Dispatch from The Quest: Scott Reynolds

Last week as we did here on GITS, the Quest writers focused on the subject of character. That seemed to have put them in an especially reflective mood as most of them used their journal entries to ponder where they were in the process of learning the craft of screenwriting. We continue this week’s series of dispatches with some musings from Scott Reynolds about a writer’s inevitable nemesis — time:

The Rolling Stones are a bunch of liars.

Let’s examine the facts: Wild Horses could almost certainly drag Mick Jagger away from anything. He’s not that big. Mother was more into the drink than little yellow pills. And Time is most definitely NOT on my side. No it’s not.

If we take it on face value that we’re the protagonists of our life’s story, then Time is the nemesis, the trickster, and if you’re smart, also the mentor.

You’ve heard the advice “dress for the job you want, not the job you have”. I propose a corollary: “make time for the job you want, not the job you have”.

These first couple of weeks of the Quest have been, in a word, brutal. Not because of the Quest itself, but just everything else I had on my plate. I already had things scheduled that I couldn’t get out of: stand up shows, storytelling, improv shows, other writing assignments…the list goes on. On top of that I picked up a new client and had more work than I’d planned for. By the middle of this week I was frazzled and realized I hadn’t kept up with my Quest responsibilities and I was way behind the curve on my screenwriting goals for the week. I had to punish myself to catch up.

If I don’t get some shelter, oh yeah, I’m gonna fade away.

I’m willing to bet that the vast majority of you out there are like me: you do something else for money, but you want to do screenwriting. You want it bad. You want it more than anything.

Make time for the job you want.

After I came to the realization that my schedule was unsustainable, I started looking for places to trim. I am a huge fan of having many irons in the fire, and exploring every avenue of the thing you want to pursue, but there’s also a practical limit. So I sat down with a bag of molasses cookies and wrote down all the projects I’m involved in and figured out how much time I could allocate to each, and ranked them in order of priority. I ranked the script (and the Quest) at the top. Paid work second. It went on from there. Then I just cut the bottom three altogether. I can pick them back up when the script is done.

I also finished the whole bag of molasses cookies. Oh, brown sugar, why do you taste so good?

Time. It’s not on my side. It’s a great nemesis though. A nemesis should be unbeatable — no mere antagonist, but an unstoppable force and an immovable object wrapped in a riddle and sautéed with garlic and bacon. The protagonist should be an underdog. That is what makes the fight hard and the victory sweet. No strife, no story.

Okay. You can’t beat Time outright (unless you’re Keith Richards, maybe), but you can outsmart it. Usually I find that when I want more time, what I really need is more focus. And in this respect, the Stones got it right.

Can’t always get what you want. But if you try, you might find you’ll get what you need.

You may think you don’t have enough time to write, but as Scott suggests, if you take a good, hard look at your schedule and your priorities, well… let’s have Mick and the boys lay a lil’ truth on us:

What about you? How do you handle time management when it comes to your writing? Any tips you’d like to share with your fellow writers? If you do or you have some comments for Scott, I’ll see you in comments to carry on the conversation.

Tomorrow: Another dispatch from The Quest.

About Scott: Brooklyn based writer and comedian who bailed on software to focus on writing words that humans could read. Twitter: @scottadhoc

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