Writer's block is the worst thing in the world. Sorry, Ugandan victims of human rights violations. Sorry, San Diegan witnesses of Jason "hey look at my son, isn't he cute, give me money, praise Jesus, fuck you" Russell's bout of public masturbation. Sorry, those of you having made the mistake of reading the article. Whatever personal traumas you may be experiencing, what I'm going through is infinitely worse. Hey, your mother may just have died, but I'd've killed her myself it meant a page full of non-contrived words. I'd even have got down with some necrophilia if it meant a few snappy one-liners.
I'm not the only person to have experienced this. [No shit, but I've gotta keep the article moving, yano?] Some are wonderfully and beautifully talented enough to actually spin their writer's block into a satisfying web of self-indulgent-but-creative storytelling. The Coen Brothers did this with Barton Fink, in which John Turturro plays an acclaimed playwright who moves to Hollywood to write movies, can't find the inspiration to write, and then John Goodman turns up with a head in a box or some shit and it gets really fucking weird. Charlie Kaufman repeated the trick when he was hired to adapt a (presumably really gay) book called The Orchid Thief and instead wrote Adaptation, a shit-hot movie starring Nicolas Cage as some guy called Charlie Kaufman who's hired to adapt a (presumably really gay) book called The Orchid Thief. Cage also plays his fictitious twin brother Donald, and once the writer's block and self-loathing shit is played out, Meryl Streep starts snorting green coke that comes from Orchids and there are crocodiles and it gets really fucking weird.
I don't, however, think I have the same writing abilities as Joel & Ethan Coen or Charlie Kaufman. These people are visionaries. Perhaps I'll get better as I get older, but right now I have about fifty pages of a screenplay [different to the one I wrote about on here a while back, although I ripped off a few ideas] and I know how to end it but it's got very outlandish and I don't know where to take it until those completely-mapped-out final scenes. Perhaps I should act like a pregnant lady and let nature run its course, jotting down ideas as they come, but I want to get to the good bits, and right now it's like there's a baby coming out of my gaping vagina, in the form of some really shitty scenes with terribly unfunny and unnatural dialogue in an otherwise quite funny comedy script. Letting nature run its course would take months on end, and would prove I'm not the behemoth of an artist I like to tell myself I am. I'll probably just smoke pot and see what happens.
FOOTNOTE:
Hey, and, y'know, fuck you, the New York Times. Your offer to let me view a most-likely very brief review of a Woody Allen-directed play from 2003 for MONEY is as appealing as I'm sure you find the offer I'm about to present you with, to suck my fucking cock.
I can identify with your frustration on some level, although it must be said that I've never formally set out to create a piece of (commercial) writing. So 'writer's block' is too grand a description for my own lack of inspiration. Let's call it 'can'tbearsedness'.
ReplyDeleteIt follows that I'm not well placed to offer constructive advice, and should therefore do one, but I certainly agree that with practice, time, age, experience and all that, you will get better. Barring some horrible brain disease or too many recreational substances, of course.
Careful what you offer the New York Times. I suspect some of them might like that sort of thing, if you know what I mean.