“Demons in horror movies can target people or be summoned,” Mr. Bruzzese said in a gravelly voice, by way of example. “If it’s a targeting demon, you are likely to have much higher opening-weekend sales than if it’s summoned. So get rid of that Ouija Board scene.”
If you’ve ever run a long race then you know about “the wall,” that dreadful moment in which your energy flags, your body hurts, and the finish line feels a thousand miles away. You’ve already logged in too many miles to give up, but gathering the extra strength necessary to cross the finish line feels, well, impossible. What’s funny is that no one talks about a “creative wall,” since every creative person has felt her passion wilt during a long and difficult project at one time or another. Sometimes it can be really hard to keep going when you’re going through a seemingly endless grind.
The New Year is a perfect time to get your mojo back, baby dolls! Because you know that you have to be in it to win it, even if at times you feel like plunking your fanny on the couch and pigging out on popcorn while watching marathon sessions of trash reality TV. And so here are some tips to get that fire relit.
You know how it is. There are days when your head is buzzing with great stories… And then there are days when your mind goes blank. You’ve run out of ideas. Now what?
Woodcut from an 1840 edition of Jack the Giant Killer, reprinted in Iona and Peter Opie’s The Classic Fairy Tales
My first suggestion is to stop surfing the internet. It’s a fantastic resource if you want to find out what everyone else is reading, what’s going viral, what’s the pulse of the people. But when you’re looking for a story that’s unique, strange, or that just hasn’t been told, a search engine won’t help you much, if only because, what drives the web is traffic. And you’re looking for something off the beaten path. Yup.
It’s time to opt out of the virtual and go back to actual reality by getting a hold of the following three-dimensional sources:
“The first draft of anything is shit.” –Ernest Hemingway
Writing is one of those things that, like exercise, we avoid even though we know we’ll feel so much better once it’s over. Why do we hear so much about writer’s block, but hardly ever about dancer’s freeze, or composer’s silence, or any other kind of artistic paralysis? Any ideas? Whatever the reason, we’ve all experienced that reluctance to sit at our desks and put words on paper.
When we read about great writers’ lives all the milestones to success are clearly marked in the story: the first glimmer of talent, the years of struggle in which he or she perfected the craft, the first break, and finally success, whether it’s slow, in fits and starts or seemingly overnight. Reading all this from the outside, it’s easy to forget that what looks like a cohesive narrative may not have felt like a sure thing from the inside. It sure as hell doesn’t feel like our own careers are shaping up in any discernible way, a fact that’s discouraging. So I bring you a new feature to inspire: life lessons we can take away from famous writers’ life stories. We already have plenty of tips about the actual writing, it’s the psychological struggle where we could use some guidance. Today I start with one of my favorite filmmakers of all time, Billy Wilder.
