When You Hit A Gigantic Wall...

The Fight or Flight Response kicks in. You tear it down or run away from it. I'm amazed at how much this has happened. Every draft of the script I'm currently working on has had a wall. Each draft has been different. Sometimes I don't know how to start it. Sometimes, I don't know how to finish it. And sometime I hit huge revision gaps the size of the Grand Canyon that take me days to get across. 

Actors and directors also hit walls. My current production--"The Taming of the Shrew"-- opens in less than three weeks. All of us are super psyched! The wall we hit is one that every theater person(or film person, for that matter)--memorization. Every single actor given a script has lines to memorize. Sometimes they have the nice short little one liners that appear only in one scene, which is no big deal(or like figuring out how to start or end a script--roughly, at least). But other times, actors land lead roles: long speeches and a plethora of  lines in an infinite number of scenes(like a Grand Canyon size revision gap).


It's times like these when I am so grateful for distractions. Granted, you do have to work your tail off at rehearsals, or in front of the computer, but if you don't want to suffer burnout, DISTRACT YOURSELF!  Some of my best ideas---both from the acting, directing, and scriptwritting point of view--have come when I'm distracted. I recently had issues with the ending of my script. I knew from the beginning that a specific character had to die, but I wasn't sure a) how to do it  without halting the flow of the plot, and b) how to kill him off in such a way that, even if it was a little predicable in the beginning, it would be enough of a sympathetic shock that it wouldn't scream "I didn't know what else to do with the character, so I killed him". After trying for ages to get this stupid death right, I did what I always do when I need distraction: watch movies or TV. At the time I was(and still am) super addicted to the TV Show "Supernatural". It was while I was watching one of the episodes that I broke through my Revision Wall. While my one part of my brain was absorbed by the epically awesome TV Show, the other was still hard at work trying to solve my plot problem. By the time the credits were rolling, I had pulled out my netbook and was pounding away on the rough draft of the death scene I so desperately needed.  


So here's what this rambling post is about: when you hit a wall, when your suffering burnout, when you are ramming yourself against Writer's Block, or you need a break from life, for goodness sake, LET YOURSELF BE DISTRACTED! There is nothing wrong with taking a little break once in a while and doing something completely useless.