More on fighting the negative voice...

Last week I shared some thoughts about how important it is to keep your cool when that first draft just doesn't seem to measure up.  How you have to realize that it's all process and peeling off the layers.

I thought it'd be useful to reinforce that thinking by sharing what some of our most successful writers have to say about encountering that negative voice.

Playwright Terrence McNally told me he has days when he asks himself: "Why can't I just get a job at a bank and be an honest worker?"  He related to me that one day while working on his first draft of a script he thought:  "I wanted to kill myself, burn the play, quite the Dramatists Guild, resign from being their vice president, quit teaching at Juilliard.  How can I teach playwriting?  I don't know what I'm doing."

Two-thirds of the way through writing her Pulitzer Prize-winning play 'night Mother, Marsha Norman told me she heard an inner voice saying:  "I don't know what this is.  I'm in real trouble here.  I mean, nobody's going to want to do this, right?  It's going to be real embarrassing."

Emily Mann captured it nicely when she said:  "There are crazy days when you lose all belief."

Almost every successful writer that I asked about this in my extensive interview series I did at the Dramatists Guild several years ago and many writers since have related to me their own stories of temporary despair.

So when you hear such a voice yourself, it's imperative that you find some way to tune it out and push on--especially when you're writing your first draft.  You're in the most vulnerable phase of the work, when it's easy to get seduced into giving up.  First drafts are tough largely because they don't have that polished and professional authority you sense when reading successful produced and published scripts.  Your initial pages just aren't measuring up.  What's important is to keep reminding yourself that every one of these successful scripts were brought into existence in the same way your script is.  Any given play or screenplay on your bookshelf may be a fifth, or tenth, or twentieth reworking of a tentative first draft.  And it's possible that very little, if any, of the very first draft may still be contained in that script you admire the most.

                                 *                    *                   *                   *

I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran July 21-31, 2016 and we are still considering applications for starting the program with our January 2017 residency that runs January 6-15 or for starting with our June residency running from June 22-July 2.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process 

The tyranny of the written...

Often, the biggest rewriting hurdle for writers is freeing themselves from words already written-- prying loose material that's been, for one reason or another, set in concrete in your mind but in truth is weighing your script down and keeping it from lifting off as it needs to.  And, of course, the remedy is to develop an attitude that doesn't allow your mix of words to harden in place prematurely.

The late Horton Foote, one of our revered playwrights and screenwriters, once told me the following:

You have to divorce yourself emotionally....There's a point where I just calm down and cool it and become as objective as I can.  I find those moments that are really essential, and I find those that are nonessential, and sometimes it kills me; I've cut some of the best writing that I've ever done.

The basic rule here is that if the script as a whole is to be served, you sometimes have to be willing and able to let things go.

Probably the most striking example of this is Edward Albee's experience with his Pulitzer Prize-winning play Seascape.  He told me that he discovered at the first rehearsal that what he thought was a play in three acts was really a play in two acts, so he cut out the second act entirely, going from two intermissions to one.  One day the play had three acts and the next morning it had two.  And he told this story with no regrets whatsoever.  The work as a whole was served, and that's what counted. Extreme, yes.  Necessary?  Absolutely.  He discovered the play was structurally sound without the material between the first and third act.

So be tough on yourself if you can.  More than likely you'll be serving your script by heeding the mantra "less is more."

                                  *                    *                   *                   *

I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran July 21-31, 2016 and we are now considering applications for starting the program with our January 2017 residency that runs January 6-15.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter) a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwright's Process.

Sharing Your Script For The First Time: Part 2

Continuing our discussion...

Once you've located your initial readers and they've agreed to the task, expect to wait a while before hearing from them.  For most people, reading a first draft of a friend's play is a big order.  They'll take this very seriously and wait until they can clear a morning or afternoon or evening for the task--something that, for almost all of us, takes time to pull off.

Once they've read your play, set up separate, one-on-one sessions with each of them.  The last thing you want is for them to hear each other's reactions as they're attempting to tell you their own.

Sharing Your Script For The First Time, Part 1

I can’t stress enough how important the very first sharing of your work is.  You’re about to cross a line in the life of your project that you can’t ever cross back over.   Outside input will now enter your creative process for the first time.  And it’s going to have an impact, positive or negative or both.  It’s going to reshape how you think about your script.