A Year of Writer’s Block
I wish I was kidding.
Cristen Stephansky as Ruthie and Connor McCabe as Billy discuss the creature lurking behind Cliff and Ginny’s (Marty Jellison & Samantha Scott Kennedy) grocery store in The Haverton Howler.
But this time last year, I was finalizing edits on The Haverton Howler before our whirlwind 5 day rehearsal week. Once the two-day production wrapped, I wanted to jump right back in and make edits.
But I felt too close to the show, too raw in the emotion of what had come to be on and off the stage. I had written audio dramas before: directed, produced, and sound-designed them. But getting a show on stage was so much more than I had anticipated. I am so glad I was able to experience that. But I needed a break.
I kept hoping the inspiration to dive back in would come, and eventually a day or two would push me towards opening the script. Small edits were made, feedback received, then the block would lock firmly back in place .
Maybe I’d write something else for a while….
The turn of the century musical I’ve been dabbling on for 18 months? I can’t write music.
The 1940s Appalachian folklore drama? It also wants to be a musical. Next.
So I started another audio dramas… a traveling young woman locked into a castle during a storm. Or the futuristic, solar punk fantasy drama!
I get one scene in, and then loose all my steam. My brain tells me to finish The Haverton Howler edits first, then more space will open for me. But the desire just isn’t there.
Then the words come to me for another audio dramas, so clear and real that I write it down, pass it over to two voice actors (thank you Brenna and Austin), and add the immersive soundscape and sound effects.
I love it.
But scene 2? No where to be found.
It’s been a year of this.
A year of wanting to create, wanting to move and flow in that energy, and sharply dissolving into frustration, anger, and loneliness just a day or two later.
I wish I knew what this was — this complete lack of pull or motivation, this “what’s the point” narrative that emerges every time I think about the future.
Is it living through the fascist fall of our country?
Perimenopause?
Or the sad realization that freedom and societal deconstruction from capitalism results in a lack of the inner motor and creative push that has been inside of you for the last 40 years.
I want this, I want to write and create. But the energy to do it isn’t there. Or it is, but only one scene at a time.
So for now, that is what I’m hoping for and accepting.
I want to write one scene a day in September.
5 minutes or less, any genre or topic. It can be any medium. And if for some reason it wants audio design, perhaps the scripts will be published for people to play and record with?
Will this magically fix the block I’m feeling?
Probably not. But I miss the woman who so “effortlessly” wrote, directed, produced, and designed entire productions. And maybe she misses getting to perform from time to time.
Or maybe what I actually miss is the connection those stories brought me, the cast who rallied around the scripts and experience with me.
Whatever it is… I’m ready to get it back.