creased
brow and over-arching eyebrows stretching forward on a lug-like
forehead. Also I cross my eyes when I concentrate and I press my
tongue into my upper lip which makes a wet splurch noise. Weird. No wonder I'm lazy. And vain.
As lunch edges ever closer I begin to
feel stupid, frustrated, and increasingly angry. I feel like someone
is constantly poking at the bottom of my spine. I don't like it. I
feel trapped.
5. The Chair – 12.45pm. I mean, you
know – this could be some kind of Beckettian thing about a
clown and the chair he practices
with, and how it gets the best of him in some kind of
psychological, surreal and
mind-numbingly stupid way. Audiences would love it because it's
ambiguous and makes them think and
has no real ending. The Chair. Good title, great catch-all
title. The Chair! Shit, we're back
on the right road now! We're trucking now!!!! We're god damn
flying through space now!!!!!!!!
6. Ostrich Man – 12.55pm. Not proud
of this one. But it's a title. I can eat lunch now. It's about a
man who wakes up one morning and
he's an ostrich.
At 2 pm I catch myself looking around
the room for something, some object, some shard of light or speckled,
foxtrotting pieces of dust to bring me inspiration. Nothing. Nothing.
I decide to watch the rest of Rise of the Silver Surfer. Maybe I
should write a book entitled “101 Films I like and You Should Too”.
Seems very non-commital. Won't bother.
7. Shard of Light – 2.10pm. This is
a play about something. With characters.
8. Blackjack – 3.30pm, I'm doing the
washing up and this one comes to mind. I write it down.
I am on my second old-school compendium
of rave music now. I make coffee, eat a second packet of crisps and
then chew a rennie and do some sit-ups because I feel fat. I have to
heat dinner up soon. Why did I eat those crisps? I'm fat. I'm old and
I'm fat and my stomach hurts because I over-did the sit-ups.
9. The Crematorium - 4.52pm . Don't
know, could be about a guy who works there. Might have
to research this one though.
Whatever.
10. Twelve steps – 5.00pm it's an
article. I'm done. I did it. I came up with ten titles. Yes. I rule.
“We admitted we were powerless over
addiction—that our lives had become unmanageable.
Step 1 : We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
I'm still none the wiser after this first
writing exercise, I'll be honest. It was a slog. It enveloped my day
so that, even when I was watching movies, doing the housework ( I do
the housework ), listening to rave music, or just scouring pornography
sites for celebrity sex tapes ( don't be fooled, most of them are
lookalikes, and not even that close ), my mind was speeding furiously
through possible titles, hoping that between the working-day hours of
9am and 5pm I could come up with ten. Just ten. I forgot in the end
why I was even doing it. I just was. There was no feeling of elation
when I'd finished, just a deflated sense that I had worn away a day
and had only ten titles to show for it.
I think the idea is this : when you're
stuck, go to your title list and work from there. I'm sure it works
for some people. Stephen King seems to operate singularly on this
premise. I understand U2 often come up with titles to their songs
first. Producer Brian Eno has his whole Oblique Strategies set-up for
the creation of music and art so there has to be some merit to this
idea. But not alone. For me it's just not enough. It just doesn't
seem that creative. For me the title is often the final piece of the
puzzle. You choose a title to sell your play, sure, for commercial
reasons – you choose a title that seems somehow original yet
recognisable so that people will come and see your play, or read your
book, or attribute meaning to your otherwise obscure poem. You choose
a title that you hope describes the piece you've created, and as such
sells it to an audience.
As it happens, and probably ironically I came up with the title
“Rebecca Hall Saves the Day” before the idea for the play. It
tickled me and I expanded it on paper. This will be the piece I'll be
working on, and the other titles I'll most likely discard because
they were created in an unrealistic and contrived manner as part of
an exercise. They'll go nowhere. What did I get from this exercise
then? A wasted day? No, I wrote this piece throughout the day. If no
one reads it so what? It got me writing. Isn't that the point? I got
something from it, so it was worth doing. But I don't think it's a
worth-while exercise, ultimately, if you truly are stuck. It's
contrived and will not help you create. It may even hinder you, it
may even drive you insane if like me you're obsessive ( and isn't
every writer? ). I'm still institutionalised into those working-day
hours so luckily I only went insane nine to five. I'm all right now.
Swearsies. I have discovered my niche, though – discovered what I'm
an expert in. Writing about myself.
Oh, and that greater power that might
just restore me to sanity – I've started my play. First three lines
already written :
Dave : Have you ever noticed how sad
Rave music is? I don't mean sad as in lame but sad, sad as in lonely,
as in melancholic. Are you Rebecca Hall?
Rebecca : Yes and I have a boyfriend
so please don't spend your evening trying to chat me up. Thanks for
recognising me though.
Dave : Welcome. I'm not chatting you
up, I swear. My ex-girlfriend just walked in and sat down and I
needed to jump up and make it seem natural and you happened to be
Rebecca Hall which helped. Can you sign something for me?
Tomorrow, writing exercise two -
“Create a character with personality traits of someone you love,
but the physical characteristics of someone you don’t care for.”
Something tells me this blog will be shorter...
Dom
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