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Pressure Makes Everything Better

Posted by DCA Theater on September 11, 2008 in July-December 2008 Season, INCUBATOR Series: Infusion Theater

Written by Walt McGough

I like to think that I’m one of those writers who is able to set a strict schedule for writing, where I wake up every morning two hours before leaving for work, get my coffee, shower and dress, and hunch over some great piece of literature for an hour. And, in theory, I’m pretty successful at this; I do in fact get up two hours early most mornings (barring an alarm malfunction), I do get coffee, I do shower (thank God), I do hunch over my computer for an hour before entering the morning commute, and I do occasionally end up with words in a document file (though “literature” is more than debatable).

Unfortunately, I find that when I’m just going day to day, writing towards some vague, undefined “future” point in time, those words tend to be a bit sparser than they should be. I can sit in front of my computer for an hour each morning, with a document open in front of me, and even be making contact between my fingers and the keys, and still only end up with a half a page of usable text. This is a mystery to me. I honestly don’t know where the rest of the time goes (though a good chunk of it is probably accountable to extra time spent choosing the “perfect” music to write by, and other distractions). One thing I do know, though: Deadlines are the be-all, end-all cure for that problem. Give me a set point when I need to have something done by, and suddenly my morning rituals are producing exponentially more pages at a time, and the number increases as each deadline looms. I also spend less and less time checking up on my favorite
blogs/sports scores/random web sites, but that’s neither here nor there.

Enter Infusion. In graciously giving me a whole month to phutz around with “The Other Half,” they’ve provided the King of Deadline Generators. Suddenly, I’m not writing and rewriting with a nonspecific date in mind; I’m writing for a rehearsal four days from now. And if I don’t have something, well, that’s really going to suck, because actors are happier when they have things to read. With weekly workshop rehearsals, Infusion has given me the perfect motivation to actually get off my duff and get some work done in the morning, rather than update my Google Reader for the hundreth time every five minutes. Deadlines, though stressful, rule.

A playwright friend of mine has taken this mantra to the nth degree; she actually reserves a performance space for herself six months or so beforehand, before she’s even started working on a script. She rightfully assumes that, if a looming production with no script to support it doesn’t get her in gear, nothing will. Maybe someday I’ll take that to heart, but for now, I need to make another pot of coffee and get going if I’m going to have anything for rehearsal tomorrow.