Walk The Walk #4

Let’s Talk About Fear. The Courage to Create and all that Sh*T...

I’m making brief forays into scene writing for my upcoming *Writing With Nancy* show. I finally got on track at the end of June when I met with my director, John Hildreth, and he pronounced the pages I sent him *preliminary*. He explained that I was still writing about the show I wanted to write and not SHOWING the audience what I had learned, not placing myself inside what I wanted to communicate. This had something to do with me wanting to narrate the show AND be in it. Is that narcissistic? No. It’s good theatre. Oddly, I was enlivened by John’s pronouncement. Because frankly I had stopped my scriptwriting on page 9 and I had not wanted to even go into the document at all, even to just look at it. That always makes me feel bad about my writing when it sucks somehow and I turn my back on it. So John’s comments gave me a face-saving reason for having stopped and I felt relieved.

Getting stuck in the writing process is always about being afraid. FEAR. Usually we don’t even know what we’re afraid of. Art’s a lot like life. There are lots and lots of decisions to make and there’s no particular roadmap with which to make them. Making art, or if you will, creating something, is a process of working through layers of fear. Some people call it problem solving. Fear is like a Pacman game, with levels of difficulty. Fear is the distance between you and the next choice. In that sense, war and creation bear similar characteristics, where things are coming at you fast and loose and you no sooner find an idea or word that’s just right, but in the next breath you’re thinking, *That is shit. What am doing?* How do you gather together the right words for just the right statement before you doubt it? It’s enough to drive you crazy.

One way I keep my cool is by writing longhand in a prone position on my couch in the living room. The red couch always has a good breeze and writing on yellow pads has a way of grounding me. Plus lying down is probably a very good thing too. Maybe somebody’s done a study of that, I don’t know. I do know that Virgil Thompson, the great American composer was fond of writing in bed. Who else? Proust? So I’m in good company. But seriously folks what’s up with the prone position thing? Once I write out the scene in longhand I can type it into the computer and that seems like a pleasure.

Got any bright moments with your own writing lately?

I’ll be in touch sooner than later...