How writers work: the Get Back/Beatles approach
Self-editing lessons from Peter Jackson's epic documentary
I’ve been watching Peter Jackson’s documentary about the Beatles album Get Back. It’s eight hours long, and quite repetitive, but I find it mesmerising and epic. It enshrines the miracle of creative work – start with nothing, mess about with it, seize on fragments and work them to smithereens, abandon them maybe, mess around a lot more, write something else, change your mind about a meaning, spend hours on tiny moments of timing or lyrics, get occasional divine inspiration (Let It Be seemed to stream from Paul’s fingers fully formed).
As I launch into the first edit of my new memoir collection, Turn Right At The Rainbow, I am living the Get Back method.