Write Every Day + Dare To Suck = Productive Writing

Write Every Day + Dare To Suck = Productivity

I pulled this from comments from a recent blog post on time management:

cilly247 says:
January 6, 2015 at 12:00 PM

In short, ineffectively. All these are really useful tools.

I used to think that starting off at 2pm was wasting the morning, but generally that’s when I’m ready to begin. The guilt is there, but I need to stop that. A routine (even if I am on holiday) is the only way I can write. I have to establish it early on, otherwise I flounder.

Thanks Scott!

Scott says:
January 6, 2015 at 1:04 PM

Camilla, one thing I’ve found in my many years of reading about, listening to and now interviewing writers, specifically about their writing habits… everyone is different. Some writer 8–10–12 hours per day. Some write just 1 or 2 hours per day. Some write first thing in the morning. Some in the afternoon. Some at night. There’s no right or wrong.

The trait I see pretty consistently: Write every day. That way, no matter when you start… how much you produce… you’re always making progress. Combine that with somehow dealing with our perfectionism and allowing ourselves to suck (Google Maureen Johnson + Dare To Suck for a great video on this), then that is the basis of how to be a productive writer.

Sounds like the basis of a blog post…

As I was responding to Camilla, it occurred to me I run into this particular combination of advice a lot: Write every day. Allow yourself to suck. In fact, just last night in the course of my interactions online, these two crashed up against each yet again.

First, I moderated the 4th annual Screenwriters Roundtable with Chris Borrelli, Brian Duffield, F. Scott Frazier, Chris McCoy, Justin Rhodes, and Greg Russo, and the consensus among this group of up and coming Hollywood writers is treat writing like a job and write every day. This is not only how they organize their own writing habits, it’s advice they extend to aspiring writers. If your goal is to be a professional screenwriter or TV writer, then develop and use those practices now… which includes writing every day.

Coming off that rousing discussion, I segued over to the Screenwriting Master Class site where the latest session of my Pages I: The First Draft just launched yesterday. In introducing herself, one of the writers said she looked forward to “churning out some vomity shitty pages & learning to be ok with it.” To which I responded:

Gives me the opportunity to plug perhaps my most favorite video of all time courtesy of the wonderfully talented writer Maureen Johnson: Dare to suck!

To those of us who grew up with an atrocious 5th grade teacher who crushed our souls for every undotted “i” or times we drew outside the lines, the very idea of embracing suckitude seems utterly foreign. However if you (and by you, I mean everyone) can claim the right to suck in your first draft, you will find this incredibly liberating.

No one is expecting perfection in the pages you (everyone) churns out in this workshop. Rather as they say in Hollywood, the first draft is the vomit draft. Or per your wonderful description, Kim, the “vomity shitty draft”.

If you (everyone) can embrace the sucky nature of the first draft, that can allow you to have fun, express yourself, test out things. Keep what works. Change the rest.

So here’s to a sucky first draft. But importantly, a complete sucky first draft! Then you’ve got something to work with, work on and work out toward a final non-sucky draft.

Onward!

Here is that Maureen Johnson video:

So I think we have the makings of a piece of writing meets math formula:

Write Every Day + Dare To Suck = Productivity

If you can get into the habit of writing every day — no matter when you write, no matter how much you write, just write — and combine that with an embrace of daring to suck — fight back against perfectionism and fear by acknowledging the fact that your first and probably subsequent drafts will inevitably have some measure of suckitude — then you have the foundation for a solid approach to productive writing.

Try putting this to practice in your own writing. Break down the first draft process into 10 weeks. Each Monday, you start writing a new sequence. Your goal: 10–15 pages. Each Sunday, you ‘deliver’ those pages. You write every day. You embrace the suck. And eventually, you get from FADE IN to FADE OUT. Not only a first draft, but setting into motion work habits you can carry over into your writing life.

Whatever you do, if you have issues completing scripts or even finding the wherewithal to deposit your derriere on chair to write, consider printing out our zippy little formula: Write Every Day + Dare To Suck = Productivity.

Love to hear your thoughts. How do you overcome perfectionism? Fear? Are you a daily writer? How did you manage to do that? See you in comments!

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