When I began writing Night Music some years ago, I reached a point where I hit a wall. I think this is true for many writer, but I'd never been a "real" writer before and I didn't know about such things. It was on my flight back to Denver from Vienna that a hole exploded in that wall and I got my angle: how to bring the story to the reader. From that point on the book wrote itself. I just offered up myself as its vehicle.I've been having the same experience while writing my screenplay. Several weeks ago I hit that wall again, but this time, seasoned professional that I am, I recognized it and backed off, allowing the ideas to simmer. I didn't blog about it; I didn't even talk about it to Nettl, to whom I tell everything. I decided to pressure cook it and let the physics of creativity do their job.
Sure enough, a breakthrough came last weekend as I lay in bed waiting for sleep to take me away. "Watching the movie" (as I call my method of falling asleep), I closed my eyes, allowing the random thoughts and images to float across my mind and move on past. Suddenly, it hit me. The Angle. How to get my story to the viewer. My eyes flew open and I was flooded with that feeling of, "Yes! That's it!" I wanted to get up and write it down, but it was already dawn and I knew that my idea would still be there when I woke up. I fell asleep watching not only the movie, but The Movie.
Since then, I've been hammering these keys every minute of the day and night. The laundry isn't getting done and I'm down to my last pair of sweats. Last night's dinner was pizza and the newspapers are piling up beside my chair in the bedroom. My cell phone hasn't been reactivated and the AC in my car still needs a new refrigerant cannister. But what of it? Priorities are priorities. Even the switching of my meds --and the resultant crappy effect that always has on me-- has to take a back seat right now. My screenplay is writing itself.
