First, my sincere apologies to those who look forward to new posts for disappearing for a few months. I'm back and will be posting regularly again. So... what happened to the Dangerous Screenwriter?
As aspiring writers with lives, families and day jobs, it's always a struggle to find the time to actually write. But if you really aspire to be a professional, no matter how simplistic this may sound you must never lose sight -- as I recently did -- that WRITERS WRITE. Every day, no matter what.
To be a professional we must first think of ourselves as professionals, and you can't get to that level if you just write every now and then or just when mood or inspiration strike. You must learn to write even when you don't feel like it. You may write poorly, but you can always go back and fix it. The important thing is to keep working that writing muscle every day so when you look back over a few months, instead of having nothing tangible to show your body of work will have grown.
I had some very serious issues occur in my "regular" life a few months ago. On a personal level things were not good, they were about to change in a very big way and I had to focus on Life. I simply didn't have the time, brain power or emotional capacity to focus on writing. Or so I thought/felt. Then, on a writing level, things got worse.
I had a golden opportunity to write a teleplay and hand it off to a friend of mine who happens to have some serious connections and could quite possibly use my teleplay to get me work -- a REAL writing job on staff with a network show. However, I was forced to focus on life issues and missed our agreed upon submission deadline. I was in the middle of writing what I think is a terrific spec episode of "Dexter" and should have been done by the beginning of April. It is now the end of May and that episode is still incomplete. I've missed my deadline by over 2 months and counting. Golden opportunity blown.
Not only did I miss the chance to shop my spec, but I aptly showed my inability to meet a deadline. Unacceptable for a new writer trying to show his professionalism. The consequence of this is that I've probably burned that particular bridge to a career. To that contact I've now proven myself undependable and painted myself as an amateur who's not really serious. I have no excuse to smooth my shortcoming. Hollywood doesn't care why you missed your deadline or couldn't complete your assignment. They just know that time is money and I've just demonstrated working with me could lose them both.
Another unfortunate consequence of missing my deadline was when I did, it was a real shot to my self confidence as a writer. I had blown my Golden Opportunity. Of course if I keep at it, other opportunities will arise. But who wants to wait? Haven't we all waited long enough? Opportunities are scarce, especially in today's market, and we need to take advantage of every one. So I missed my deadline, lost confidence and as another consequence couldn't face the blank screen. I was afraid I wasn't good enough. I kept putting writing off, and had no shortage of reasons -- personal problems, health issues, family issues, etc. Even doing good things for myself like working out seemed like a valid drain on my writing time. With low self confidence, you can find a billion reasons not to write.
So what does a writer with low self confidence do to regain their confidence and get writing again? You write. More specifically, you write shit. You know you're no good anyway, so just write shit. Write knowing that it'll be bad. So what? No one's ever going to see it. The important thing is that you're WRITING. The second thing you do is KEEP writing shit, every moment you have. From my experience, what happens is at some point you will go back over your work and see your shortcomings. That's when the magic starts, because you will try to fix them. You may not be too successful at first. You may feel like you're covering shit with more shit. You probably are. But at some magic moment, you will have a good idea how to fix a particular problem, or you will be inspired by a bad scene to write a good one, even a killer one. The magic of this moment is that your confidence immediately goes up a notch. "Hey, that was a pretty good idea", you say to yourself. That inspires you to keep working to make the material better and the snowball effect begins -- one good idea raises another question which leads to another good idea and suddenly your pile of shit isn't smelling quite so bad anymore. Goddamn, there're even some roses in there somewhere! How it worked for me is every problem I solved, every piece of dialogue or scene direction I fixed raised my self confidence until -- in a relatively short amount of time -- I felt like a WRITER, again, one in control of himself, his muse, his craft, and eventually even my time and my life.
A crucial aspect of why self confidence is so important to the writing process is -- and I'm sure you've heard this before -- if you want to be a professional, you need to act like one. You need to see yourself as a professional and conduct yourself in that way, so when other people meet you they see a professional, not an amateur or worse, a dreamer. So you must have the confidence to see yourself that way first. And the only way to get that confidence -- real confidence, not a pose -- is to know deep down inside that you're a real writer, and the only way to know that is to be like other real writers, and REAL writers keep writing, no matter what.
So my apologies again for my temporary lapse, and I look forward to being Dangerous again.
