Writer’s Block
The mythic “Writer’s Block” …
I just experienced a couple months (two) where I simply could not write. Or rather, write anything good. Granted, I kept busy during this time — thankfully, I’m co-creating and directing Reggie Watts’ next show (www.pica.org/festival_detail_new.aspx?eventid=337) otherwise I would have been in Kafka-like despair for lack of creative output.
But for a writer, writing is a very important thing. And when you can’t do it, or feel like you can’t do it, your total sense of worth goes down the tubes. Drinking has an added tinge of despair. The sky seems duller. You wake up and think: This again?
Enter into my last few months. It started with my last p73 reading of THE WIFE, which got such a total and baffling response that it simply shut me down. You get three tiers of response from readings. There is the superficial level — everyone smiling and saying good work. This is always appreciated, of course, but you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. There are two subcategories here: People who are on your side, and whether they liked it or not, will give you honest response that will benefit your thinking in further drafts. The other: People who don’t care for your artistic project in general, and will lob comments aimed to kneecap your worth as an artist and, by proxy, human being.
Many times, the latter category are playwrights themselves. After the reading, I found myself cooking breakfast for a playwright friend of mine who was present at the reading, and as I was frying the eggs slowly over the stovetop, I was greeted with passive-agressive and outright vicious comments about my naive assumptions about Jews and women. A week later, I found myself on a train with another playwright, who similarly had major problems with how I could *possibly* depict people in this manner. In both cases, they assumed I didn’t know my tactics — that the childish and self-centered and racially incorrect POV that the play employs was somehow a mistake of my misguided perception. (read the play here to see for yourself: www.vimeo.com/tommysmith) Of course, I smiled and said nothing during these interrogations — the only thing worse than a playwright writing a play is a playwright defending a play.
When I get stuck in these situations, I wonder if people are superimposing their desire to see the narrative conform with how they view the world. I know I do this when I see work. Playwrights are people with stubborn and inflexible points-of-view — without this, we wouldn’t be able to write.
But when this stubborn and inflexible point of view becomes dilluted, we pause. We reconsider. We evaluate our tactics and purpose for writing our narrative. And we entertain the death-knell for any artist: Maybe they’re *right*.
I can’t claim why Writer’s Block happens to anyone else, but for me, it always occurs when I listen to people too much. You can’t shut yourself off to all comments, of course, because you’re in theatre, and without a certain level of communication it all falls apart. But when you feel people aren’t understanding your work, and they are letting their frustration with your project overwhelm their decency in conveying their response, you must not listen to them anymore. Even if they are right. Because the worst thing that can inflict you as an artist is a multiplicity of voices inside your consciousness. How can you possibly express yourself or your characters if you are trying to pay heed to the multiple desires of an outside commentators? I’ve seen so many promising plays destroyed by “committee” — the playwright, in an effort to make their work please everyone, creates a monster that contains a lot of elements but has no driving perspective. I would rather see a searing play from a singular voice with flawed dramaturgy (e.g. Thomas Bradshaw) than a well-made drama with nothing to say because it has three or four voices competing for dominance.
I was receiving so many varied comments on THE WIFE — many positive, some negative, all with a strong point-of-view on how it should be *different* — that I literally had to flee the city. I went to LA — Reggie and I decided to construct our show while crashing a series of couches. And the detachment ended up cutting down the voices rolling in my head. I ate lots of cheeseburgers. I swam in rolling waves. I hung out with my LA friends, who are *convinced* that everything (aside from global evidence to the contrary) is going to be all right. I disengaged. Five days before I left, I woke up with an idea, and that idea led me to my computer, and before I knew it I had the narrative for my next play. Nothing *happened* — I just stopped listening, and made myself unavailable to commentary.
I know much more accomplished playwrights than I who have been crippled by reviews, or stopped writing temporarily because of how something was received. The Block happens at all levels, at all times, all ages.
I don’t really have a final thought or aphorism to summarize all the above. I should probably get back to writing…
(Addition on 7/13/08: Just talked with Thomas Bradshaw. What I mean by “flawed dramaturgy” is that the strong idiosyncrasies of the writing and subject matter force the play to not conform to a easily recognizable structure, and in many cases, refuse to include characters we can “identify with”. I simply don’t understand this need for “identification” in characters — when I listen to classical, I don’t complain when a violin solo is too complex and out of my experience, and nor should people care if they can’t see their desires reflected in complex and challenging writing, because there are millions of different experiences and you should be grateful that you’re getting to experience one that it outside yourself.
Regardless, “flawed” plays often render themselves useless in the eyes of producers and literary managers, who have been forced to concern themselves with the desires of a phantom audience. But these kind of plays include everything by Caryl Churchill, Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline”, Sam Shepard through the 80s, Charles Mee, everything by Harold Pinter, etc. In short, masterpieces. AND the only plays we remember from that era. So the argument could be made: Flawed plays with strong points-of-view have shaped the history of theatre.)