Radical Acceptance
Once you open the door, the plays will come into the room. During the year I was writing, I had to practice radical acceptance. Every notion for a play was treated with respect...when you set out a task for yourself of writing a play a day, you have to invite every notion to the table and treat it like an honored guest...
I’ve gotten hip to the ways of the censor, or the inner critic. This is what I know: the inner critic, or mine anyway, does not run fast. If I want to beat him or her, get away from the inner critic, I just write fast. Because the critic’s inbox is totally overloaded. She’s got tons of pieces of paper to look at that I’ve been pouring out. She doesn’t have time to say, “Stop!”
There are two forms of writing. There’s writing and there’s rewriting. When you write, you’re in the jungle of growing things, the fertile earth and the parrots and monkeys and the beautiful canopy of leaves. That’s the writing process. No self-critical stuff there. Just writing, just creating.
Then, when you go into the rewriting process, you are on a beautiful horse. Something like Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” is playing in the background and you have in your hand the sword of discrimination, the sword that can tell you what is and what isn’t. You are swinging that sword over your head and cutting out everything that doesn’t work.
I just keep them separate. I write and then I rewrite. I don’t rewrite as I write.
Suzan-Lori Parks, on writing a play a day for a year