Don't press

 In my WIP I have at least two major issues I need to deal with before I can move forward. The temptation is to dig and dig at the problem in order to make the solution come out of where it’s hiding in the subconscious. If that’s what it’s doing.

I’ve worked on both issues, jotting notes down about them, thinking about them while walking and so on. No solution has yet appeared. Not a workable one anyway. I have to be willing to say to myself: ‘This isn’t the answer – yet.’

I watched Alfred Hitchcock’s movie Shadow of a Doubt again last night. This will be the third time I’ve seen it. Quieter in its menace than some of Hitchcock’s movies, it nevertheless has a very menacing character at its centrem played by Joseph Cotton. One of the other actors in the film is Hume Cronyn. This was his first movie, and he went on to make a second with Hitchcock, Lifeboat. He also contributed to the scripts of two others, Rope and Under Capricorn.

In the superb Hitchcock biography by Patrick McGilligan, Cronyn talks about working on the script of Rope with the director. What Hitchcock had to say to him is relevant to the subject I began this post with. 

Early on in the working relationship I discovered a curious trick of his,’ said Cronyn. ‘We would be discussing some story point with great intensity, trembling on the edge of a solution to the problem at hand, when Hitch would suddenly lean back in his chair and say, ‘Hume, have you heard the story of the travelling salesman and the farmer’s daughter?’ I would look at him blankly and he would proceed to tell it with great relish, frequently commenting on the story’s characters, the nature of the humour involved, and the philosophical demonstration implied. That makes it sound as though the stories might be profound or at least witty. They were neither. They were generally seventh-grade jokes of the sniggery school, and frequently infantile.’

One day, Cronyn asked the director challengingly: ‘Why do you do that?’

‘Do what?’ asked Hitchcock.

‘Stop to tell jokes at a crucial juncture.’

‘It’s not so critical – it’s only a film.’

‘But we were just about to find a solution to the problem…I can’t even remember what it was now.’

‘Good. We were pressing…You never get it when you press.’

Cronyn said later that he never forgot ‘that little piece of philosophy’ Hitchcock offered, ‘either as an actor or as a sometime writer.’

 What Hitchcock is saying is that making a big fuss about trying to find the solution, hammering away at it in frustration, doesn’t work. ‘Don’t press,’ he says.

It’s like trying to remember someone’s name – and at my time of life I can forget the names of my grandchildren, or very good friends, or relations I’ve known since childhood. Pressing on the matter and trying to grind yourself into remembering doesn’t work. Forget the name and talk about other things, read a book, or write on some other topic. The name will suddenly appear.

I was going over some of the Psalms of Ascent this morning. I memorised these a long time ago and they remain with me to this day. Occasionally, however, a word or phrase will go AWOL, or drop out of sight. The immediate reaction is to think ‘I’m forgetting this Psalm.’ No I’m not. It's only the fact that the brain hasn’t done any work on this Psalm for some time, and so it has to collect all the information together again, which may take a moment, or a minute, or five minutes.

That word that’s gone missing will suddenly appear, even if I’m already in the middle of the next Psalm.

Which is to say, that the solution to a writing problem will suddenly appear. However with something like writing, something that requires creativity, it may take not minutes, but days.

Be patient. Don’t press.

 The quotation from the book, Alfred Hitchcock – a lifein darkness and light – by Patrick McGilligan, comes from pages 402-3 of the 2003 Paperback edition by John Wiley and Sons Ltd. The photograph of Hume Cronyn is courtesy of The Movie Database.