What next

A classic principle of cinema goes like this: what is happening on screen is never as exciting as what might happen next. I'm just about to start the next script. So naturally I'm thinking, 'what next' - what the story will be, will it be any good, who do you consult about what to wear at the Oscars, that sort of thing.

I'd be lying if I made out that I am feeling pure excitement. This sensation is actually writer's trepidation. No. It's stronger than that. I feel fear. This is writer's block.

If I was really excited about what might happen next, everything in me would be striving to make it happen. I'd be expectant, wanting the future now. This is fear though. And it's making me postpone the future, put it off for as long as I can, indefinitely if possible. For a writer, maybe this rule of cinema does apply, but only in the sense it applies to horror movies. By this I mean, nothing is as scary as what might happen next, but you are kind of compelled to sit and go through with it. Maybe you too have found yourself sitting at your desk, knowing there is a monster up those stairs, behind that door.

But there is something not right about all this focusing on what might happen next. Recently I have got a lot out of trying to live as much in the 'now' as I can, being thankful for how things are, how I am. So if it is true that keeping an audience in anticipation of what might happen next is key to holding their attention to a story, I don't think this future-focus contributes to the actual writing the story.

That's not to say writers never derive any pleasure in what might happen next. Who hasn't sat back with their pencil in mouth, fantasizing about finishing that first book, making up a persona to meet the fans, putting words to that acceptance speech? But this practice is poisonous in the sense that it renders what's happening now as boring as the fantasy is fantastic.

So where does this leave us? I guess you have to force the issue. Start writing. Make what might happen next into what's happening now. The best advice I ever had to cure block is to start writing, write anything. Isn't it true, in fact, that nothing is as exciting as what you are writing right now? And that runs completely counter to our rule of cinema. Don't you get such a buzz about what you are writing right now that all thought of what might happen next dissipates. Bring it on I say. Let's get cracking!

Simon Maxwell lives and writes in Ireland.