Good news! I've got my groove back, things are working; I can cook without injuring myself, play bass without fumbling over my own fingers and write without forgetting what on earth I was trying to express.
I was wondering what strange force it is that governs this. Is it the moon? something in my diet? I have no idea, sometimes though my mojo just appears to be broken. It gets pretty annoying when I can play for hours without being able to string even a half-decent walking bassline together, then come back and hit my groove just before I have to go out or go to bed or something like that. It doesn't seem to be linked to my mood; I've written some very good stuff while in a serious funk but I've also produced cool stuff when feeling froody and hep. I think it might be somthing to do with restlessness, when I can't keep my mind focused all that comes out is shite. I need to be in the right frame of mind.
It seems that concentrating helps, I'd always assumed that teachers were lying.
Last night at about 2am I switched off the lights and went to go to sleep. I had no joy in that department and, after staring at the walls for a couple of minutes, got up and wandered over to my computer. Things were appearing in my head, as is often the way when I'm trying to go to sleep; fragments of song lyrics, some already existing, some in my head; pieces of dialogue, sometimes part of a story I've already come up with, sometimes just isolated fragments. Ideas for stories, old conversations, bits of music, basslines, melodies, all sorts of bits and bobs. I sat in front of my computer writing whatever hung around in my head long enough for me to get it onto paper until 8am, when I fell asleep in a pile of scribbled notes for a script idea I had abandoned about 2 years ago as unworkable.
Looking at the notes again today I can still say, despite last nights efforts, that it is definately unworkable. Not only that, also completely incomprehensible. The thing is that last night I think I could have made it work. If I hadn't run out of steam I probably could have sorted out a solution to all of the issues I had with it. It reminded me of the idea graveyard that sits in a box in my room, all the ideas that I didn't manage to get a proper framework down for before I slipped out of turbo-mode. After the initial burst of inspiration I lost my way and the idea faltered, occasionally the result is still quite funny though.
Looking through it today has been interesting. I forget just how much bollocks I've written over the years, scripts (The Party, A Walk in the Park, Prepwork, Strange Meeting), sketches (mostly comedy - some just isolated chunks of dialogue), short stories (usually attempts to get old ideas to work in a different format), plans for longer pieces that I knew that I'd never bother to write (Blue Bell Hill) and just plans and notes that never got any further than that stage, usually because I couldn't finish the story properly - filling out the characters, their situation etc(Facing Up, Mother). The last category are the ones that I still think I could do somthing with - they are ideas that were never ruined by me trying to write them down.
I attacked one of them last night (mother) and it went pretty well. It's the idea I explained to you Kristen. I started intending to just write notes on how the script would go but it sort of turned into prose I'm not sure whether to turn it into a script or attempt to turn it into a short story. Prose has never really been my thing though.
Anyway. I'm rambling again.
-Ben
