WRITER'S BLOCK I

These days I find many of my students at the Academy Studio – ScreenWrite.In come up with the answer very often: “I was not in a mood to write” or “I don’t think I’m getting the right thing to write”, some even say straight, “I have a Writer’s Block.”

Is there a Writer's Block at all? Or is it one’s reason just to avoid what one should be doing – write? I’m of the opinion Writer's’ Block is another name for your priority to do something at a given time. If your priority is to write, well you write. When one is hungry and crave to fill in, I don’t think anyone will come up with a Hungryman's-Block. Ha Ha!

This’s a quote I like very much and I have posted this in facebook long back: "The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair." (Mary Heaton Vorse)

Well, I’m not being cynical, and I do agree most of the screenwriters and writers will have trouble with Writer's Block at some point in their lives.

From my experience of having seen other screenwriters work, also having written many a screenplay, I can well understand the many many hitches during the process of writing. Writing is of course a journey, like life itself, like the story one writes itself. Trepidation, anxiety, a life change, financial commitments, the end of a project, the beginning of a project…almost anything, it seems, can cause that particular feeling of fear and frustration in the writer.

Let me ask you something: What's the most arduous part of writing? Or, what phase of the writing process gives you the most of burden? Is it developing the story? Structuralizing emotions? Rewriting? Revising? Editing?

For many of us, the hardest part of all is ‘getting started’. Sitting down in front of a computer screen or a blank sheet of paper, facing a blank wall, and--and nothing.

"The easiest thing to do on earth is ‘not write’."

(William Goldman)

We really will want to write. We may be facing a deadline that should compel us to write. But instead of feeling motivated or inspired, we grow anxious and frustrated. And those negative feelings can make it even harder to get started. That's what we call "Writer's Block."  

Or sometimes, even after we start writing with labored focus, making time to write will always be something of a struggle. With friends and family, financial obligations, and emotional issues all vying for our attention, it takes determination to make a writing schedule and stick to it. Writer's Block, of course.

When asked about the most frightening thing he had ever encountered, novelist Ernest Hemingway said, "A blank sheet of paper." And none other than the Master of Terror himself, Stephen King, said that the "scariest moment is always just before you start [writing]. After that, things can only get better."

  

It’s interesting to read what’s found in Wikipedia on Writers’ Block:

Writer's Block is a condition, associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task at hand. At the other extreme, some "blocked" writers have been unable to work for years on end, and some have even abandoned their careers. It can manifest as the affected writer viewing their work as inferior or unsuitable, when in fact it could be the opposite.

Writer's Block may have many or several causes. Some are essentially creative problems that originate within an author's work itself. A writer may run out of inspiration. The writer may be greatly distracted and feel he or she may have something that needs to be done beforehand. A project may be fundamentally misconceived, or beyond the author's experience or ability. A fictional example can be found in George Orwell's novel Keep The Aspidistra Flying, in which the protagonist Gordon Comstock struggles in vain to complete an epic poem describing a day in London: "It was too big for him, that was the truth. It had never really progressed, it had simply fallen apart into a series of fragments."

In her 2004 book The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain (ISBN 9780618230655), the writer and neurologist Alice W. Flaherty has argued that literary creativity is a function of specific areas of the brain, and that block may be the result of brain activity being disrupted in those areas.

(to be continued . . .)

Characters, where's the depth?

When upcoming actor Narain came to Screenwriters Studio (photo) for the convocation and parting ceremony of the first batch at ScreenWrite.In a couple of months back, we had a little chat on characters. Narain firmly believed present-day movies lacked the character's touch and depth when compared to those in the eighties to mid nineties. Characters lack depth and tangibility, and seem derived, caricatured for fabricated dramatic plots. That was Narain's lament.

Is it really true? If it is, then is it because writers and directors don't care to go find their characters, delve deep into them and bring out the best of them? Is it because the writers think the present-day audience doesn't want to see the depth in characters, as modern living has become more periferal and shallow; with lesser values and more of consumerist, egotist, haute bourgeoisies euphoria?

I don't want to talk about the theories of character building here, which I think is all over the books of screenwriting and film-making. I'm trying to find a cause for the depletion in character dimesions, as Narain has pointed out.

I remember one of the great screenwriters, and novelist and creative writer of my times, M T VASUDEVAN NAIR Sir, winner of the Jnanapeeth Award, talked about how great stories and great characters emerge - from agony and pain; both from the inner self of the writer, and the outer manifestations of the characters the writer finds around his/her world. So the pain in the writer, and of the character contribute to the many dimensions in the character.

Yesterday I happened to hear an Educationalist talk of 'human values' at the school day celebrations where my son studies.The guest speaker was asking a pertinent question: how many among us nowadays eat alongwith our entire family, at least once a day, where the mother serves everyone not just the food, but the warmth of love - 'paasam'.

How many of us as writers and, also as living characters go through any rituals of love these days? How many children of our times enjoy the solace of breast milk and moonlight (oh, it is the famous lines in Kamla Das's story, which I wrote as screenplay for a television short script for National DD long back)? How many show the compassion ( or may be audacity) amid our busy day/night schedules to stop by the mad old woman on the payment and try communicate with her to find her state of schizophrenic psyche? How many of us can care to experience a sleepless night, in a filthy shack in a mosquito-swarmed, rain soaked slum? How many of us can identlfy the pain of seperation, the agony of poverty, the anguish of uncertainty, the misery of tarnishing, the despair of ostrasization, the fear of debt, the guilt of helplessness, the defeat in deceit? No, most of the times we don't. We're in a rat race to accomplish the laxuries of life.

And that's the death of character.

A character is never a whole person, but just those parts of him or her that fit the story or the piece of writing. So the act of selection is the writer’s first step in delineating character. From what does he select? (William Sloane) From his misery and agony first, and then filter it from an array of character elements the writer has seen in his life-time, through the countelss interactions, perceptions and experience, not to mention the influence of other characters in other stories. The character has more character in poverty and pain than compfort and contentment; like honor comes from giving and not receiving.

I'll share my own experience in 'Guna' (Tamil). The spark of character came from a person called 'Joosey' (who I knew from my paternal household), a born retarded flirt, who stuck by the kitchen in every homestead and flirted with every housemaid or lass around the corner, and relished their slaps day after day; still everyone accomodated him because of his innocent, 'two-cans-short-of-a-six- pack' demeanor. The character was Joosey, of course; and that didn't take any further shape from him for a long time. Kamal was asking me for a pitch, I rather evaded many a time. And then a Monday was fixed for the pitch; I still was not ready with the character and the story.

The Monday morning pitch seemed almost impossible as I had to go through one of the most gruelling times of my personal life, through the Saturday and Sunday; tumultous, angry and without sleep, as I came to Cochin airport to catch the flight to Chennai for the Monday pitch. The flight was delayed by two hours that Monday morn, I slowly staggered to the corner table at the cafeteria and ordered a strong black coffee. Not that I was sleepy or emotionally engaged for almost forty eight hours hence, the most draining reason was that I was taken over by grief and guilt at what I was going through, a desperate quest to identify what's gone wrong with me; why's all this happening to me?

I started to write about Gunasekharan (Guna) at the Cafe, and slowly I realized I was mixing my own grief, my own agony and desparation with Joosey, and the many other others I have seen and heard about, read about, and interacted with before; and the best of what Guna turned to be later, emerged from those two hours. I pitched the story to Kamal straight from the airport, and after I finished Kaml asked me: Why didn't you tell me about this 'character' much before, and I said: I don't know. He laughed and commeneted: That's pretty much a 'Guna-like' answer.

The excellent, mutli-dimentional characters that Ray, Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, M T Vasudevan Nair, Lohithadas, Abrar Alvi ( who knows Abrar Alvi as writer for almost all Guru Dutt films?) Raj Kapoor, (to name a few from the Indian selection), as I reckon would definitely have come from their assessment of human values, through their own 'painful experience', leave alone writers like Woody Allen and William Goldman from the western world.

I'll end today, with a quote from a favourite satirical/Sci-Fi-writer: " . . .When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away – even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time. . . "

- Kurt Vonnegut (Breakfast of Champions, Slaughterhouse-five)