Patterns

Those of you who have read some earlier posts will know that part of the reason I started doing this is because I want to become more at peace with sharing my writing publicly. Part of my anxiety about doing this, of course, is that I'm always convinced nothing is complete enough, polished enough, or (frankly) good enough to share.

I've been thinking about patterns this week, inspired by getting a couple of pieces of criticism back on my writing, slogging through a round of edits on another piece, and some conversations I had with a former student while advising her thesis last year.

We all have patterns that we can probably recognize if we take a moment to think about them. There's a moment I always think about from Shakespeare in Love that speaks to this:

HENSLOWE The natural condition is one of unsurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.

FENNYMAN So what do we do ?

HENSLOWE Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.

FENNYMAN How ?

HENSLOWE I don't know. It's a mystery.

There's always a point in a rehearsal process where everything feels like it's somehow off the rails, getting further from the place you're trying to go instead of closer. Things that seemed set and sorted earlier in the process suddenly come unmoored, lines you've known since day one evaporate inexplicably, and the big picture turns into some blurry impressionist version of itself. And then, usually, it rights itself, and nothing was as bad or lost or hopeless as you were certain it was just a moment ago.

I've been doing theatre my whole life: I know this pattern, especially when I'm standing on the outside. Inside? It can still feel like it's the first time it's ever happened to anyone thank you very much. Even if I can recognize the pattern intellectually, some part of me is thoroughly convinced that this time is different. I had this exact conversation with a student last year, and we both laughed at this disconnect and agreed that recognizing it has to at least do something beneficial for us. She was pretty sure her crisis moment hit in the same part of the process every time, about a week before tech. We decided that knowing this would help her get the better of the feeling next time. I hope that's been the case for her. I should ask.

This week, I confronted what I realized was a similar pattern in my writing. I was working on a chapter and got to the point where I knew I couldn't see the forest for the trees. No way, no how was I able to be objective about it. And this was really frustrating, because I feel like I've been working on this same piece for AGES. It should just stop misbehaving and start making sense. Except I couldn't see how to make it happen. Which generally triggers all kinds of bleak spiraling and leads to me putting it away "for a few days" (that quickly turn into weeks).

That wasn't an option, because I'd planned to share it. So I tried to trust the part of my brain that recognized the pattern and embrace my commitment to letting go of things before I think I'm ready.

We'll see how it goes, but either way, at least I saw a pattern and made a conscious choice to break it. Baby steps.