The Rhythm Method

Right off the bat, I have to come clean. 

I admit I feel slightly disingenuous using the phrase "rhythm method" in conjunction with my "process" (which, by the way is broadly what this blog will be about until such time as the new film whose birth it is tracking is fully born).

And it's not because that phrase is a kind of con(tra)ceptual contradiction in terms to employ when discussing the imminent birth of something. It's more because I am in fact deploring my complete lack of rhythm, or any recognizable method in my so called process.

But, as I am now launching into my critical second draft of A Nutshell of Infinite Space (that title's a whole post in itself), I am increasingly reaching for both those things. 

God knows, I'd love to be the kind of writer that spits shootable scripts out whole with an enviable, if somewhat frenzied, regularity. Or the kind of writer that wakes up in the dark, eats the same cereal with the same spoon, climbs the same 11 stairs to the same office, sits at the same desk, looks at the same wall, and doggedly punches out the same number of pages every day. Until it's done. 

On any given day, I might be a little of one, or even both, of those kinds of writers. But never fully one kind and never all the time. And more often than not, I'm nothing resembling either. 

So, as the pressure and indeed, visceral need to make another movie mounts, I find myself still in the process of discovering what my process is. What exactly works for me. And this is what I've come up with so far:

Poutine*. 

And a variation on the aforementioned rhythm method.

Now, if that's not immediately clear, allow me to explain...

Right back here, next week.





* for the uninitiated, poutine is a sinful mess of a hangover cure said to be invented at a rural Quebec truck stop sometime in the '70's that involves a mound of unripened cheese curds atop a bed of French fries smothered in gravy.