If you aren’t writing and you want to be, this is what you need to do.
Tomorrow, start the new year by writing one page of a story. It will take 15 minutes of your time.
If you repeat this every day for 2009. At the end of 2009, you will have 3 scripts.
If I have one goal, it is for you to write.
There are no real secrets anymore. The information can be found online and free. If you don’t trust it, keep searching until you realize the same ideas are repeated over and over. If you still don’t trust it, buy a couple of books and follow the advice. Just write.
If you don’t know how to format your script, get one of the many free programs that are online. If you don’t trust them, buy one of the expensive programs. If you don’t have the money, quit complaining. If you don’t have a computer, then grab pen and paper. Just write.
Now practice. Write over and over, again and again. Write till the pen runs out of ink and get a new pen. Write till your head aches and your hand cramps from pecking at the keys too long.
Learn from your mistakes. Do it better the next time. Get past the theory of reading books and following the advice of teachers and turn it into wisdom.
That’s the reason this blog exists.
There is no simpler way for me to tell you this: If you want to write, you can do it. It’s up to you.
I hear a lot of reasons why people don’t write. They always sound good but they have to be because they aren’t for me. They are for the people giving me the excuse. I know because I used a lot of them before I started writing again.
It took time and energy to lie to myself and others why I wasn’t writing. If I was working back then at the pace I am now, I could have completed at least 90 drafts, I could have been past my 10,000 mistakes and my 10,000 hours of practise. I regret now that time I wasted.
Now, it is your time to choose but remember it has nothing to do about time, or money, or skill, or talent, or the right writing tools, or a place to write.
It is about you making the choice to begin.
Write. Do the work.
This is a part of the practice of becoming a writer. It is about making the mistakes and writing ugly stuff. It is about learning what you like and what you hate. It is about not letting yourself pretend that you are working just because you are researching or thinking about the story or waiting for inspiration.
It is about learning about how you work and that learn to run on empty is sometimes the process and then, at the end of it, for the rest of the day, fill the well.
How do you know when it’s not working? How do you know when you are struggling and you just need to get out of your own way to make it work?
Discovering this is the reward of doing the work on a regular basis.
It is about familiarizing yourself with your tastes, your dislikes, and your work habits and it is about knowing when it is time to for a change.
This is more than techniques. Techniques are just tools. This is about the beekeeper who gets up every morning to work his bees and and help them make the honey.
I am starting to feel like a broken record but I am going to keep at it while I know that there are the stragglers out there.
Why aren’t you doing the work?
The amount of time and energy required to make excuses far exceeds the amount of time spent doing the work.
How much time? How about 30 minutes a day? How about 15? Spend 10. Write a page. In a year you will have 365 of them. That is 3 to 4 scripts.
That will be a lot further ahead than the direction you are going right now.
If you are telling everyone this is what you want to do for the rest of your life, then why aren’t you doing it right now?
