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| They may think you're a slacker, but you know better - you're the writing Dude! |
I'm currently adapting Craig Russell's most excellent thriller "Blood Eagle". It's dark, it's twisted, it's everything I love about a serial killer tale and I've just sent the first draft to the producers ... now it's wait and wait until rewriting begins ... but actually, that's not what I want to write about today. People ask me all the time about this "writing thing". How do I manage a day job, enjoy life with my wonderful family ... and still find the time to write screenplays?
If you're a newbie, this may come as a shock to you - most of your writing will not be happening on paper, it will be happening in your head.
It doesn't matter whether you mow the lawn or pick up dog poop, whether you're buttering toast or roasting in the hammock. If you're a writer, you'll be - consciously or subconsciously - always connected to that fictitious story world you're currently living in. Regardless of what you do, where you are, who you're with - your story is always with you, your characters are buttering toast with you (I wish they'd pick up the damn dog poop instead, but I digress) ... There you have it - what may appear to be "just hanging around" to others is, in fact, a large chunk of what your screenwriting profession is all about.
That get me wrong - as a newbie you should be practicing the actual writing bit every single day. It builds your writing muscle and prepares you for when that first contract rolls in. Many pros will tell you that you don't start writing the actual screenplay for months after the official "go" has come. I wouldn't want to put a time frame on it (sometimes the deadline's are ridiculously steep) - but the fact is, when you have a story in your head already, every moment you spend NOT writing is time well spent. That's the time your characters are free to roam, to explore all the countless glorious "what ifs". That's the time you'll get flashes of scenes, snippets of dialogue, ideas for locations. That's the time you'll scribble things on a napkin and toss it in a drawer.
And you'll know when the moment's arrived, the moment when it feels right to bring it all together and put it on paper. You'll open that drawer, packed with notes by now, and you'll open your mind and choose everything that most excited you during all that time of "just hanging around".
I'm a great believer in the necessity of procrastination. Done right, it will never be a waste of your precious writing time. The one thing you must do is to put yourself on a story path first - pick the story, the characters, the inciting incident - see the world your story will be set in ... and then trust yourself that the story will be with you, percolating, from that moment onward. Procrastinate away, folks.
PS: Please do use your common sense. If you're still procrastinating six months after reading this - you may want to take another hard look at carpentry instead.
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