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kleinbl00  ·  2331 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: November 8, 2017

I do not believe there was ever a time where I was inspired to write all those particularly spectacular moments down in a notebook. Writing has always been this spiteful thing I do better than other people to make them STFU. Eventually it became this thing people thought I could do for money, then it became this thing people paid me to do.

I haven't written in eight months. I've been waiting to hear back from my agent, and it's been ridiculous just getting her a goddamn draft. I'll say this - as someone who has always been externally motivated to write, y'all are fucking insane if you really think that if you want it bad enough you'll get it. Or, more importantly, that if you arrange your life in this way or that you'll accomplish something you wouldn't accomplish otherwise.

Write for an audience. Write to respect their time. Write in a way that they want to read it. Write to put your ideas in their head. Write for as long as it takes, for as long as you're productive, then stop. Because - and here's the bitch of it - if you are dependent on contrived deadlines and forces to get you to write, you will never truly write.

I once wrote 15,000 words of a screenplay on a flight from Japan to San Francisco. It got me signed to William Morris. But hey - I know a guy who once wrote a 20,000 word screenplay in 2 days because he showed 5 loglines to a prospective agent and she asked to read the one he hadn't written.

You can keep going. You can edit it further. You can do all these things. But good god, man. If you have any respect for yourself don't swaddle your craft in a smothering blanket of metooism.