Wednesday, February 27, 2008

INSPIRING WRITING 2

A blank white canvas seats in front of me. Not a single word that courses through me from the neurons of the mind, activating the electrical jolts surging through the nerves to my fingers to even tap a single alphabet to form a word or even a sentence. The mysteries of writing?

I let idea/s to percolate in my mind first. Days, weeks, maybe months the idea/s remains in that state. A state of limbo. A state of hibernation. It is important that the idea/s stay in the state until one of the ideas begin to slowly erupts out of that cocoon of percolation.

Now! Let it flow through you and let the fingers work and you begin to sculpt the white canvas with sculptures of words, sentences, verbs and prose. Cause and effect work in tandem, a conflicting of harmony. Inspiration is a drug. A natural one at that as it acts as an adrenaline rush that pushes your mind and your body to create something which had percolated in the ridges of the mind and finally erupting out into the physical world of ours in the form of language where we understand.


... To be continued

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

INSPIRING WRITING

The process of writing is a lone journey that should be as organic and as dangerous as it can and should be. I am corrupted. Corrupted by the very film education system that I learned in Los Angeles. Corrupted by the 3 ACT structure that is being preached like it is a logical scientific formula. There are books and books written about how a screenplay should be written... plot point 1 should be at the tenth page or tenth minute into the movie... then it should be propelled the character and situation to the next level of obstacle...

Now... if all of these have been distilled down to a perfect formula for writing screenplays... In fact all the movies should be box office hits and the question that we need to ask... Why aren’t they all box office hits??!! Do we really need to read all those books?

Yes... and then take them like a pinch of salt... and then forget them completely. No matter how much you have prepared yourself with your loglines, synopsis', research, treatments or scene cards... once you begin to write, it will have a life of its own. Let it, don't succumb yourself to the system that you have already set. Its a TRAP!! Those preliminary preparations should be what it is... preliminary preparations. You should not let them be your hindrance as they can destroy the organic nature of writing if you follow them studiously.

When inspiration comes, it flows through the writing as fluidly as possible and nothing that can come in between you and the MICROSOFT WORD. Now the problem comes when inspiration stalls!!

What do we do when that happens?
... to be continued