Force Multiplier

For the past few weeks, I've been slogging through the first three seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I can't say I'm particularly enjoying it (although the quality of the show is growing exponentially with each episode). And I have at least thirty more episodes to go.

So why am I watching it?

Because, like laser-guided bombs and aerial drones, Buffy is a force multiplier.

Let me explain. Force multiplier is a buzzword from Donald Rumsfeld's controversial transformation of the United States military; it refers to something that dramatically increases a unit's combat effectiveness. The idea is that if you have the aforementioned bombs and drones, you don't need as many boots on the ground. Note how quickly Iraq was occupied, despite the relatively small invading force.

As a screenwriter, I am - like the military - faced with an extremely large and difficult task that can only be attacked directly. I'm either going to write 120 pages of a script or I'm not. No way around that. There is no model in which I do not spend a lot of time banging my head against the keyboard like Don Music from Sesame Street.

But there are many ways to increase my combat effectiveness as a writer. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the difficult heavy-lifting of writing only occupies a few hours of my day. The rest are activities that are only tangentially related to my work.

1. Yoga
2. Reading
3. Watching DVDs
4. Meditation
5. Weight Training
6. Playing Video Games
7. Blogging (in theory)
   

A corporate middle manager might point out that an obvious way of optimizing my productivity would be to limit these extracurricular activities and devote more man-hours to the actual task of writing. And many writers that I know would agree - there is no substitute for chaining yourself to the desk, especially when the deadline rolls around.

But I have a slightly different approach. It's true that many writing problems are solved at the desk. But just as many are solved away from it. And in order to facilitate the problem-solving, it's important that the mind be constantly refreshed. People, colors, stories, silence. All of these comprise the raw material for my work, and I must never stop collecting them. After all, the best solutions in my line of work often appear when I'm doing something else.

For a writer, reading books and watching movies isn't a form of leisure, it's a way of attacking my work obliquely, as opposed to directly. That's why I'm watching Buffy - because there's much overlap between my field of inquiry and Whedon's vampire slayer. And the more extracurricular activities I participate in, the more possible routes I have to outflank my opponent: the unsolvable writing problem of the moment. My strategy is to create as much surface area as possible; to attack from every conceivable angle at once. Writing at my desk is a powerful weapon, but it's also the bluntest and most enervating. Watching movies and reading books and going to yoga are slower to yield their payloads, but no less powerful and rejuvenating to boot. And when I combine all of the above, it's almost as if the problems solve themselves.

I tend to get a little anxious when I stop reading books, or playing video games, and it's because I know I've stopped collecting some raw material. I've closed an avenue of attack. I've lost surface area.

It's not just play. It's force multiplication.