Sunday has evaporated, and so far I haven't managed to pick up the
threads and start the whole thing moving again.
It's not utterly miserable, because I do at least remember that it is
possible to do, that there was a story coming from somewhere and ending
up on the page.
I do wonder if somehow I (or some ID like me lurking within) didn't
*create* the crash to bring my progress stuttering to a close, just as I
was building up momentum to deal with the most difficult re-write, the
scenes which has brought me to a standstill before.
Certainly that may have conditioned the way I responded, the frozen
shock, the hours spent putting it all together again.
It's even a bit reassuring to know that I have come up against the core
difficulty, the scene, the actions that I don't want to look at, don't
want to describe. Now I know what they are, and how far part of me might
be willing to go to turn aside from them.
Honestly though - where does story come from?
Because it's not from a rational place. No amount of plotting and theme
weaving and character exploration is going to move things along as fast
or as well as the sheer flow of story from brainstem to screen via
finger tips. All those rational things have their place in the process,
as does just turning up to do the work, day after day, week after week,
even if no work gets done, or the work is done and then nestles down in
the waste paper basket to raise dust-babies two days later.
Two weeks ago I had nothing. All those hours of typing, all that
plotting and replotting, all that "turning up" - and nothing. Nada. No
words. No story. Enough to make you want to throw the laptop off the
Jubilee Bridge then follow it.
Then from nowhere, 4 whole days when the whole thing, from A to B,
starts to unfurl in the mind, and there is no part of it you cannot look
at without seeing the through line, and the words to complete it.
It will come back (nothing is more certain) but I am still foxed as to
the circumstances in which it arose, and so how to go about recreating
the conditions which will make its return more likely.
1 comment:
I know just what you are talking about here, Tanya. While I would in no way compare what I do [fan fic writing] with what you do [professional writing] I, too wonder where the inspirational streak comes from and where it goes.
For instance, I have written THREE 'Professionals' fan fics in the last week and a half! Plus I have written pages of an fourth much longer story. YET I can't finish off the last couple of epilogue pages for a MFU fic I have been working on since last year. What's happening?
Creativeness much come from some deep part of our subconscious that follows its own agenda and won't be wrangled.
Don't give up....it will come again.
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