Rule #6: You Need To Make Writing a Full Time Job

If you’re a writer, at some point you’ve probably heard yourself say some version of the following sentence:

“If I could just get (one day/one week/one month/one year) off from my (day job/kids/spouse/everyday life) to focus full time on my writing, then I could actually finish my (screenplay/novel/other creative project) and finally feel like a writer.”

At some point, maybe you even went for it.  Took a leave of absence, called out sick for a week, locked yourself in the library for a weekend and resolved to focus 24/7 on your writing…

…Only to find that your writing life didn’t change in the way you expected.

You imagined yourself writing every minute of every day, but instead found yourself unable to stick to your deadlines, blowing those precious hours on Facebook or solitaire, and creating new and inventive procrastination techniques that robbed you of your precious writing time.

You imagined the words flowing effortlessly onto the page, and instead found yourself staring at a blank screen, lost somewhere in the middle of your screenplay or afraid to even start.

You imagined being at one with your creativity, and instead found yourself alone in a scary place, feeling even more blocked, more overwhelmed, more stuck, and more frustrated.

Perhaps at that moment, you started to ask yourself “do I really want this?”  or “do I even have what it takes to be a writer?”

The Journey and the Destination

Building a healthy relationship with your writing is not about teleporting yourself to an alternate universe where everything changes overnight.

Rather, it’s about embarking on a journey with your creativity, through which writing gradually becomes so naturally integrated with your daily life that when you finally reach your destination, you may even find yourself wondering exactly how you got there.

Understanding The Power of a Single Drop of Water

Dump 100,000 gallons of water onto an arid desert, and you don’t get a river.  You get a terrifying flash flood that overwhelms everything in its path and then disappears just as quickly into the sand.

Let that same stream of water trickle slowly and steadily over time, and gradually a channel will start to form, getting deeper and wider until it becomes a mighty river, which can carry that water all the way to the sea.

This is how you build a writing life.  Not with a 100,000 gallon flash flood.  But with a small, steady trickle that gradually grows stronger and more powerful.  For most of us, the time to create that trickle already exists in our lives.  It’s just about making it a priority, and getting the support you need to make the most of the time you have.

How Much Time You Really Need To Write?

One of my most prolific students writes for 90 minutes a day. 45 minutes on the train ride to work.  And 45 minutes on the train ride back.

One of my good friends, Christine Boylan, a highly successful TV writer, writes in chunks of 48 minutes on and 12 minutes off-and forces herself to stop writing after 48 minutes no matter what in order to train her subconscious mind to follow her impulses and make decisions quickly.

The truth is that it doesn’t matter whether you have 5 minutes or 5 hours to write.  If you train yourself to set achievable goals, and then force yourself to stick to them, you will notice that your writing time, and the ease with which you generate material, starts to expand naturally.

5 minutes of writing in the morning gives rise to a whole day of thought about your screenplay.  During your coffee break, you jot down a couple of notes.  Instead of updating your Facebook status, you suddenly find yourself pounding out a scene.

That night, you don’t go home and turn on the TV.  You find yourself back at your computer, putting on the finishing touches on the work you’ve done.  You go to bed dreaming about your script, and you wake up the next morning racing to get everything out on the page before you leave for work.

You’re no longer writing because you have to write.  You’re writing because you want to write, because you already feel successful as a writer.  Not because of the huge goals you dreamed of, but because of the 5 minute goal you stuck to.

Create The Steady Stream of Writing that Changes Your Life

If you wrote one page a day for a year, at the end of the year, you’d have written three screenplays.  But getting that page written, day after day, can be a real challenge.

Our lives are filled with so many “urgent” demands from so many people, that sometimes the things that are really important end up falling to the wayside, simply because there is no one but ourselves to demand it from us.

If you’re going to succeed as a writer, you need to find a way to make whatever writing time you do have as urgent and non-negotiable as showing up for work in the morning.

You need someone to hold you responsible for hitting your goals, to let you know when you’ve done well, and to demand more out of you when you’ve fallen short.

If you’ve ever gone to the gym with a personal trainer, you know that even 45 minutes working out with a personal trainer can give you ten times the workout of hours spent working out on your own.

That’s why I’m introducing a new service to help you keep your focus on what really matters to you.   It’s called Personal Training for Writers.   And it’s just like working out with a trainer in the gym.

Here’s how it works:

• Subscribe: For 3 months, 6 months, or a full year of weekly training sessions.

• Create Your Gameplan:  Discuss your writing goals with your personal trainer, and create a personalized writing schedule and regimen of exercises, to maximize the time you have to write, and integrate your creative goals with your daily life.

• Stick To Your Goals: Halfway through your writing week, your Personal Trainer will call to check in on how you’re proceeding, answer urgent questions, and give you the guidance (or tough love) you need to meet your deadlines.

• Turn in Your Pages: Each week, you’ll submit up to ten pages of writing to your Personal Trainer, hitting your deadlines just like professional writers do.

• Get Personalized Feedback:  With weekly one-on-one sessions with your personal trainer.  Get in depth feedback on the pages you’ve  written, and the guidance you need to keep moving forward, so you can stay on track and growing as a writer.

• In Person or Online: Meet with your trainer from anywhere in the world: in-person in NYC, or online via video chat.

Students Save 50% or More on Personal Training!

Take any of our NYC Write Your Screenplay classes and save 50% off your first month of Personal Training for Screenwriters.

Don’t live in NYC?  Take a Write Your Screenplay class online, and receive up to a month of Personal Training for FREE.

Is your fear of cliche killing your writing?

In this video I recently recorded for Scriptmag, I discuss the screenplay for Crazy Stupid Love and how you can engage with your cliches in a healthy way, in order to set your creativity free and and create the kinds of fresh and exciting scenes you dream of writing.

On this Thanksgiving Holiday, I’d like to invite you to take a moment to ask yourself the following question:

What are you thankful for in your writing?

So often, we spend our time criticizing ourselves, searching for what is wrong, and what can be improved in the words we write.  And certainly there is value in that part of the process.

But it’s important to remember that the real key to becoming the writers we want to be lies in identifying what we love.

When you identify on the things you love about your writing, you shift your focus away from the things you lack, and onto the wonderful gifts you already have.

In this way, you give yourself a foundation upon which to build, open yourself up to the opportunities in your writing, and invest yourself with the hope and excitement that will carry you through to the end.

So take a moment today, think about your writing, and write down the things you most love about it.

Think about your process.  What about it makes you happy?

Look at a scene you’ve written or a character you’ve created.  What do you most connect to?

What’s a line of dialogue you’re thankful to have discovered? A theme you’re thankful to have explored? A character you’re glad to have taken on a journey? Or an obstacle you’re grateful to have wrestled with and overcome?

Get specific about all the things you’re thankful for.  And then,  if you’d like, share some of them with us and with your friends by posting what you love about your writing to our new Facebook Page!

We’ll be thankful that you did!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Jake

100 Rules and How To Break Them

Introducing my new series “100 Rules and How To Break Them!”  Each week, I’ll be analyzing one of the so called “rules” of screenwriting, and exploring both why they exist, and how to break them in interesting ways that make your writing better and your stories more powerful.

RULE #1 – WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW

One of the most misleading ideas in screenwriting is that as a writer you should “write what you know.”

On its surface, this is a brilliant idea.  After all, writing what you know means you’re a whole lot less likely to get into trouble in your writing—and even your fiction is a whole lot more likely to be rooted in truth.

As anyone who’s ever told a lie can tell you, building on pure fiction is like building on quicksand.

Things might look so much easier for awhile, but pretty soon one fabrication piles upon another until you’re spending all your time trying to keep your story from from collapsing on itself.

Writing what you know makes things so much easier.  Rather than reinventing the wheel, you get to focus on something you know profoundly well, conjure it for your audience, help them to connect with it, and take them on a journey in relation to it.

But of course, if great writers truly only wrote what they knew, some of the greatest works of fiction would never have existed.

I think it’s safe to say George Lucas never spent much real time “a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away”.  Nor were JRR Tolkien or Peter Jackson ever abducted by Gandalf.

You don’t have to be a serial killer or an FBI agent to write “The Silence of The Lambs”.  You don’t have to be a mobster to write “Goodfellas”.  And you don’t have to be a pet detective to write “Ace Ventura.”

As writers, we know on some level that our job is to invent.  We are creators of fiction…  So how are you supposed to write what you know, when you’re conjuring a world you never lived in, or a character whose life you’ve never experienced?

The trick with writing what you know is not to write what you know literally—it’s to write what you know emotionally.

George Lucas may not have known Darth Vadar—but he was deeply connected to the idea of the force.  That’s what makes the early movies so powerful—and its absence is what makes the later movies so easily forgettable.

JRR Tolkein may not have dwelled in middle earth, but he clearly understood the nature of addiction:  the irresistible urge to put on the precious ring of power—even knowing that it draws the dark lord closer.  And the way the end of that addiction—with the destruction of the ring by the ultimate addict, Gollum, also means the end of the age of magic, and the beginning of the age of man.

What a great writer does is not simply to write the literal truth of what he or she knows.  What a great writer does is to translate what she knows into a fiction that tells the truth even more powerfully than the literal truth ever could.

Check back next week for the next article in the “100 Rules and How To Break Them” series.  

Help Your Inner Artist to Cooperate With Your Grown Up Goals

Click here to read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of the series

If screenwriting was just about playing happily and freely, if you could simply free your creative child to play, your job would be done, and you and your inner artist could now dance off into the sunset.

But just like any child, if your inner artist is going to give you the kind of writing you can use to build your writing career, it’s going to need some guidance.

Different children need different kinds of parenting. And the same is true for different kinds of inner artists.

When I was growing up, my mom used to laugh that she could let me play out on the front lawn for hours with barely an eye on me, and never have to worry for a moment.

The same is true for my inner artist. When I write the first draft of a screenplay, I barely have to worry consciously about structure, outlining, hook, or any of the stuff they teach in screenwriting books. For the most part, I just need to allow my inner artist to play, and I’ll know he’ll get there.

This is true for many different reasons.

The first is that my inner artist is super-educated. From a lifetime of reading, writing, watching movies, breaking down scripts, learning from great writers, trying new approaches and reading just about every book on writing he’s become an “old soul” who just knows how to do it.

But he’s also just “that type of kid”– just like I was growing up. Give him too much structure, and he feels trapped. Give him freedom, and a little gentle guidance here and there, and he’s blissfully happy.

My sister, on the other hand, was an entirely different kind of kid. Crack the door an inch, and Carina would be off dashing happily into traffic with my mom chasing frantically after her.

If your inner artist is built more like Carina– you can’t just leave her unattended in the front yard to follow her impulses.

Because as brilliant and talented as she may be (Carina grew up to be a Harvard educated doctor) she also needs some structure to keep her safe.

At the same time, if you’ve got an inner artist like Carina, you’ve got to resist the urge to put her in a cage. Because she may be “safe” in there, she’s not going to be happy, and she’s going to fight you like crazy to escape.

This is where so many screenwriting gurus, screenwriting books and programs go wrong.

They put so much focus on “adult” stuff: outlines, image systems, rules and principles of “good writing” that your inner artist doesn’t get to have any fun at all. And soon, no matter how nice you treat her, she still doesn’t want to play.

To understand this, all you have to do is take a kid like Carina to a playground. Insist that she has to play on the swings, and she will kick and scream and cry and fight. But put her in a nice safe area with lots of great stuff to play with, let her run around madly for awhile from the swings to the slide to the sandbox to the jungle gym, and eventually you’ll be surprised to find her settling down into one area where she really wants to play.

It may be the swing set you intended for her. Or it may be something else that’s even cooler. But at that point, you’ll be amazed at the endless creativity she’ll show you. The hardest part will be getting her to leave!

Become the perfect parent for your unique inner artist.

As writers, when we become obsessed with forcing our inner artists to perform the way we want them to, we cut ourselves off from our best writing and the endless source of creativity within us.

But when we create just enough structure to keep our inner artists safe, our characters moving forward and our stories developing, and free our inner artist to play and explore within that fabulous playground, writers block becomes a thing of the past.

It’s impossible to be blocked when you’re having fun.

If you enjoyed this series of articles, and want help striking the balance with your own inner artist, I invite you to check out my Summer Screenwriting Classes starting July 25^th and my upcoming 10 Day Screenwriting Retreat Oct 1-10 in Bali, Indonesia.

Shift The Focus of Your Feedback

Click here to read Part 1 & Part 2 of the series.

Here’s a great exercise that can get you started changing the way you relate to your inner artist. Next time you find yourself feeling blocked, listen for the words you’re saying to your inner artist. It might be hard to hear them at first. You may just feel a general sense of anger, frustration, or despair. But if you listen carefully, you’ll find that there are words underneath. Go ahead and write them down.

Now, in a second column, replace each of these negative comments with two positive comments.

Sound easy? Here’s the trick.

Your positive comments must be true. And you have to believe them.

Like all children, your inner artist can detect false praise from 200 miles away. You’ll feel silly saying it. And they won’t believe you anyway.

For example, if you heard yourself saying “this dialogue sucks” your first instinct might be to replace it with “This dialogue is awesome!” and “I love this dialogue!”

But the truth is, if you were already in the place where you could believe that, you probably wouldn’t be reading this article.

So instead, you’ve got to work hard to find something that you can believe. For example, “this dialogue sucks” might transform into a statement of curiosity like “I wonder how this character talks?” And while you might not be able to say “I love this dialogue” you might be able to say “I like the idea of this line”.

When you switch abusive statements into positive ones that you can truly believe, you allow your inner artist to stop cowering in the corner, and start to get curious and creative.

You give them a foundation upon which to build, by honoring the work they’ve already done, and pointing them in the right direction.

Invite your inner artist to start trusting you again.

If you’ve ever worked with an abused child, you know that establishing this trust may take time. And it may even take counseling. But if you keep on using this exercise, you’ll be shocked one day when your inner artist suddenly shows up at the computer, and you start to feel the excitement with writing you once felt as a child.

Check out the final installment of this series, in which I’ll be discussing how to take these concepts to the next level, and get your creative child to play ways that serve your grown up creative goals.

Recognizing The Cycle of Abuse

Click here to read Part 1 of the series

Have you ever felt cut off from your inner artist?

Do you feel like there was once a childlike spirit of creativity inside you, that now no longer wants to come out and play?

Do you find yourself dragging yourself reluctantly to your keyboard… or even worse not dragging yourself there at all?

Do you feel like you’ve lost your creative inner-child?

We say things to our little inner artist that we would never say to any other human being, let alone a child. In fact, in the real world, if anyone saw you treating a child the way you treat your inner artist, they’d be rushing off to call social services.

When we abuse the creative child inside us, it starts to behave like most abused children: becoming glum, rebellious, fearful, and depressed.

What used to feel like play now feels like being force fed celery and chopped liver. And before long, your inner artist doesn’t want to play with you anymore, no matter how good your intentions for it may be.

Breaking The Cycle of Abuse

This isn’t your fault. Since you were in kindergarten, and the first well meaning adult told you to “think before you speak” or made you feel ashamed for acting on your impulses, you’ve been taught to censor your inner artist. This works great for preparing you for your place on the Henry Ford assembly-line of life. But it’s deadly for writers. And until you become aware of the way this innate self-censorship is affecting you, it’s like having a wall between you and your creative brain.

In my screenwriting classes here in New York and Online, I teach a unique feedback style designed to reframe the way you communicate with your inner artist and with your fellow writers. The result is a unique community that understands what it’s like to be an artist, and can help you nurture your creative child, while still building toward your creative goals.

A Reframing Technique You Can Use Now

If you have trouble breaking the abusive cycle with your inner artist, resist the urge to beat yourself up about it. This will only add to the cycle of self abuse. Instead, focus on becoming aware of your patterns, and seeking out the support you need to help you build a positive relationship with your creativity: a good screenwriting class, a hypnosis session for writer’s block, or a one on one script consultation to get you back on the right track with your writing.

Check out next week’s article, in which I’ll be sharing a reframing technique you can use right now to break the cycle of abuse with your inner artist.

Your creative brain is like a child.  And like any child, it has extraordinary creative capabilities.  If you want to remember what it was like to create freely, go to a playground and watch a child play.

A child doesn’t wonder if she’s playing with her My Little Pony correctly, if her action figure has an appropriate story arc, or if an audience will connect with her main character.  A child doesn’t watch the clock, wonder if she has anything valuable to say or put off playing for another time so that she can wash the dishes.

A child simply plays, naturally connected to the limitless source of creativity within.

It was this feeling of creative connection that most likely lead you to become a writer in the first place.  But if you’re like most writers, you’ve probably found that as you’ve grown up, your relationship with that childlike inner artist has changed.  Sometimes your writing is flowing, and other times it feels like you’re in a barren desert without a spark of creative life.

There are so many things that come between us and our writing as we get older. Professional aspirations, fear of being judged, misguided teachers, confusing or contradictory feedback, deep rooted emotional blocks, writing for others instead of yourself, and the tremendous pressure we put on ourselves to succeed.

Every writer struggles with writers block at some point in their career.

And sometimes when things get bad enough, we can start to wonder if that creative child is still there at all, or if we’ve somehow lost it along the way.

Learn to play again.

Check out my 4 Week Write Your Screenplay workshop, starting July 25th and learn how to get your creativity flowing freely again.  Discover the tools you need to recapture the joy of writing, and shape the playful creativity of your inner artist into the kind of screenplay you have always dreamed of writing.

Stay tuned for next week’s article, in which I’ll be describing some of the road blocks that stand between writers and their inner artists, and ways you can begin to overcome them.

The Captain And The Navigator

If you imagine your writing as a ship, then you can think of your subconscious, creative brain as the Captain, and the conscious editing brain as the Navigator.

Having a good Navigator is a vital part of keeping the ship afloat. After all, it’s the Navigator who reads the charts, plots the course, adjusts for winds and currents, and makes sure you arrive in the most efficient way possible. The Navigator makes the plans that make the Captain’s goals possible. Tell the Navigator where you want to go, and the Navigator will get you there.

The Trouble Occurs When The Navigator Starts To Think He Or She Is The Captain

Imagine your terrified Editing Brain Navigator, clinging desperately to the helm in the middle of the storm, seeing the rocks ahead, and not knowing what to do about them: frantically pouring through screenwriting books, planning, outlining, writing character backstories, building image systems, refining your hook, organizing around a theme, obsessing day and night…

But no matter what it does the rocks just keep getting closer. Because your editing brain doesn’t know how to steer the ship.

Unlike the Captain, the Navigator has no idea how the intricate inner workings of the ship actually function. They don’t know how to run the rigging, manage the emotions of the crew, or make the millions of instinctual decisions that make the difference between survival and destruction.

And yet, most of us continually put the Navigator in this position. Mostly because, just like the terrified Navigator, we’re unaware that the Captain even exists. Or unwilling to trust them if they do.

Learning To Trust Your Creative Brain

It’s only natural that we’d feel this way. Our entire education system, since we were in kindergarten, has taught us to ignore the instinctual, creative side that actually governs 90% of what we do, and to focus instead on the editing side of our brain– the part that thinks before we speak, second guesses our actions, and prepares us for a role on the Henry Ford assembly line of life.

This same mistake is repeated by almost every screenwriting book on the market and almost every screenwriting guru on circuit. More and more and more education for the editing brain, until it thinks it’s the only brain on the ship.

And the next thing you know, you’re completely blocked.

This Is Where Writer’s Block Comes From.

Just like in any enterprise, when you travel too long with the wrong person at the helm, there’s usually a mutiny brewing. And of course the same is true when it comes to writing.

Your writer’s block may take the form of complete paralysis. Or it may take an even more insidious form– dull, flat, boring writing– the feeling that there’s something inside you that’s dying to come out, but that it’s never making its way onto the page.

Put Your Creative Captain Back At The Helm

Unlike your conscious editing Navigator, your subconscious creative Captain doesn’t give a hoot about Archetypes, Structure, Format, Symbol or any of the millions of other informational ideas that gurus preach and film professors salivate over.

There will be plenty of time for that later. But first you need to learn to steer your ship.

That’s why my screenwriting workshops begin with mind opening exercises, designed to help your over-anxious Navigator retire to its cabin for some well-deserved rest, and put your creative Captain back in control.

Gradually, you’ll learn how to balance the two sides of your writer’s mind, so that both Captain and Navigator to work together in harmony to develop and craft your voice as a writer, discover the story within you, and translate it to the page.

Spring Semester starts on April 19th, with 4 Week and 8 Week classes both here in New York City and Online from anywhere in the world. Reserve your spot today.

Take Your Creative Brain Out Of Cold Storage

Remember the expression on Hans Solo’s face when Darth Vader pulled him out of the carbon freezing chamber?  That’s how our Creative Brains feel most of the time.   Frozen.  Helpless. Paralyzed.  Lost.  Mouth open in a silent scream.

It wasn’t always this way.  If you want to remember the time before your editing brain took control, just watch a child play with their holiday presents.  Watch how effortlessly the creativity flows through them.  Each and every child is a creative genius.  They can make things up forever, without ever getting blocked, or every running out of ideas.

A child doesn’t worry about whether or not she’s playing with her Barbie properly, whether her My Little Pony’s journey has the appropriate arc.  A child doesn’t fret over whether or not she has a talent for dialogue, or whether her Tickle-Me-Elmo is a likable character.  A child doesn’t beat herself up over playing wrong, or breaking the rules, or making up a story that nobody else understands.

A child simply plays.

Pablo Picasso, one of the greatest artists of all time, said he spent the first half of his life trying to paint like Rembrandt, and the second half of his life trying to paint like a child.

There’s a reason he felt this way and dedicated so much time to this unlikely goal.  There’s a reason why Picasso was so prolific.   And there’s a reason why the work he created in this way was so tremendously successful.

When you tap into your inner child, you’re tapping into the limitless power of your creative mind.  You achieve what Zen Masters call ‘beginners mind’, that magical state before you know the rules, when everything seems possible, and is.

I’ve seen this again and again in my classes.  Young writers who have never picked up a pen before outshining the perfectly polished work of graduates of top film programs.

When you find beginner’s mind, you have nothing to lose.  Because you’re not trying to be good.  You’re just allowing yourself to write.

Here’s a guy who really understands how to get in touch with your creative mind. Watch the video and learn:

• How rewriting from memory can be better than editing from the page.

• How to create space for your writing within the hectic schedule of your everyday life.

• How the real work of writing happens without any conscious thought.

• What’s wrong with most writing classes, and how you can protect your creative process by seeking out teachers who appreciate and understand the way your creative mind works.

Just as the real hypnotic script discussed in Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 of this series uses a three step structure to hypnotically bring about a change, the structure of the film Inception also takes three steps down, and then three “kicks” back up, to plant the post hypnotic suggestion of breaking up his father’s company in Robert Fischer’s mind.

The film begins in conscious reality, or at least what seems like conscious reality.  Robert Fischer is in a plane, and Cobb builds trust with him by returning his “lost” passport, before inducing trance by drugging Robert and entering his dream.

First Step Down: A Secret Safe

Robert finds himself in what he thinks is Los Angeles, where he is taken hostage by Cobb’s crew.  Eames impersonates family friend Peter Browning, and convinces Robert that he has been tortured for the combination to Robert’s father’s secret safe– a combination only Robert knows.  In the safe is his father’s last gift for Robert, a secret will that splits up the company.  Robert’s doubt of his father is so intense that even in a dream he can’t believe Browning’s story.  Even on his death bed, Robert’s father only had one word to share with him: “Disappointed”.  Ultimately, the numbers need to be extracted at random from Robert’s subconscious before Robert can be put back to sleep for the next step down…

Second Step Down: Browning’s Secret

At the Los Angeles hotel, Robert meets Cobb, who tells him that he is dreaming, and that he is there to protect him.  Once again using Eames’ skills of impersonation, they trick Robert into suspecting Browning, who admits that he staged the kidnapping in an effort to prevent Robert from accepting his father’s challenge to break up the company.  This experience begins to cast down upon the story Robert has been telling himself about Browning, and about his father, and to shift his trust from one to the other. Desperate to understand, Robert enters what he believes to be Browning’s dream.  As Robert is put back to sleep in the hotel room, he finds himself…

Third Step Down: The Father’s Secret

Robert attempts to infiltrate the snow fortress which he believes holds the secrets of Browning’s mind.  After Mal’s untimely appearance and a brief misadventure in Limbo, he is rescued by Cobb and Ariadne and returned to the inner chamber of the fortress.  Inside,  he discovers himself alone with his father, at the sick bed where his father once expressed his devastating feelings about Robert in one painful word: “Disappointed”.

“…because I wasn’t you…” Robert tells his father sadly, sharing the story he’s been telling himself about his father’s words.

“No, his father corrects him… disappointed that you tried.”

And at that moment, everything changes for Robert… and he is ready to open the safe.

The Post Hypnotic Suggestion

From the moment Robert’s story changes, so too does every element of the way his subconscious mind perceives his world.  And that’s why, when he opens the safe, what he finds is not just the will, but a symbol of his father’s love: the old pin-wheel from the photo Robert has always carried with him– his last memory of a loving relationship with his father.

And with that pin-wheel comes the healing Robert so desperately needs.

Whether the story is true or not.

Three Steps Back Up In Inception

As you saw in last week’s hypnotic script, in classical hypnosis, at this point a hypnotist would return the client to each level of the dream, allowing to see how the new story they have accepted will forever change those images, and building toward an even more powerful moment of healing, which anchors the larger change the person is seeking.

To some degree, Christopher Nolan does this as well, for example, by allowing the snow fortress (and with it, the secret that was once kept from Robert) to collapse.  But for the most part, Nolan reduces the three steps back up process to a series of three “kicks”: Fischer and the team falling with the collapsing snow fortress, Arthur blowing up the weightless elevator in the hotel, and Yusuf crashing the van into the water.

But even though Robert the character doesn’t go through each of the three steps back up– as an audience, we experience the whole journey, witnessing each step down from a new perspective as we race back up toward consciousness…

From a character perspective, this makes a lot of sense.  Because ultimately, Robert may not be the only one dreaming…

Cobb’s Inception

Just as Inception is built through a “dream within a dream” structure, it may also contain an inception within an inception.

Just as Robert is being incepted to break up his father’s company, so too is Cobb being incepted to “take a leap of faith”.  He’s the one we truly care about– in whose transformation we are most deeply invested– and through whose dream architecture we actually experience the story of Inception.

Stay tuned for next week’s article, in which I’ll be breaking down Cobb’s journey as it relates to hypnosis and Inception:  “Is Robert Fischer The Only One Dreaming?”

As discussed in parts 1, 2 and 3 of this series, Christopher Nolan’s screenplay Inception is deeply rooted in the principles of hypnosis.   Learning more about these principles may not only change the way you approach your own writing, but also help you understand new ways that you can break through writer’s block and build the writer’s life you’ve been seeking.

The Post Hypnotic Suggestion

Just like the idea, in Inception, that Robert Fischer’s father really loved him, a post hypnotic suggestion is an idea, delivered in deep trance, that the subconscious mind accepts as if it were true.

Post hypnotic suggestions are incredibly powerful, in that when done right, they become anchored in your consciousness, and begin to bring about real life changes in your every day reality.

As suggested in Inception, these post hypnotic suggestions only work if certain conditions are met:

• They are in alignment with the person’s beliefs.  (In other words you can’t “incept” a kind person to be violent, even though you can “incept” a person who desperately wants to write to take action).

• The person chooses to accept the suggestion.  This is why post hypnotic suggestions are more likely to work if they’re given by someone you trust– such as a respected teacher, a great hypnotist, or a person you can depend on (in the case of Inception, Eames masquerades as Peter Browning, the one person Robert truly believes in, to surreptitiously deliver the post-hypnotic suggestion)

• The suggestions, and the “dream” images used to get the person to them, are phrased in the right way for that particular person, using their own language, and their own symbolic systems.

The magic book used in last week’s hypnotic script is just one of many ways of delivering a post-hypnotic suggestion.  Just as the classical three step model is only one of many ways of using hypnosis to bring about profound change.

How Are You Incepting Yourself?

The truth is, you’re delivering post-hypnotic suggestions to yourself every single day, in the words you say to yourself, and the soundtrack running in your head.  And these suggestions can be even MORE powerful than the ones a hypnotist provides, because they are already perfectly aligned with your belief systems, come from a person you trust (yourself), and are perfectly phrased in the way that only you can say them.

So if post hypnotic suggestions really are this powerful– are so transformative, as suggested by Inception, that a person like Mal will continue to accept them as the truth, even if they are not true.  Are so powerful that a person like Robert Fischer can heal his whole relationship with his abusive father based on a simple thought.  Then its worth asking yourself, what are the post hypnotic suggestions that you’re giving yourself about your writing?  And what effect are they having on your writing life?

Stay tuned for next week’s article, in which I’ll be breaking down the structure of Inception in relation to the three step hypnotic technique.

As I discussed in last week’s article, the organizing principles of Inception’s dream within a dream within a dream structure almost perfectly mirror the classical hypnosis training one receives at a weekend certification class in hypnosis.

To understand how a movie can be built from this kind of organizing principle, you first need to know a little about hypnosis.

The Standard Three Step Hypnotic Technique

Weekend certifications in hypnosis generally teach a three step technique which corresponds almost perfectly with the “three dream” technique the characters in Inception are using to convince their subject, Robert Fischer, to break up his father’s company.

Just as the architecture of Robert’s dream sequence in Inception is  built around around the people, image systems, and beliefs Robert holds most dear, so too is a three step hypnotic technique built around the most resonant images for the person being hypnotized.

Dream Research and Hypnotic Research

A hypnotic session using this approach begins with an interview, during which the hypnotist gathers images that have emotional power to the person being hypnotized.

For example, if you were using this method to help a blocked writer pick up the pen after a long period of procrastination, you might begin with images that are not even related to writing, but which capture some of the emotions the person wishes they had when they were writing.

The hypnotist would then induce a trance in the person, creating a dream like journey– a series of three images down into hypnosis, and three images back up–  in which each image leads them deeper into trance, and closer to the transformation they are searching for, just like a dream within a dream.

With each step down, the value of the image is established, and with each step back up, the meaning of each image is deepened and adapted, associating that image with the change the person is seeking, and anchoring that change on a deep subconscious level– as if it had already happened.

The Power of Images

Movies are built around images, because movies are hypnotic.  They carry us out of our own world, and transport us into the dream world of the writer.  Each sequence of images leads us deeper into trance, until we begin to respond to the movie as if it were real, feeling real emotions for characters we know don’t actually exist.

We cry for losses that never happened, feel embarrassed for social gaffs that never actually occurred.  Our hearts race as if we were standing in the character’s shoes– as if their fear was our fear, or their love our love.  We root for them, we care about them.

And we begin to care about their images systems as if they were our own.

When Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Cobb, sees his children but cannot see their faces, we begin to long for their reunion just as he does.  And when those children turn around and reveal their faces to him, it’s hard to fight the rush of emotion.

Are You Getting The Most Out Of Your Images?

As a writer, you can use the three step hypnotic process to craft a profound journey for your character.  Think about the images that most powerfully capture your character’s experience on the way down toward the heart of their journey, and how you can return to those images in new ways on the way back up in order to anchor and deepen the change your character is experiencing.

And while your at it, think about the hypnotic images that play in your own head as a writer.  What images do you chose to focus on?  What images are holding you back?  And how can you revisit, deepen, and adapt those images in order to anchor the future that you are seeking?

Whatever images you choose, if you get them right your subconscious mind will respond to them as if they were real– just like you do at the movies.  Perhaps it’s time to create some new variations.

Stay tuned next week for my most exciting Inception article yet– a powerful hypnotic script that uses the principles behind Inception to help you overcome your own creative blocks.

By now, you and everyone you know have probably seen Inception.  You’ve read reviews that wax poetic about its dream like nature, its visual innovation, and its extraordinarily ambitious thematic aspirations.

Perhaps you’ve even heard me lecture about Inception, and the ways I feel it could have pushed its themes even further.

The Hypnotic Basis of Inception

One of the truly interesting things about Inception is that its structure seems to be based upon the principles of hypnosis.  In fact, the organizing principles of the dream within a dream within a dream structure of the film almost perfectly mirror the classical hypnosis training one receives at a weekend certification class in hypnosis.

Your Screenplay’s Organizing Principles

Why is this important to you as a writer?  Because as writers we all need organizing principles around which to structure our character’s journey.  Usually we think of such structures in terms of acts and themes, but as Inception demonstrates, the truth is that almost any source of inspiration can become the organizing principal of your story:  from a question, to a character trait, to a work of art or piece of music, or in this case to a classical hypnosis certification class.

As writers we are not only students of screenwriting, we are also students of the world.  And the good news is: you can utilize the hypnotic principles behind Inception not only to inspire the way you create the structure of your own movie, but also to open up new avenues toward building your life as a writer.

An Exciting New Series of Articles

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be discussing the hypnotic principles behind Inception, and ways of applying them to your own writing.  I’ll also be describing ways that you can draw upon your own experiences to create organizing principles for your own movies– and harness those ideas to create unity for your script and profound journeys for your main characters.

To that end, we’ll not only be talking about the things that work in Inception, but also the things that could have been pushed further, to make the film even more dramatically successful and emotionally powerful.

Finally, we’ll be discussing ways that you can apply hypnotic principles in your life as a writer, in order to break through writer’s block, heal old wounds to your confidence, overcome procrastination, and create a better relationship between your writing and your editing brain.

Check back next week, for the first article in the series:  INCEPTION:  Understanding Hypnosis For Writers

Recently a student asked me the following question:

Can I write a synopsis/storyline, complete with time era, scenery and plot for a movie, and have someone else develop the characters and dialogue?

This is essentially what producers do in Hollywood.  But it’s very, very hard for young writers to sell movies this way.  And it’s even harder to actually develop a script that captures the spirit of your idea in the way you imagined it unless you’re writing it yourself.

The Long Road To Development Hell

As much as we all dream of the magical writer who can sweep in from the sky and make our ideas come to life, if you know much about the development process in Hollywood, you know this hardly ever works.

Hollywood is full of great ideas.  And producers spend millions of dollars paying professional writers to turn these ideas into scripts.

But no matter how glowing the writer’s past track-record, scripts that are generated this way are rarely successful.

Projects end up being written and re-written by dozens of writers, and seem to get worse with every re-draft.  These scripts end up languishing in what producers like to call  “development hell,” that eternal purgatory of screenplays that will never be made.

Create The Script You Really Want

It’s a safe bet that if writing someone else’s script is this challenging for a million-dollar-a-script writer in Hollywood, it’s certainly going to be even harder for the young writers you can afford to hire as a young producer.

Most writers do their best work when they are writing from the heart, exploring themes that are resonant for them, and discovering their character’s journey as they write it.  Not when they are “painting by numbers” and filling in the gaps of someone else’s story.

So most likely, if you want to see your project come to fruition, you’re going to have to write it yourself.

Take a class.  Grab a pen.  Sit down, and start searching for your character.

Tell the story you wanted to tell, as only you can tell it.

You’ll be happy that you did.

Here’s a great, FREE teleseminar for any of you who are struggling with procrastination.  Audrey Sussman is more than just a brilliant hypnotherapist… she’s also my mom!

I’m sure you’re going to love her teleseminar.  And you don’t even have to go anywhere to experience it!

CONQUERING PROCRASTINATION
A Workshop For Creative, Intelligent People Who Get Stuck
With Dr. Audrey Sussman, PhD, LCSW, NBCCH
Thursday, January 28th at 9:15pm

Here’s a link to sign up:

http://www.actionsendsprocrastination.com/freecall/

You can learn more about all the wonderful work she does at her website:  http://www.anxietycontrolcenter.com

WHAT TO DO WHEN IT’S JUST NOT COMING
Understanding the Causes of Writers Block

It’s the most coveted time for writers. The rare moment when the words are just flowing, when writing feels effortless and the ideas are coming faster than you can write them down. During times like these, it’s easy to think of yourself as a writer.

But how are you supposed to think of yourself as a real writer at times when the words are NOT flowing? What do you do when you find yourself staring at a blank page, wondering if you even have anything worthwhile to say.

The way you respond to these difficult writing times will define your life as a writer, and the happiness and longevity of your writing career.

The times when things are not flowing are as natural a part of the writing process as the times when things are. But because these times can be so trying emotionally, we often experience them as writing failures. One perceived failure builds upon another, and before long we start to fear writing. Under these circumstances, even the thought of sitting down to write can become painful.

This is often the real source of writers block, a long chain of negative emotions, linked together until you feel completely paralyzed in your writing.

In order to break through these kinds of blocks, you need to break the chain of fear and pain associated with writing. One of the ways I do this with many of my coaching clients is through hypnosis.

The experiences of your creative life do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, they are interwoven with other elements of your life, and the millions of other emotions you experience every day.

In fact, you can imagine each event in your life like a single domino in the most complex arrangement of dominoes in the world. Within this arrangement, your creative experiences are mixed in and interwoven with the emotions of your entire personal history, spanning from your childhood all the way into the future. Family conflicts, romantic relationships, dreams, successes, failures, old traumas and new hopes, everything is included, and more importantly, interconnected.

It’s no wonder then that positive or negative feelings you associate with writing can profoundly affect the way you feel in every other aspect of your life. After a successful writing day, you feel fully charged, confident, hopeful, ready to take on the world. But on days when it’s just not coming, negative emotions can spill over from your writing life into the rest of your experience, leading to feelings of grief, fear, hopelessness, or even depression.

The result is often a vicious cycle. The more the negative feelings pile up, the more blocked you become, and the more you beat yourself up emotionally. The negative feelings associated with this self abuse get attached to the ones that got you blocked in the first place. And instead of releasing your blocks, you end up reinforcing them.

The first step you can take toward freeing yourself from writers block is recognizing the cycle of self abuse when it’s happening, and forcing yourself to put a stop to it.

But for some writers, this may not be enough.

The deepest creative blocks reside at the unconscious level, so to deal with them effectively, you may need some unconscious help. Imagine if rather than trying to consciously wrestle with each and every emotional “domino” in your chain one by one, you could use the power of your unconscious mind to simply track your creative block directly to its source. Push down that first “domino”, release that emotion and everything else on the chain falls into place. Just like an arrangement of dominoes.

If this sounds good to you, it’s probably time to set up a private hypnosis session.

More information about hypnosis and upcoming screenwriting workshops.

This article comes in response to a question I was recently asked by a screenwriting student.

I think it describes a challenge almost all screenwriters face: finding balance.

Balance between the planning phases and the writing phases of creating your screenplay.

Balance between the demands of your life and the demands of your writing passion.

Read on and find some suggestions!

There are just a few spots left in my upcoming Write! Write! Write! classes, so if you haven’t signed up yet, make sure to do so right away to reserve your spot!

WRITE! WRITE! WRITE!
Monday Night Workshop, begins September 14th
Tuesday Afternoon Workshop, begins September 22nd.

QUESTION:

“My question is in regards to a story I have been working on for a few years now… I have been writing and writing and I’ve done outlines and character beats and research and all of the back story I can think of and I am still at an impasse. I’ve put the story down for the past four months and have now just started a new internship and really struggling to find the time to write it. There is time, granted, but not enough I feel to adequately devote to what this story needs to separate itself from being mediocre… Is this fair to my story?”

ANSWER:

Not having time is a game we often play with ourselves when we’re feeling nervous about writing.

If you think about it, even if you just wrote one page a day, by the end of the year you’d have 365 pages. That’s three screenplays! (or more likely three drafts of one screenplay).

In your case, it sounds like the thing that’s really locked you up is trying to figure out the whole movie before you’ve actually written it.

The beauty of writing is that it is an act of discovery, so my advice to you is to let that pressure go. Stop planning, and start writing.

Come up with a goal that you know you can achieve, one page, half a page, 15 minutes a day, whatever it is. And then go and achieve it. To give yourself even more support in your endeavor, you may want to sign up for a good screenwriting class that helps you out with deadlines, writing techniques, and quality feedback on your writing.

At this point, your goal should be quantity, not quality. You can’t control whether pages come out great or mediocre. But you can control how many pages come out. And the more pages you generate, the more chance you have of stumbling onto something truly wonderful.

The good news is, once you have it on the page, you can make any scene better. But you can’t do anything while it’s only in your head.

There’s only one way to learn– by doing– writing the scene, figuring out what’s working, and what’s not working, and then learning the skills you need to make the stuff that doesn’t work fabulous.

So let all that preparation you’ve done slide to the back of your brain, engage your writing mind, and see where your characters take you. Write the scenes that seem the most fun, or the ones that scare you the most.

Focus on quantity, not quality, and the quality will come.

If you’d like to learn more, I invite you to check out one of my upcoming classes.

HAVE A QUESTION ABOUT SCREENWRITING?

Have a question about screenwriting? Email me here and your question could be featured in a future newsletter.

It may be hard to tell from some of the stuff you see coming out of Hollywood, but believe it or not, no one sets out to be a mediocre writer.

No writer dreams of writing that crappy screenplay with the unintelligible plot. No writer fantasizes about creating paper thin characters, canned dialogue, or predictable plot points.

As writers, we share a common desire: we want to write great scripts, fascinating characters, brilliant dialogue, and breathtaking stories that catch people and won’t let them go. We want to say something that matters to us, have our voices heard, and create the kind of movies we grew up loving.

All writers want to be great writers.

Unfortunately, for many writers this need to create something great is actually the biggest obstacle to their writing.

That’s because, as much as we’d all like to, no can can control the quality of their writing.

Occasionally, magic does happen. You wake up one day inspired. You know the story you want to tell, and somehow it just pours out of you, almost like someone else was creating the story and all you have to do is type out the words.

But more often, that magic is elusive. You wake up inspired with a brilliant premise, but feel like you don’t know how to execute it. Or you discover a character that intrigues you, but haven’t the slightest clue what his or her story will be, or how you’re going to find it.

When the words you’re actually writing don’t seem to match the dream of greatness you’re holding in your mind, it’s hard to see yourself as a writer.

You start to feel stuck, lost, or just plain blocked. You may even start to wonder if you really have what it takes to be a writer…

Nonsense.

The desire for greatness is the most dangerous desire for writers.

When you hold it too closely, you not only take all the joy out of writing, but also make it increasingly unlikely that you will ever achieve the greatness you’re seeking.

It’s not that writers shouldn’t strive for great writing. It’s that writing is a process, and to actually create something great, you must first give yourself the freedom to play.

Picasso said that he spent for years trying to paint like Raphael, and the rest of his life trying to paint like a child.

The same is true for writers. Creating something great often means letting go of your goals for your writing (and the judgment that goes with it), and simply allowing yourself to play like a child.

That’s the goal of my new “Write! Write! Write!” Screenwriting Workshops.

Each workshop begins with a special in-class writing exercise, designed to set your judgment aside, unlock your creativity, and make writing fun again.

These playful scenes then become the basis for inspiring lectures, designed to not only teach you the craft of screenwriting, but also help the build the skills you need to take your most creative scenes, and transform them into the kind of screenplay you’ve always dreamed of writing.

Take your first step today.

I was recently giving a lecture on using hypnosis to combat writer’s block, and was asked a profound question by one of the students.

She explained that her block had nothing to do with fear of writing, procrastination, the desire to get every scene “right” or any of the other common causes of writer’s block that students were describing.

Her problem that she simply didn’t know what happened next in her story. She was just plain stuck. And she felt like until she figured it out, she couldn’t write another word.

How many writers have felt EXACTLY like that?

More than you think.

It’s easy to convince ourselves that if we don’t know what is going to happen, that there’s no way to move forward in our writing.

But the truth is exactly the opposite. And if you want proof, all you have to do is think about your life.

How often do any of us have any idea what is actually going to happen?

When you wake up in the morning, you don’t know what’s going to happen to you that day. Sure, you may have a general idea of what you THINK is going to happen, what USUALLY happens, or what you’d LIKE to happen.

But the truth is, you have no idea what’s going to happen in your life.

There’s an old adage– if you want to make God laugh, make plans.

The same wisdom that is true for life is also true for character.

You don’t need to know what’s going to happen to get out of bed in the morning. You simply get up, because you have to. You live your life. You meet that new person. You fall in love. You get the big promotion or the new job.

You deal with pain from unexpected places. Death, sickness, loss. Unexpected phone calls. Friends and family in trouble.

Wonderful things and terrible things happen all the time, and we rarely see them coming.

And yet we keep on living.

So does your character.

So when you think you’ve run out of story, understand that you are fooling yourself. Life doesn’t work like that. And neither does story.

Get your character out of bed. Just like you get out of bed every morning.

Think about what he or she wants. What your character’s hopes, dreams and expectations are for the day.

And then ask yourself, what’s the BEST or WORST thing that can happen.

Write that scene, allow your character to deal with it, and you won’t have to find your structure. Your structure will find you.

From Jacob Krueger’s Screenwriting Newsletter

The following is an expanded version of an exercise I created for my screenwriting students.

It is designed to replace the negative feelings often associated with writing with positive feelings of excitement and success.

As a result, you’ll not only find yourself writing more consistently. You’ll also discover that you feel better about your writing, and the role of writing in your life.

STEP 1
Set an achievable goal for your writing this week. Something you absolutely KNOW you can EASILY accomplish. 2 pages a day. 10 minutes a day. A page a week. Whatever you know you can make work within your busy lifestyle.

NOTE: For this exercise to work, your goal must be quantifiable. In other words, there must be an objective way of determining whether or not you achieved it.

For example “write every day” is not necessarily a quantifiable goal, because it’s not clear how much writing makes this successful. Write for 7 minutes every day or writing one page a day is, because when you complete your 7 minutes or one page, you know you have achieved your goal.

Similarly “write a good scene” is not a quantifiable goal because you would have to subjectively judge whether the scene was good or not, and opinions might vary. “Write three versions of the scene I am currently struggling with” is a quantifiable goal, because regardless of subjective opinion, you can know for certain when you have achieved it.

STEP 2
Now, take whatever goal you set for yourself and CUT IT IN HALF, to make it even more easily achievable. Write it down and post it in your writing space. This is your goal for this week.

STEP 3
Break out your calendar. Schedule the time that you will use to accomplish the goal. Get specific. What time will you start? What time will you end? Will you write every day or on specific days. Where will you go to do this writing? How will you set up your day and your schedule to make sure you are not interrupted. Write it down, and make it non-negotiable. Treat the appointment just like you would treat an important appointment with your boss or a client at work.

STEP 4
Now follow your schedule throughout the week. Remember, when you achieve that goal, you are DONE. You can choose to continue if you wish. But you can also choose to close down your laptop, and feel that sense of accomplishment of a full writing day (even if your goal was only a few minutes or a quarter page of writing).

Accomplishing and CELEBRATING achievable goals is one of the most powerful things you can do to integrate writing into your life. So do something nice for yourself after each successful writing day, just like you’d hope a boss or a co-worker would do after a big meeting. Compliment yourself. Treat yourself to something. Remember, the reward should be equally great whether you simply meet your goal or end up exceeding it.

If there is a day when you do not meet your goal, accept it and MOVE ON. Don’t increase your goal for the next day. Don’t punish yourself. Don’t beat yourself up. Just remind yourself that you will do better on your next writing day, and concentrate on meeting the goal you originally set out for yourself on the day you scheduled to do so.

STEP 5
At the end of the week, evaluate- did you achieve your goals? Use the criteria below to set your goals for the next week, and repeat steps 3-5.

IF YOU FELL SHORT OF YOUR GOAL

RELAX! This is not the end of the world. It just means you set your initial goal too high.

Whatever you do, DON’T punish yourself. It will not make you a better writer to beat yourself up. All it will do is take the joy out of writing, and make your resistance even stronger.

Instead, take note of what you DID accomplish and congratulate yourself for that. If you expected to write 7 pages, and only wrote 3, celebrate the three pages you have written. If you expected to write for an hour one day, and only wrote for ten minutes, take a moment to appreciate the ten minutes of writing you accomplished.

Then, adjust your goals for next week to reflect what you now KNOW you are capable of doing. Whatever you successfully wrote this week becomes the goal for next week.

For example, if you’d set a goal of seven pages, and only wrote three, your goal for next week would be three pages.

If you planned to write for an hour, and only wrote for ten minutes, your goal for next week would be ten minutes.

Remember, the point of this exercise is not to have BIG goals, it’s to have ACHIEVABLE goals, so that writing can start to feel like a joyful, successful, and integrated part of your life.

IF YOU ACHIEVED YOUR GOAL

Great job! You are already establishing a rhythm for yourself, and it will soon pay big dividends in your writing.

Set the SAME goal for next week, repeat steps 3-5, and keep that rhythm going.

IF YOU EXCEEDED YOUR GOAL

Congratulations! Often, by setting small goals that we know we can accomplish, we set the stage for even bigger success.

To get the most out of your writing, you can now increase your goals for next week, to reflect what you actually are capable of accomplishing.

Set the amount of writing you accomplished THIS week as the goal for NEXT week, and repeat steps 3-5.

In this way, your goals can grow as your ability grows, and writing can become organically integrated into your life.

Remember, if there ever comes a time you fall short, you must adjust the goal for the following week back to the level that you actually accomplished.

Repeat this process for a full month, and notice what changes for you. Send me an email, or post a comment to this blog, and tell me all about it.

Jake

The other day, a student asked me a thought provoking question. It’s a problem faced by so many writers that I decided to include it and my answer in this month’s newsletter.

What do you do when you’re so fed up with your writing, you’re ready to scrap your whole project?

Whoa! Pull those pages out of the trash can– at least until you try these simple tricks to re-energize your writing and get your project rocking again.

QUESTION:

I’m at a fork in the road. I over thought my script and my writing has frozen.

I’ve just been doing writing exercises. I feel like they are closer to “real” writing than what I’ve been doing with these scripts. I just write whatever bubbles up. It feels freer and overall much more enjoyable than the feature writing. It’s like starting a sketch and just drawing whatever comes to mind.

I know when I focus on the script I’m still writing from a conscious level. And I don’t get anything out of it. Its frustrating, depressing, etc.

These are the two sides: When I write the exercises I have fun and don’t care much about where they go. When I write the feature I don’t have fun and I worry about what’s the best/most beautiful stuff put in there.

But writing the exercises I feel like I don’t know if it’s any good. When I write the feature, at least I “think” its good writing.

So my question is, “What are your thoughts on these two sides?”

AND

I have a new idea that I’ve thought about writing for a couple of years now. I’m not sure if I should scrap the old story and start this new one or not?

ANSWER:

The question you’re struggling with is one of the most profound ones to answer as you make your transition from amateur to professional writing.

ALL writers have tons of scripts sitting in their files that are not completed. Sometimes you hit a wall. Sometimes you lose steam. Sometimes it just takes a month or even a year of working on something else to find your way back in.

There is nothing wrong with setting a script aside, UNLESS it starts to become a habit. What happens to some writers is that every time they hit a roadblock, they start something new. While this is great for keeping up the flow– and just fine for writers who are doing it as a hobby, for people with professional aspirations, it can actually become a form of writers block.

Professional writers need to finish scripts. So here’s a little trick that I use to fool my brain into finishing scripts.

Work on two scripts at a time.

This way, you can honor your writing brain’s need for a break every once in awhile– while still knowing that you are progressing toward your goals.

What you’ll soon notice is that when things get hard on one script, the other script becomes incredibly appealing. It doesn’t even feel like work anymore. So you set your current script down, and start up on the other one again.

Before long, things get hard on the second script, and suddenly the problems with the first one don’t seem so overwhelming in comparison. So you switch back, and once again keep that momentum going, accepting and respecting your process on each screenplay, and integrating it with the demands of the industry.

As a nice side benefit, you’ll find that the scripts start to inform one another– as you build on things you learned writing one script to improve things in the other.

In addition, you may also want to set aside a day to just play (as you’ve been doing with the exercises), without worrying about either script. Playing around like this keeps your writing brain limber, and often leads to huge breakthroughs in your projects. Think of it as a valuable part of your routine (like stretching before you exercise).

Keep the main focus on those two scripts (and no more than two!) and before you know it, you’ll have two finished drafts.

A final word– remember that it’s not important for either of these drafts to be GOOD. What’s important is for them to be DONE. Once you have a full draft on paper, you can always go back later and revise– and even use the two script trick again in the editing process. Until your script is on paper, there is nothing you can do to improve it. But once it’s out there, the possibilities are endless.

Got a Question About Screenwriting?

Email me here, and your question could be featured in a future issue of my newsletter.

I recently had a student ask me a profound question. After chugging along excitedly for a month on a first draft of a new screenplay, he had found himself paralyzed by a terrifying question:

“What if it isn’t GOOD?”

I think we can all imagine his horror– the kind of horror only a writer can feel, after pouring everything you’ve got into something that may not turn out to be what you dreamed it would be.

The horror of not knowing. And possibly, not wanting to know…

This is what I like to call the “Emily Dickinson Syndrome”– the urge to hide your writing away where you can never find out what’s good or bad about it.

It’s the same urge that keeps writers from finishing some of their best projects, for fear of not living up to their own expectations.

It’s that same little voice in your head that comes up with the excuse just when you’re ready to sit down to write, sign up for a writing class, or get your script out to an agent or producer.

It’s the fear of being judged as NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

Let me say this loud and clear:

In order to write well. You have to be willing to write badly. And you’ve got to be willing to show your work, not always knowing how people are going to respond.

Writing is a lot like mining. It’s hard work. You can’t always see where you’re going. You’ve got to sort through a lot of stuff. And most of it’s not gold.

But if you don’t bring it up to the surface where others can see it, you’ll never know what you have.

Becoming a great writer is not about having some kind of secret blessing that other people are missing. It’s about generating as many pages as you can, and getting really good at noticing the flashes of brilliance within them.

As you become more skilled at excavation, you’ll learn how to follow these unpolished nuggets and shimmering dust until you find the big vein of gold you’re really looking for. That’s the moment when your script suddenly seems to be writing itself.

You’ve just got to be willing to do a lot of digging to get there.

And every once in awhile, you’ve got to take a step back from the process, come up for air, and check out what you’ve got.

The question is, where will you surface?

To really know if your writing is working, you’ve got to show it to people who know what they’re talking about.

To the untrained eye, gold doesn’t look a lot like gold. In fact, it looks a lot more like rock. But when it’s polished, shined, hammered, and shaped, its value is unmistakable.

Don’t get your initial feedback from just anybody. Get it from someone who’s at least as good an excavator as your are. Take a class. Find a professional. Or you may end up throwing out your best scenes, simply because they’re not yet polished enough for a layman’s eyes.

Ready to take the next step?

Classes Start June 8th. Sign up today. http://www.jacobkrueger.com

The following are six of the most destructive words writers can say to themselves:

“Maybe I Don’t Really Want This…”

If you’re a writer, you’ve probably uttered these words more times than you’d like to admit.

A day spent procrastinating. “Maybe I don’t really want this…”

A missed deadline. “Maybe I don’t really want this…”

That tortured feeling of sitting in front of your keyboard, wondering if you actually have anything to say. “Maybe I don’t really want this…”

Let’s put this myth to rest right now.

OF COURSE YOU WANT THIS!

No one spends that much time and energy beating themselves up about something they don’t truly care about.

Think about the things you use for procrastination: dishes, vacuuming, laundry, errands, email, television, the internet and a thousand other things you don’t really care about but spend so much time doing.

If a day went by and you never logged onto the internet, you probably wouldn’t spend the next week furiously bashing yourself over your lack of real dedication to Facebook.

If a day went by and you never switched on the cable box, you wouldn’t spend hours morosely pondering your ability to make the sacrifices necessary to be a reality show viewer.

Of course you want this!

If writing was really just a hobby for you, you wouldn’t be agonizing over your missed writing days, abandoned deadlines, and whatever it is you feel your writing is lacking. You’d simply find another hobby.

Usually when a writer is thinking about giving up, it stems from plain old fear. Fear of not being good enough. Fear of trying and failing. Fear that your greatest dreams and fiercest desires won’t come true. Sadly it’s often the things we want most desperately that we’re most afraid to admit to ourselves.

So, next time you find yourself asking that dreaded question, beating yourself up over your lack of dedication, lack of skill, lack of discipline or lack of inspiration, accept what it really means.

It means you’re a writer.

It’s not an easy life, but it’s a good one, and it’s yours.

Admit it now. And set it to rest.

You want this. You want this badly. And you are going to pursue it.

There are days you are going to fall short. Days you will miss your deadlines. And days you will feel lost and uninspired. Questioning “Maybe I don’t really want this…” is not going to protect you from those days.

It’s only going to make you feel worse, by undermining the dedication that could get you back on track.

And who are you fooling anyway?

So next time you hear that familiar question bubbling up in your head, just go ahead and laugh it off. Nobody said this was going to be easy. And not even the best writers are perfect every day. Take a moment to remind yourself about just how badly you want this, and then find something you can do right now to bring yourself closer to achieving it.

Take a step toward your real goal, and you’ll be surprised at how quickly those doubts begin to lose their power.

The best way to start is with something small. Grab your notepad right now and spend a few minutes jotting down notes or ideas. Make a date with a writer friend to sit down and write together. Or better yet, sign up for a Screenwriting Workshop.

Accept that you want this. And then accept this:

Most writers don’t have trouble writing. They have trouble starting.

How will you start today?