Happy New Year Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative!

I can’t believe it’s been a year since instigators Laura Shamas, Jennie Webb, and Ella Martin told me about the formation of the LAFPI. I’m so happy to be part of it.

I’ve met so many women who really do support each other and care passionately about playwrighting. I’ve been introduced to some excellent work and have made connections that I wouldn’t have made otherwise.

I love writing and reading the blogs. Thanks so much Nancy, for your comment on writer’s block about the necessity of being emotionally connected to one’s characters. It put my problem in perspective. If one isn’t emotionally connected, something is wrong. I think I have been utterly lost, casting (flailing) about, looking for inspiration from “subjects” or “big matters” or “issues,” and hadn’t recognized that until you commented on my blog! Thank you again.

Thinking about that further, I wonder if looking for something, I don’t know what the word is, maybe it’s “important”, to write about, comes from the frustration of trying to get produced. That thought probably proceeds from the effort of trying to be noticed and the thought that those in power are not interested in plays written by or about women and what follows becomes, “How do I write something meaningful that will knock people’s socks off?” rather than, “Oh, that tickles me. Let me get it down!”

On reflection, I think, too, that the ideas that came to me on Thanksgiving were more ideas about weighty matters, and I’m going to let them sit. Instead, I’m going to step back, reassess, and with luck, recharge.

Happy Holidays to everybody.

I still had Writer’s Block just prior to Thanksgiving. I read several articles about Writer’s Block and learned that nobody knows why it happens, that there is no known cure and that it happens to most writers during their writing lifetime.

I read the responses from the ICWP list and what disturbed me were the number of people who talked about how many ideas they had and how swiftly they arrived. Pam said “Do any of you just wish that your mind would STOP? I have so many ideas rumbling through my head at times.” Shirley said, “I have ideas coming at me all the time.” Robin said, “When don’t ideas insert themselves? They come too often and from too many places and at too many times to list.” Sandra de said, “One time I was walking across the street and I was hit by an idea in the middle of the crosswalk and stopped dead in the middle of the street.”

Without an idea, I spent my time trying not to worry and not to obsess about not writing and that took up a lot of time, of course: the trying not to worry.

I tried taking a break and doing something entirely different. I looked forward to Thanksgiving which would let me to just that. I spent Thanksgiving dinner with my family and about a dozen people whom I’d never met before. I listened to conversations about how to grow macadamia trees and how to teach yourself to play piano. I learned about chicken tractors, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, the Jacobson gland, and the mating habits of elephants.

During dessert, while I was listening to talk about folk art in Oregon, I had a glimpse of an idea. Then in the car, during the long trip home, I had another, and then another. I was shocked and not quite sure they were real. I don’t know if any are or if they will stay with me but at least I have something to noodle around with for a while.

The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there,
written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible. ~Vladimir Nabakov

Looking for help, I went to the International Center for Women Playwrights, which is always supportive, and asked the list:  Where do your ideas come from?  I got many different responses.

Many people are most receptive to creative thinking when in motion.  Ideas come to them while they are driving.  Susan said, “Mine is in the car on the highway when I am alone.”  For some ideas come when they are doing the dishes, picking up the mail.  Deb said, “Mine is on my feet:  I do some of my most creative work on my daily walk.”  Angelina likes a “reasonably quiet public place, or at home.  I like seeing trees and a wide sky.”

I understand that. When my husband and I wrote screenplays together, we took long walks, got lots of exciting ideas and shed pounds.  I continue to walk, love the rhythm of walking, and find the quiet surroundings soothing, but for a long time,  I’ve thought only about my daily to do list when out for a stroll.

Water is a powerful muse.  Hindi wrote, “My muse is water…especially the ocean.  I look at it and it is so much bigger and powerful that my little writer worries disappear and I’m able to write.”  Others like to think in the bath and shower.  Lori combines motion and water.  She says she gets ideas  “during my daily walk on the river.  Occasionally, when I swim.  But as I live in Seattle, these often feel like the same thing.”

I understand that, too.  Ideas used to come to me when I was in the bath but in the bath now I can’t hear anything but Edie Brickell singing “In the Bath.”

People find sleeping and dreaming productive.  Ideas sneak into the brain when one is half-asleep or lucidly dreaming.  Letitia said, “I get my most creative ideas in that half-sleep as I’m waking up in bed but not quite awake.”  Sandra keeps post-its by her bed to capture those ideas that come in the middle of the night.

Some people are alone when musing.  Some get their best ideas in company, people watching and listening.  Martha gets ideas “from watching actors I know that I’d like to write parts for.”  Meg’s ideas come when she is working on something else – “Right now I’m working on a travel blog from our journey 2009-2010 to India, France, and Morocco.  Each picture helps to bring out thoughts not only on the moment, but also deeper or analytical questions that I’ve studied or thought about for years.”

I thought that knowing how and where people write could help.  Most said they sit at a computer, some daily, some not.  Some need only a computer, quiet, and coffee.  Pam wants a one room cabin up in the mountains, Sandra has a 1940’s oak teacher’s desk.  Letitia “may be on a velvet sofa or on the leather sofa depending on my picky mind-body moods.”

I’ve been writing in longhand.  I work at the office rather than at home.   I’ve been writing in my car, in the laundry room, desultorily, or with what Alan Bennett calls, “grim application”.

Maybe, trying to write short pieces could help, I thought.  Ann said, “The “sprints” somehow help me with longer pieces, even though they have nothing to do with one another. For example, a memory piece on my grandmother’s kitchen preceded an academic piece on deconstruction and Pinter!”

I took several stabs at ten minutes plays but nothing.  Nada.  Zip.

However, I did get some excellent advice and was pleased to connect with the creative women on the ICWP list, which I recommend to all.

The International Center for Women Playwrights – http://www.womenplaywrights.org/

I had Writer’s Block for a long time and it drove me crazy.  Over a year ago, I had an idea for a terrific play about a meeting between Albert Einstein and Paul Robeson.  I spent months and months researching and thinking.  I made hundreds of notes, copied dozens of quotations, read several books, even outlined the play, but I couldn’t hear their voices and couldn’t shape the piece. A friend suggested that I rework it as a vaudeville sketch but I couldn’t get my mind around that one either.

All that work is lying in the Mac land of the lost.

I worked on a project involving music and history which I loved doing.  When that fell apart, I hit the wall.

I tried the writing exercises.  I wrote about a painting, an object, a conversation I’d overheard.  I wrote for ten minutes without stopping.  I did it again.  Nothing.  Again.  I stared at the computer waiting for something, anything.

One day, I found myself clicking on dozens of youtube versions of Casta Diva.  I listened to Rosa Ponselle, Marian Anderson, Maria Callas, Renee Fleming, and more, and was beginning to memorize the words, when I thought, “You’ve already written a play about opera singers!”

What I did do is improve as a cook.  My basil chicken with parmesan and tomatoes is tasty, the carrot muffins are nutritious and moist, and one day, when doing my staring at the computer, I remembered an old recipe for a really good meatloaf.   I watched more episodes of Top Chef than one can safely do without permanently impairing her worldview and I can now chop onions with the best.

The rugs were vacuumed, the closets organized, and the bookshelves dusted.

And the mind was swept clean.

MARIAN ANDERSON SINGS CASTA DIVA