Palumbo on writing
So many amazing nuggets for creatives in Episode 99 of the Scriptnotes podcast, in which Craig Mazin and John August have a conversation with screenwriter-turned-psychotherapist and best-selling mystery writer Dennis Palumbo. They discuss writer’s block, procrastination, partnerships and more. Palumbo drops some serious nuggets of creative wisdom that spoke to me. For example:
On being blocked
Most people think writer’s block is bad. I think it’s good news for a writer. Because, if you look at the kind of biographical narratives of some of the greatest artists you’ve ever known, they all have like five or six periods in their lives where the work is repetitive, where they feel stuck, where they seem to be going backwards. And then all of a sudden there is this burst of inspiration … I’ve never had a patient who has worked through a block who didn’t think they were a better writer on the other side of the block.
On feeling bad about yourself
Feelings don’t predict the future … we have a tendency to see our feelings as predictive. And they’re not.
If you imagine yourself as the hero of a journey, where the development process is a journey and you’re the protagonist, who is the antagonist? … to me the antagonist is our emotional pain.
I’ve been in personal therapy on and off for like 18 years. I’m as neurotic and insecure as I ever was. I just don’t hassle myself about it anymore … I don’t mind being neurotic and insecure because I don’t think the goal is to become some perfectible version of yourself.
On failure
I think being a screenwriter requires the Bushido Warrior Code of risk, fail, risk again.
On procrastination
It’s easier to tolerate the small shame of procrastinating … than (the potentially greater shame of) putting the script out.
The shame of self-exposure will always be there as long as you don’t feel engaged with the process itself; as long as you’re only concerned with the result in terms of what it says about you, what clinicians call “the external locus of control.”
If a patient is willing to be uncomfortable writing, they’ll break through the procrastination. If they need to feel like they’re ready to write, they may have to wait forever.
Frederic Raphael … said that for a writer there is only one real definition of work: pages that are there in the evening that weren’t there in the morning. He didn’t say good pages. He just said pages.
It’s a seriously good episode, available for download here. I highly recommend it.
