When You Don't Feel Like Writing
I hope you're well and happy and full of The Write Stuff today.
Almost finished the first part of my new doco - "I See Dead People". Yay! I should be able to put up the first nine minutes on YouTube later today. I think it's working well...
When it's complete I'm going to try and get it on the festival circuit - and apply for post production funding.
Plus of course the new
HD camera means I'll be working on lots of new projects this year,
including Easy Way to Write stuff and a couple of exciting drama
features in the pipeline.
After the doco, I'll be trawling the planet for a couple of young actors!
Keep Writing.
Rob Parnell
THIS WEEK'S ARTICLE:
When You Don't Feel Like Writing
Rob Parnell
Just because you start writing doesn't mean you know where you're going - or even that you feel like doing it.
Sometimes
you get days like these, when you know you must write (to live or
eat or to fulfill the promise you made to yourself) but inspiration is
lacking, or your circumstance or head space isn't particularly
conducive to creativity.
Heck, when I was slaving to make a living back in the 90s, most days were like that. I'd
get so frustrated knowing that each hour spent in an office or on a
factory or shop floor was a precious set of moments I could never get
back - time when I could have been doing something worthwhile.
Writing, in other words.
And
then, during the evenings and weekends feeling dog tired and
uninspired, hating myself for never having the time to write - and
as a consequence getting drunk and hungover to compensate for my self
loathing.
Which, of course, always made the situation worse.
God,
how I hated Sunday evenings, enduring the creeping dread that
accompanied knowing the working week was about to begin again the
following morning...
Maybe
it was just me. Nobody else I knew appeared to feel the same way.
Nobody else hated the system that made us work for a living as much as I did. Or so it seemed.
Of
course, what I didn't realize at the time was that the prison I felt I
inhabited was self imposed. That I lived that life as a kind of
subconscious self punishment mechanism - like Thomas More wore
a shirt with hair on the inside - to remind him of his own sins.
But
I did feel trapped. The money I made working 9 to 5 was never enough to
pay the bills anything but two or three months late - and still there
were the toys we had to have to make life bearable, but actually just
compounded the misery...
A
couple of times I tried to make the break. Gave up work to write.
Didn't work either time because I felt guilty, didn't try hard enough.
The final time it worked because I meant it.
God
knows, I have to admit I prayed for help that final time. Help that
came in a round about way. Getting sacked for writing a novel at work -
and my boss smiling and saying, "You and I know, Rob, you shouldn't be here. You should be at home, writing." No malice, no anger in her voice, just a kind of complicit understanding when she added, "Just think of me as the bitch who made it happen."
Now, I see the wisdom in her words. She was an Earthbound angel, really, forcing me to face up to what was in my own heart.
That I had to make a decision - and stick to it.
And the way to make a decision stick?
Act like your life depends on it - and that there is no alternative.
None.
Nothing to fall back on, no safety net, no soft place to fall.
It's like that every time you write when you don't feel like it.
You must summon that energy somehow, even if there's only a tiny spark left - and focus it on one word after the other.
Force the words out, even if they're just nonsense or a direct reflection of the mood you're in. You've just got to get started.
And
trust that your inner instincts are right - that you are a writer
first. And that getting words out and on to a page is what you're
supposed to do...
And
knowing that the agony of wrenching words from your soul is actually
part of the problem and the solution - the cause and the effect all
wrapped up into one.
Of
course writing should be easy but that doesn't mean it's wrong when
it's hard. I've known writers for long enough to know that getting the
right words down - hell, any words down - sometimes is a monumental
feat for a writer, for anyone.
But it's the wanting of it that's important.
The wanting is the key to the door that unlocks the inner you.
The you that was meant to be.
This
is why habit is so important. Our bodies, not our minds, crave
regularity.
The need to breathe and eat and sleep is written into our
DNA - the cyclical patterns that sustain us. We need to make writing as
important as our need to breathe, to eat or sleep.
And when we write every day, we make that happen.
Purely
by repetition do we convince our subconscious that, yes, this is our
modus operandi, that writing is a daily part of who we are. And that by
writing, we are sustaining ourselves.
And
like any habit, anything done with regularity, when we do it we get the
mental reward, the serotonin rush that causes us to feel satisfaction
so we can relax and enjoy the process...
And guess what that brings?
Yes, oh yes.
We are writing again - and all is right with the world.
Keep writing!
Rob Parnell
The Easy Way to Write
The Easy Way to Write
THIS WEEK'S WRITER'S QUOTE:
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“If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.” Tennessee Williams
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