SCRIPTLAND 6 – LOVE/HATE

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I know I said I wouldn’t do this but people keep asking…when I wrote this week I was listening to:

 

Music: Johnny Greenwood’s Score to There will be Blood.

Brain Food: Pelecanos’ The Turnaround.

 

Gotta say THE HANGOVER is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a looooong time. Class.

 

As I sit here in the British Library writing…for the 9th weekend in a row (I took an afternoon out to watch Star Trek)…I think about the craft and how sometimes how much I despise it. I know I’m not alone in expressing this, I know many a writer feel the same way. It’s not about the sacrifice….last night I was invited to two parties but knew I needed a clear head for today so didn’t go…like I said it’s not about the sacrifice…I made a call long ago that my work would always take precedence over anything else and to my detriment I’ve probably lost many friends because of it.

 

I don’t advocate following this intensity your whole career but I know the only way I got a break was by obsessing about the craft. But let me be clear I think you need down time. How can you write about Life if you don’t live it? It’s about a balance. Which is another reason why I think reading is so important to writing. You can lead another Life for 350 pages and change without leaving your living room.

 

Why do I do this? Forsaking a stab at normality, spending an unhealthy amount of time alone? I can tell you one thing. It’s not for the money. It’s not about how many films I can direct. How many awards I can get. No. I believe we’re all put on this Earth to make some sort of a difference. Big or small. I believe that that the stories I want to tell have some sort of insight into the human condition. That’s not being arrogant. That’s just saying it as it is, much in the same way your experience has some sort of insight into Life too. Everyone’s does. The only difference is I have decided to put pen to paper.

 

I always think about my brothers when I think about differences. All of them in some way do exactly that in particular my older brother David who will always go out of his way to aid or help people. Sometimes at a cost. When I think about the amount of people he’s touched in a positive way…including me…frankly its humbling. So that’s why I do this. I want to touch people in what ever way I can. Thrill. Scare. Shock. Make them laugh. Make them cry. But doing that is a privilege and it comes at a cost…and that cost is why I hate the craft.

 

See anybody can write a story. Plot it out. But what makes it unique is the character and theme. Essentially its soul. That elusive element that gives a piece of work Life. But where does that come from? From within of course. Like some sort of parasite the work sucks on you, like a foetus, taking what it needs to grow. Once it has what it needs to survive and take its first steps, I think you then sit back and just describe what you see.

 

But this gestating. This incubating of the story. This bit for me personally is the hardest. Because you feed your mind with everything you can (the research bit I call gathering) your head swells so much with information it’s like angry bees are bouncing around in your cranium. 

 

I think because I am what my agent calls a ‘method writer’ (though aren’t we all?) I have to know every minutiae of what I’m doing. That means spending a great deal of time inside your own head. And I’ve said it before…there are places in a man’s head he shouldn’t go. I think that’s what drugs do. They allow you access to those places…I’ve never understood why a trip is described as mind altering. It should be described as mind revealing.

 

Before this comes over as some sort of self pitying blog, it’s not…all I am trying to do is describe my process with the hopes it may aid yours.  I should get to the point. The gathering bit of a project is the worst bit not just because of the soul searching/giving involved but also because of the amount of input. The amount of options you are presented with. You have lots of path (there’s that forest analogy again!) choices given to you…which way do you go?

 

Again though this is where I think if you have a vague idea of what you want to say…you won’t feel so lost. My latest project has taken just under a year to finish and I’m sure it’s because I didn’t quite know what I wanted to say. And because of this I stumbled and went up the wrong paths many, many times.

 

So…the point of this blog. Yes. The Gathering stage…the research. Write down everything you think may be of use. Every single thing. Always with a watchful eye on time and also do not get side tracked or become to self indulgent. It’s the road to Hell.

 

So next time we move onto the treatment…I’ll be using examples from Steve Cleary’s Arista programme…(great scheme…what happened to Steve?) plus some of my own devices…

 

Oh yeah…I don’t want to end on doom and gloom but this hate for the work…it does turn into love at some point…then when it’s all over to hate again as you can see all its flaws…then it starts all over again!

 

 

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