Reader Question: What’s the biggest writing lesson you learned through a mistake?

Oh goodness, Rebecca, where do I start! Honestly one of the reasons I launched Go Into The Story nearly 8 years ago was to try to impart some insight I’d discovered in my tenure in Hollywood. In fact, you can go through most of my The Business of Screenwriting posts and see how many of them derived from times I simply didn’t do the right thing.

If pressed to zero in on the single biggest writing lesson I learned based on a mistake, I would have to say it’s this: Write more spec scripts.

Once I came to Hollywood and started landing writing assignments and selling pitches, I only wrote a handful of original spec scripts. I should have taken on more of them.

In my defense, the function of a spec script has evolved. Back in the day, a spec script was seen primarily as a vehicle for an aspiring writer to break into the business. Yes, there were the Shane Blacks of the world who continued to write specs after establishing themselves, but it was not nearly as common a practice as it is in today’s Hollywood.

I would have been smarter to write more specs, at least 1 per year, especially so because I was identified as part of a writing team. Setting up a solo spec script would have made a big difference in establishing myself as my own writer.

My advice born out of this experience: Write at least 1 and preferably 2 spec scripts per year. Indeed, that’s one of my writing goals in 2016.

You need look no further than writers who have made the jump into the business in the last decade or so. Brian Duffield, F. Scott Frazier, Daniel Kunka, and others, no matter how busy they are with assignments, they continue to pound out spec material.

It keeps you sharp. It generates another piece of material you can possibly sell. It gives you the opportunity to write stories which are personal to you.

There’s just no downside to writing a spec. Sure, it may not sell. Hell, chances are it won’t. But what you learn about yourself as a writer… you cannot measure how important that is. And sometimes, you hit a home run with a script which can substantially alter your career in a big way.

So write specs. Bare minimum: 1 per year. But push yourself to write 2 each year.

How about you? What writing lessons have you learned from your mistakes? Curious to see what folks say in comments.

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