"Stretching" as a Creative Pause: What Writers Can Learn from Dancers
In which I share my love for something you might find cringe, but I beg you to go with it anyway.
Hello, dear friends and readers,
I was going to do a close reading of Paul Tremblay’s latest novel, Horror Movie,1 this week, but I’m waiting on copyright permissions to do the deep dive I really want to do.
That might take a while to get, but tune in for less quote-heavy close readings in the near future. On July 15, for instance, I plan to explain how the adversaries pursuing Jake and Elwood Blues take The Blues Brothers from being a decent movie about two adoptive brothers saving their childhood orphanage to being a fabulous movie (one of my top three comedies!) with tons of built-in tension and momentum. This will include a story map of how various forms of conflict culminate in a car chase Hollywood would never film today, so stay tuned.
This week, though, I’m tired (thanks to a freelance-heavy week), and I’m on the threshold of something new (and therefore distracted).
Maybe you can relate? ✨
How do we devote time to our wordcraft when our energy levels and the demands and joys of daily life are pleading for our attention?
For an answer, I’d like to ekphrastically turn your attention to the choreography in the musical Cats.2
(This isn’t a trap, I promise!)
For as much as you’re welcome to pooh-pooh this musical, just know that I’m on the other side of your judgment, judging you right back. I think most people see Cats as weird theater adults wearing striped unitards and pretending to groom themselves, but (a) there is a plot; (b) the source material, including not just Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats but some of T.S. Eliot’s heavy hitters, like “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” lends itself to robust themes of existentialism, fatalism, and the roles we all play in life; and (c) …
…it is absolutely a dancer’s musical. And it takes someone with all the discipline, recovering self-loathing, and trauma of a former dancer (yes, hi, it’s me) to appreciate it.
Regular feats of acrobatics, flexibility, and stamina are going on in Cats, like this incredible leg extension or this double-headed cartwheel, often while the performers are singing uptempo tracks.
Gillian Lynne, the musical’s original choreographer back in 1981, not only did an excellent job making her human dancers embody feline movement, but she also did a superb job of knowing what a dancer’s body needs when it’s performing three straight hours of high-impact movement for eight shows a week.
Here comes the lesson, I promise.
There are a few slower numbers in Cats, including “Old Deuteronomy,” “Moments of Happiness,” and an interlude in “The Jellicle Ball,” wherein there’s a massive cuddle puddle/orgy.3
But if you’ve been dancing nonstop, throwing your legs over your head, performing cartwheels, spins, and leaps, you can’t just go into a static state of motionlessness. If you do, your muscles will seize up with lactic acid, thinking the show is over, and your performance after standing or lying stock-still will suffer for it. (Not to mention the life of your career, if you pull a muscle or twist an ankle or a knee.)
So Lynne built in stretch breaks.
In the upstage areas of any of these slow numbers, you can see members of the ensemble cast acting catlike. They might extend their legs or do a yogic cat/cow pose to seem like they’re doing feline actor busyness, but by stretching out their legs, they’re also keeping their hamstrings warm.
Brilliant, right?
Sometimes as writers, we’re going hell for leather on a new project, performing the literary equivalent of a triple pirouette.
At other times, we retreat upstage or into the wings. We pause to gather our thoughts for a round of revision. Or maybe life is coming at us, and going hell for leather just isn’t possible. (At the top of this month, I had every intention of participating in
’s 1000 Words of Summer. I wrote maybe 256 words in my Notes app before calling it quits.)When circumstances put you against a backstop or you’re noodling with a project that breaks your brain a little to think about, don’t stop writing entirely.
Consider such an instance to be less of a pause and more of a stretch break.
While you’re stretching your brain and waiting to jump back onto center stage, brush up on the mechanics of our craft. Read a novel or poetry collection you find stimulating. Take a writing prompt and think about how you would tackle it on the way to work. Write morning pages. Get in a little drafting time in your Notes app in line at the coffee shop.
The muse will always be there when you return to your writing desk, but she’ll welcome you with an even firmer embrace if you’ve been leaving little trinkets at her altar in the interim.
I hope you’ve been having a lovely start to summer, whether you’re busy and tired or you’re writing hell for leather. 🖤
My writing retreat in Portland, Maine, was a great success, a term which here means I thought a lot about astral projection, mother wounds, and how they fit into my book. I also bought far too many the right amount of books at Print Bookstore, which I’ve had shipped home. I continued my writing aims, though with more of a focus on vacationing, checking out museums, and attending readings while visiting friends and family in Brooklyn and the Hamptons.
Internet Magpie Time!
Think of me as that friend who sends you a millionty one Reels, articles, and Tic-Tacs, but in a more curated three-at-a-time kind of fashion. Here are a few things I’ve enjoyed of late:
I Like What I Know: A Visual Autobiography, Vincent Price (1959).
The Duchess Deal, Tessa Dare (Avon Books, 2017).
Tarot for the Creative Spirit: A Journey of Self-Discovery through Tarot, Typewriter Tarot/Cecily Sailer (2024).
I hope June has been treating you kindly. Have a lovely July 1 and July 4, Canadians and Americans! I’ll be back with the promised film analysis of Blues Brothers’ Chicago law enforcement, Illinois N*zis, Good Ol’ Boys, and more on July 15.
Jessica xx
Which is an incredible exploration of the social contract between creator and audience, and you should all read it. Right now.
This post is a treat, I tell you, because I’ve been embarrassed to talk about my love for this revue-style musical, especially after that horrendous Tom Hooper adaptation. So listen up and stop calling me cringe! (Also, is it obvious yet that Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber was a formative influence?)
Seriously, rethink your take on this musical. And f**k Tom Hooper while we’re at it.