Pick the Fruit When it's Ripe
I don't choose what I write.
One morning, I realize my dramedy script has stalled. The new scenes are labored, predictable. Even the fixes I make here and there don't seem to go in the right direction. It's all going to crap.
Meanwhile, without even looking: three ideas for a comedy.
Everyone knows writing (creating in general?) is 10% inspiration and 90% work. So if you wait for the divine spark to get going, you'll never do anything. Sometimes you have to push yourself a little. Get the machine running and see what comes out. Right?...
I'm less and less sure.
Of course, the writing process itself – the work it takes to get the idea down on paper, to revise, to reread, etc. – can hardly be shortened. I'd even say it tends to get longer with experience. In many ways, what makes a professional, a craftsman, is knowing how long their work takes. Unlike me with music, for example, getting offended that I can't crap out a track in an hour like the musicians I follow on YouTube. (The word "crap" isn't chosen at random, as we'll see.)
But when it comes to pure creation, the mental process of making new ideas, of pulling them out of nowhere, my theory is that the time it takes, like the quality of the ideas themselves, varies exponentially with the circumstances.
The line you come up with in one go as you walk out of a meeting where you got pushed around a bit, say, which you build on with a comeback you didn't dare say in the room, then a whole exchange that could have happened, until you've invented an entire scene that could go in a courtroom drama or a crime film: you could never write the same thing the following week, sitting at your computer. Not with the same energy, the same wit.
Same with the nonsense your brain can't seem to stop producing after an improv session with other creators sharing the same old joyful silliness: none of it would come easily on a Tuesday morning at the office.
And finally: the nostalgia that colors everything after a painful breakup, the sadness of the world, the shittiness of things, you never express it better than at rock bottom.
The best comparison I have for this idea involves toilets and number two – here we go. Not out of a love of vulgarity (though used well, it rarely bothers me) but because I couldn't find anything clearer or more universal:
Picture an office worker whose job is to produce... shit. Literally. He's paid to deliver one quality turd a day, so he's not allowed any blessed laxatives, which would contaminate his sample.
His day can go two ways:
- Walk into the bathroom at 9 a.m. – to show he's serious, disciplined – and then for hours... Push. Push. Breathe out, rub his belly, rock his hips and thighs. Sweat. Not dare to come out for fear of being taken for a slacker. Feel the panic rise: "Am I doing it wrong? Maybe I'm not committed enough? Not motivated enough? Not focused enough? What if I never shit again? Am I a dilettante, a fraud, a loser? Have I wasted my life?"
Or:
- Spend the day at the park with his kids and his dog. When the urge comes, go to the bathroom, do his business, wash his hands and poof: workday over!
Put that way, everyone agrees.
And yet, how often do we try to force things instead of letting nature take its course and picking the fruit when it's ripe? Count them over a day. It's often much, much more than we think. When the job itself isn't built on constantly violating the natural timing of the world.
That said, it depends. I made progress on my novel by writing very regularly every morning for long stretches. So it can be done. But usually, those writing sessions only serve to arrange, into nice compositions, the fruit already picked up by chance along the way. And nothing says it'll be a quality turd in the end.
UPDATE 1: The sociologist Niklas Luhmann, not exactly known as a slacker, says it better than I do:
"I only do what is easy. I only write when I immediately know how to do it. If I falter for a moment, I put the matter aside and do something else."
- Niklas Luhmann
UPDATE 2: Since we're on the subject of toilets and creation, go watch this (very) short film I just put back online, which is about exactly that. One of my first films.