I’ve been reading through the early screenplay drafts of Star Wars this week, just because the process by which it came to be is endlessly fascinating to me. So many chances to make something even better than what it is — especially post-Empire. Instead, we got saddled with Jar-Jar Binks and a bunch of bullshit trade disputes.
This is absolutely destroying my self-esteem as a guitar player. My 12-string is going to be seeing a lot more playing time in the near future — it’s already tuned to C# standard.
Eight Miles High - Leo Kottke Live, 2-9-8 (by studiotrans)
Sure, you can sit there and mindmap your problem areas in your fancy software, create projects of life improvement in OmniFocus, approach your problems systematically and methodically. But honestly, it’s kind of hard to do that while you’re wounded. We’re only human. Create some space; breathe; gain some momentum and self-esteem.
While I was walking to breakfast this morning, I had the thought that the novel I’ve been working on for the better part of a year (two years, really) should maybe be turned into a screenplay.
Have I ever written a screenplay before? No.
Have I ever considered whether the story which I’m writing is actually filmable? No.
Am I going to give it a shot, and see what happens? Yep.
Hey, I’m Mary Timony. While Carrie sings, I’m just gonna space out over here and tear it the hell up with my guitar playing like it’s no big deal, that cool with you? Yeah, I’ll probably even do some tapping up on the neck while I just kinda float around in a cloud of awesome. It’s all good.
Everything you read today about creativity is about fighting against whatever it is that keeps you from doing creative work, whether that’s called resistance or friction or your Inner Editor or whatever other thing you call it. It’s all about getting things out of the way, and sitting down to do what you want.
But what about when you have more than one thing going on (say, working on a draft of a novel, working on writing songs for an album, and writing articles about a basketball team, not that I know anyone who’s trying to do all three of those things at once) and the problem isn’t that you can’t get started, but that you can’t figure out how to split your time up so that each one of those three things – all three of which are very important tome the creator in question – so that all of them continue? What about that? How do you split your time evenly between the things you want to do so that one of them doesn’t wither and die?
If all you ever do is push through resistance, eventually you’ll burn out. If all you ever do is try to plan out your time, you’ll never spend any of that time actually doing anything.
I need to find a balance. I don’t feel like this area of creative work has been explored much by people who pontificate about creativity; resistance (I use that term because of The War of Art) is such a big roadblock that I guess sometimes people don’t get to this stage. We’ll see how it goes.
Trying to write a thing about being in bands and working in those creative relationships, but having a lot of trouble figuring out how to say what I’m trying to say without being negative.
) is such a big roadblock that I guess sometimes people don’t get to this stage. We’ll see how it goes.