Blocked

the same horizon
Originally uploaded by Norma Desmond

I've been having a lot of angst lately about the fact that I am feeling really blocked, creatively. The scenes I am directing in Central City are hanging like a monkey over my head, not to mention the stuff I am doing next season.
Logically, I consider the work I have done recently....and how ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN I was that I would be awful and that I would NOT know what to do with anyone. This internal dread generally reaches its peak in the days just prior to meeting the singers and beginning rehearsals and then magically disappears the moment we get down to business.
Strangely (or some might say, perfectly appropriately) I have run into several articles, comments, etc, about creativity and the creative process lately. And the short story is this: JUST SHUT UP AND DO THE WORK, STUPID.

I leave you with some passages of interest:

Stella Adler:
It isn't that important to know who you are. It is important to know what you do, and then do it like Hercules.

Letter from Joseph Conrad to Edward Garnett.
I sit down religiously every morning, I sit down for eight hours every day--and the sitting down is all. In the course of that working day of 8 hours I write 3 sentences which I erase before leaving the table in despair. There's not a single word to send you. Not one!... ,,,There! I've told you all and feel better. While I write this I am amazed to see that I can write. It looks as though the spell were broken but I hasten, I hasten lest it should in five minutes or in half an hour be laid again.

See also this amazing post at The Sheila Variations