Friday
Oct292010
Masterwork
Friday, October 29, 2010 at 10:22PM
The last couple of days I've been having a really good time drafting a script for the current theatre project I'm working on, One Forbidden Thing. It's getting exciting! And I'm noticing again this phenomenon: every time I write, and it's moving along, I'm convinced that what's coming out of my fingers is just brilliant. On some level, I have to be, or it wouldn't make it out of my head and onto the page. It has to seize me, delight me, convince me that it is powerful and funny and important or whatever, or I can't bear to write it and I sit there with a growing desire to check Facebook.
The feeling has little bearing on the value of the piece I am composing. There have been times I've gone to bed convinced that whatever I just produced is the most amazing thing ever written, only to look at it in the dreary light of morning and understand its irrevocable mediocrity or suffocating boredom. And then there have been times when I've wrestled with myself, slogging through distraction and depression, to churn out something barely usable, that the next day looks pretty all right.
Anyway, predictably, there's an emotional high involved in feeling like I am currently producing a masterwork. It's addictive. It comes easier, that feeling, the more often I am writing. It's sOOoooo, God, SO hard to get started, but then it's grind grind grind and then it's chug chug chug and then it starts to fly and that's better than anything.
I haven't felt that so much with writing theatre lately. Essays and some limited poetry and good long emails have come easily and satisfyingly to me, with that coincident grandiose love of what I am making, but writing Friend's Enemy, for example, was a chore nearly the whole time. In fact, if I think back over the times I've had primary responsibility over the text of a significantly-sized project (not that often, as I have been blessed with some incredibly talented wordy collaborators over the past many years), the last time I felt the sing of a large and glorious vision was maybe back in college, when I was proudly assembling a dialogue amongst 20th century poets to be performed onstage by a nude chorus about simple delight in humanity (thank God that one never saw production; it would have been a disaster.)
The point is, the last day or so of working on the One Forbidden Thing script, the singing came! The angel choir descended! I see before me the way through this beautiful, shimmering, profound, incredibly complex play and it is WONDERFUL! It will be my MASTERWORK! I understand EVVVVERYTHING!
So that means nothing, really, about the result. I'm currently nine pages into a very rough first draft that exists more in my head than on the page, and most of the substance is being generated by the actors of the ensemble in rehearsal. But it sure is nice to stop writing, not because I'm out of ideas, but because I'm out of time for the day, nice to have it on my mind as I try to sleep, nice to WANT to talk about it instead of dreading people asking me about it. There's something to work on in every inch of it, and I waste time bouncing back and forth because I suddenly understand the way to tie THIS together, and introduce THAT, and develop THIS...and I have to force myself to focus on whatever little section I decide to stop on.
So here's to inspiration, when and where it chooses to descend, and may I make as fertile a home for it as I possibly can for the rest of my life forever, amen.
In other projects: in case I haven't pestered you about it, I started an advice column about dealing with people. Which means that I am twiddling my thumbs waiting for questions to answer. So far I've gotten two. Come on! You've got a question, right? Everybody does! I'll even take silly ones! Or serious ones! The site is http://whatifiwrote.blogspot.com and you can send questions to whatifiwrote at gmail dot com and it would make me very happy if you did.
Love 'n insomnia,
Alissa
The feeling has little bearing on the value of the piece I am composing. There have been times I've gone to bed convinced that whatever I just produced is the most amazing thing ever written, only to look at it in the dreary light of morning and understand its irrevocable mediocrity or suffocating boredom. And then there have been times when I've wrestled with myself, slogging through distraction and depression, to churn out something barely usable, that the next day looks pretty all right.
Anyway, predictably, there's an emotional high involved in feeling like I am currently producing a masterwork. It's addictive. It comes easier, that feeling, the more often I am writing. It's sOOoooo, God, SO hard to get started, but then it's grind grind grind and then it's chug chug chug and then it starts to fly and that's better than anything.
I haven't felt that so much with writing theatre lately. Essays and some limited poetry and good long emails have come easily and satisfyingly to me, with that coincident grandiose love of what I am making, but writing Friend's Enemy, for example, was a chore nearly the whole time. In fact, if I think back over the times I've had primary responsibility over the text of a significantly-sized project (not that often, as I have been blessed with some incredibly talented wordy collaborators over the past many years), the last time I felt the sing of a large and glorious vision was maybe back in college, when I was proudly assembling a dialogue amongst 20th century poets to be performed onstage by a nude chorus about simple delight in humanity (thank God that one never saw production; it would have been a disaster.)
The point is, the last day or so of working on the One Forbidden Thing script, the singing came! The angel choir descended! I see before me the way through this beautiful, shimmering, profound, incredibly complex play and it is WONDERFUL! It will be my MASTERWORK! I understand EVVVVERYTHING!
So that means nothing, really, about the result. I'm currently nine pages into a very rough first draft that exists more in my head than on the page, and most of the substance is being generated by the actors of the ensemble in rehearsal. But it sure is nice to stop writing, not because I'm out of ideas, but because I'm out of time for the day, nice to have it on my mind as I try to sleep, nice to WANT to talk about it instead of dreading people asking me about it. There's something to work on in every inch of it, and I waste time bouncing back and forth because I suddenly understand the way to tie THIS together, and introduce THAT, and develop THIS...and I have to force myself to focus on whatever little section I decide to stop on.
So here's to inspiration, when and where it chooses to descend, and may I make as fertile a home for it as I possibly can for the rest of my life forever, amen.
In other projects: in case I haven't pestered you about it, I started an advice column about dealing with people. Which means that I am twiddling my thumbs waiting for questions to answer. So far I've gotten two. Come on! You've got a question, right? Everybody does! I'll even take silly ones! Or serious ones! The site is http://whatifiwrote.blogspot.com and you can send questions to whatifiwrote at gmail dot com and it would make me very happy if you did.
Love 'n insomnia,
Alissa
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