by Jenna | May 15, 2025 | ScriptMag Articles
In this month’s “Ask the Coach” article, I’m responding to two readers in response to their submissions to a recent reader survey I conducted. Their comments and questions coalesced around dealing with distractions from writing:
“I’m struggling most with distractions and interruptions.”
“I am having a hard time writing between family distractions and self-doubt.”
In the article, I focus on distractions in terms of tasks, logistics, and awareness, as well as interruptions and physical challenges, and explore what we can do to corral them and keep them from overtaking our writing:
1. Give tasks a place to live.
2. Create a time to complete tasks.
3. Give logistics their due.
4. Recognize the emotional and mental load you’re carrying.
5. Build protections and resilience around interruptions.
6. Take care of your physical well-being.
7. Cut out the truly unimportant sidetracks.
Drill down into what’s truly important to you and make sure you’re eliminating everything not on that list, so you can focus on what you’re called to do: write.
Want the full scoop? Get all the details in the full article on Script Mag:
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by Jenna | Apr 17, 2025 | ScriptMag Articles
In this month’s “Ask the Coach” article, I’m responding to a writer who’s commented about feeling like they’ve stalled around writing.
“I’ve made so much progress with my draft but… I’ve just stalled again, and I have no idea why. I’m just not FEELING it right now. What gives?”
Whew, yes. SO many writers I’ve spoken to recently are feeling similarly. In the article, I unpack some of the possibilities for underlying causes and then brainstorm how to recover from the stall.
Why Writers Stall
1. All the *everything* right now is zapping you.
2. Personal life stuff is getting to you.
3. You’re reacting to a mountain (or an iceberg) in your story.
4. You’ve lost confidence in yourself as a writer.
5. You feel overwhelmed by the quantity of work ahead.
6. Your writing practice has been disrupted and resistance has crept in.
How to Recover From a Stall
1. Write for a little tiny bit, right now.
2. Write morning pages.
3. Write about writing.
4. Rewrite your fears and doubts.
5. Calm your fight or flight response.
6. Carve out a space for just writing.
7. Check your priorities.
8. Reclaim your sense of self as a writer.
9. Use writing as your refuge, if you can.
10. Show up anyway.
Usually, avoiding or stalling is a symptom of something else going on deeper down. Solving it often requires a combination of personal work and finding ways to sneak (or trick ourselves) back into writing.
Want the full scoop? Get all the details in the full article on Script Mag:
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by Jenna | Mar 21, 2025 | ScriptMag Articles
In this month’s “Ask the Coach” article, I’m responding to a few readers in one article, in response to their submissions to my recent survey about the classes, workshops, and programs I teach.
Their comments and questions coalesced around the purpose of writing:
“It’s not the writing as much as the writing with a purpose. What’s the end goal? What are the strategies?”
“I am once again struggling with the demon that says writing somehow isn’t enough. That it’s not enough of a purpose to justify my life, particularly as publishing keeps saying ‘no’ to my knocking.”
“What is my writing purpose?”
These are similar questions, but with varying shades of intent. I suspect these are questions all writers ask periodically, though the specifics may vary for each of us. These overlap with the commonality of purpose.
In the article, I explore navigating one’s purpose as a writer and reply to the specific questions and situations of the screenwriter, novelist, and essayist who chimed in via my survey.
Writing with purpose means being who we are in the world and expressing the unique insights and perspectives we bring to the table…. Whether we choose to focus on writing for the sake of the practice, make strategic choices to meet both ourselves and the market, or put our work out in the world ourselves, we write because we are writers.
Want the full scoop? Get all the details in the full article on Script Mag:
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by Jenna | Feb 20, 2025 | ScriptMag Articles
In this month’s “Ask the Coach” article, I’m responding to a writer about overcoming procrastination and dealing with self-criticism:
“I need to overcome my procrastination. I am trying to write a screenplay, with a proposal, for a funding opportunity. I had experience in short-filmmaking. But this is my first feature-length script. I have been trying to write a feature-length script for years. I need help to find a way to put myself to write while resisting the non-stop self-criticism of my ability and self-worth, as well as the sense of guilt after wasting time on social media. If you could share some insight into how to tackle these problems, I would be most grateful.”
In the main article, my reply explored the primary issues of procrastination and self-criticism and provided some thoughts on how this writer can shift their experience.
Here’s a list of the seven strategies discussed in the article:
- Recognize what’s really going on when we procrastinate.
- Calm the fears by changing the way you talk to yourself.
- Reframe the “stepping up” aspect of what you’re asking of yourself.
- Choose productive procrastination instead.
- Relegate social media to non-writing parts of the day.
- Save binge-watching as a reward for writing.
- Start small with writing.
Give yourself the gift of going for it and enjoying the ride, even the hard and scary parts. This is part of shifting your perspective to help the scared part of you see writing as something that might even be — dare we say it — fun.
Want the full scoop? Get all the details in the full article on Script Mag:
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by Jenna | Jan 22, 2025 | Writing Articles
When I first started writing fiction regularly (screenwriting, specifically), our first child was quite young — like 3 ½. I really had to “steal” time to make writing happen, mostly from my own sleep schedule (thankfully he was sleeping by that age so at least I wasn’t sleep deprived anymore and could “afford” it).
I got up every day at 6 a.m. to write for about an hour while my husband played with him and got him ready for the day, then I’d hang out with him for a while and take him to preschool. The rest of the day was for my “day job” (my work as a coach).
Later, during an extremely difficult personal life phase, I wrote a script in 15 minutes a day, often late at night just before bed. It took me about 6 months, but given the adversity I was facing, I was thrilled with the accomplishment.
Despite my progress and success (I was hired to write an original script for a producer-director based on a writing sample), I was longing for longer writing days.
Long writing days, or not?
Ironically though, pre-kids, long writing days did NOT work well for me, not at all.
If anything, they were abject failures.
Before having kids, I used to set aside every Friday as a full writing day.
And then when Friday would roll around I would do ANYTHING ELSE other than write.
Turns out those long stretches were stopping me from writing, by triggering huge amounts of fear and resistance. I didn’t understand that at the time. (The other challenge was the infrequency, but that’s a story for another time.)
I see this same issue come up around long writing days for my clients and community members too, especially for those who are retired, don’t have a separate day job, or who are trying to set aside big chunks of writing time. They often struggle to write.
Big blocks of writing time can trigger big time resistance.
It turns out those big blocks of writing time — as much as we say and believe we want and need them — can spark proportionate amounts of resistance and “blocking energy.”
Big blocks of time (often) => big blocks of resistance.
This is why writing for smaller increments of time can be hugely beneficial when building or rebuilding a writing practice.
And yet, … and yet!
Those big blocks of time are so satisfying! … when they work.
Especially while I’ve been in creative recovery over the last two years, I’ve found I need to write differently. I can’t and don’t want to “write on command” the way I could and had to when my kids were little.
I need and want those long days.
The magic of making space for “sideways drift.”
I especially need and want time for “sideways drift” built into my writing days, so I can get up and wander, ponder, shower, drift, walk, imagine, brainstorm, explore, and journal as needed. I’m also allowing myself time and space to “find” my way to the page each day. Sometimes this looks like goofing off, but it’s mainly about getting myself into the state I want to be in to write. Sometimes I’m listening to music, tidying up, or taking care of distracting tasks (something I used to avoid). The net effect is that I’m shifting from kid-focused morning time over to Jenna-focused writing time.
This helps me move into a potent, liminal space that opens up story ideas and possibilities unlike anything else.
I also want enough time to get something on the page, too, in addition to the drift space.
In order to have both, I’m back to designing long writing days into my schedule now.
My sideways drift approach to these long days means fear and doubt don’t get triggered the same way any longer. Partly this is because I’m not currently using definitive time, word, or page goals (though they can be useful tools at the right time).
Instead I’m focusing on progress wherever I am in the process with a particular story.
For example, with the script I’m currently working on, I’m in the midst of reverse outlining the story so I can evaluate it for a rewrite. I’ll keep working on that each writing day until it’s complete, then move on to the next step.
Taking the focus off specific goals and putting it on making progress overall takes the pressure off me, and makes more space for that magical sideways drift.
So does setting aside long days to write.
It’s a kind of double magic: long days plus space to get into a liminal flow state.
Bliss.
