Creative Process

One of my favorite scenes from the movie Swordfish is Hugh Jackman's character clacking away at the computer, drinking a bottle of wine and jamming out to techno music while writing complicated computer code to build a "worm" that will either destroy the world or save it, depending on who controls the thing when it's complete. Since I'm committed to spending most of the weekend clacking away at my own computer trying to get 2 weeks of delayed blogging done, I've been thinking about my creative process, especially as it relates to writing.

I never really did enough serious writing to understand the concept of "writers block." I always thought it was the most intellectual explanation for procrastination ever invented. Yet I've found myself suffering from a case of writer's block for the past 2 weeks. I've actually had time to blog, but just couldn't get myself motivated to write.

Part of the problem is where I'm expending brain power lately. Work is picking up again, as it always does towards the end of the year. So for lack of a better explanation, I have to think harder at work, which leaves me less brainpower for my personal thinking. The other problem is simply inspiration. I know what I want to write about, but the language takes longer to come sometimes.

Why? I guess because my style of writing is more conversational - it's like cocktail party gossip, and I have to hear it my my head. I also think good writing needs to have some emotion attached, whether it's making someone laugh, choking them up, or just making them think. I think the emotional aspect of writing is the reason that, unlike Mr. Jackman's hacker persona, I have difficulty writing with music playing, unless the music specifically matches the emotion I'm trying to convey. Not the easiest thing to accomplish when you have the iPod on random shuffle. Try as I might, I find it hard to talk about hip checks and hockey fights listening to "Lost In Love" by Air Supply. Although techno music would be the perfect motivation for writing about hockey! Do I have any techno....?

OK, focus Meg! The other thing I really need to start doing is writing rough drafts of my blogs. When I was in school, my teachers always emphasized the same process for writing. Do an outline, write a rough draft, sit on it a little while, then go back to it and make your revisions. Lather, rinse and repeat. But I had to be a rebel, so I always ignored that process. The outline phase was stored up in my brain, and most of the time I knew what I wanted to say, so doing a rough draft seemed like rework. My normal process was to write and edit as I went. Looking back, I must have used more typewriter ribbon than anyone on earth, because typing does not lend itself to my compositional methods. And I was the kid in college that was up at 1 AM, hopped up on No-Doz and Jolt Cola, STARTING the term paper that was due at 9 AM. Plenty of time! Maybe I DO have a procrastination problem, not writers block...

So even in the age of computers, why do a rough draft? Because my brain seems to be storing more ideas than ever, but not always in a cohesive pattern, and I lose them if I can't get back to them. My brain feels like a computer hard drive in need of a defrag program - get in there and re-sort all that mess so I can find things faster, would ya?

Come to think of it, maybe all I need to improve my creative process is a bottle of wine...