On Avoiding Writing as Long as Possible
Hi all,
Sorry for the long radio silence — I’ve been travelling and, of course, procrastinating. Speaking of: latest issue, below!
On Avoiding Writing as Long as Possible
I’m not one of those writers who loves to be writing or, to be honest, even likes it very much. It’s often a strain for me to put words to paper: not in the traditional writer’s block sense, I don’t sit at an olde worlde typewriter, my fingers suspended in the air, nothing coming. My version of the block starts earlier in the day than that, my mind will do or say anything to prevent me from sitting down at my desk and opening a document: once I get over that barrier things tend to flow okay.
I think the tendency to procrastination comes from a fear of things being fixed. There’s an old adage that all writing is re-writing, and of course that’s true. But I also think there’s a danger to leaving everything to the redraft. There’s an important moment, I think, when things move from an ineffable, chaotic head-melange, not yet on the paper — where the difference between good and bad, right and wrong doesn’t yet exist — to something being written. And no matter how much you re-write I’m not quite sure you can ever get that moment back.
Because of this, I’ve built tricks into my writing process: an attempt to fake myself into putting off this moment of fixity as long as possible. At one end, this is about outlining, I go through all kinds of outlines. I sit in front of a board with index cards for days on end. I make bulleted lists. I re-order the list, scratching out plot points and reinstating them. No matter how many words I write down at this stage — thousands and thousands probably — I can tell myself that it’s not really writing.
At the other end, I also write treatments. Long, painfully detailed documents that are sort of, but not quite, in script form. These will include bits of character notes, plot points, snatches of dialogue. My aim is to take away choices. That way I can make all my mistakes early and, more importantly, I can fix them: again because nothing is written yet.
What that hopefully means is that when I actually do come down to write a script, a lot of the processing power that’s going on in my head is focused on how to formulate the words on the page.
I’ve been reading… Sally Rooney’s CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS
Last month I spent a little time in Dublin, and so I thought I’d pick up something by Ireland’s current foremost novelist (I’d somehow managed to miss Ordinary People in both its book and TV incarnations). I found Conversations with Friends compelling and engrossing while I was in the midst of it, but I haven’t really missed it since I finished. Rooney’s story is about Frances, a young poet who embarks on an affair with an older, married man creating psychodramatic complications for him, his wife and her friend and erstwhile lover, Bobbi. It didn’t — at least for me — rise above the (very fun, don’t get me wrong) sexual intrigue to say anything larger or more lasting.
I’ve been watching… SEVERANCE
I’ve blasted through SEVERANCE over the last week, and it truly is a little corker of a show. As well as having a LOST mystery box style plot, and occasional Lynchian flights of the surreal (if you haven’t seen it yet, I have two words for you: waffle party), it also has a central sci-fi concept to die for.
What’s really exciting about the show for me is that it’s managed to find a quite unique science fiction trope that opens up seemingly endless possibilities in terms of storytelling. The show is about a group of workers who are installed with a chip that means they don’t remember anything that happens in the office: effectively severing their work selves (or “innies”) from their “outies.”
The idea of these warring consciousnesses inside the same body has all kinds of thematic resonances: the horror of trying to be human while getting by under the yoke of capitalism, how we have different faces for different people in our lives, the search for an authentic self. Season 2’s been announced and it feels like it still has a lot of mileage in it.
All my best,
James.