An article over on the Final Draft blog with PG: Psycho Goreman writer-director Liam O’Donnell about his writing process, how he spends time on the visual aspects of his stories, and making monsters and aliens galore — all on a meager budget. [read more on the Final Draft blog]
Image courtesy of RLJE Films
This is the third and final article in our “new year to write” series! This article is about some of the lessons we learned in 2020 about writing all year round even in the most difficult and unexpected circumstances.
In our Called to Write community, it feels like we’ve been through it all together — it’s always an incredible place for learning and growing in a powerful way. 2020 really put our collective writing mettle to the test and I’m grateful for all we’ve learned.
Here’s what we learned at Called to Write in 2020 about how to keep writing year-round, even in the middle of a pandemic, to bring forward with us into 2021.
Isolation has been a terrible problem for so many people during the pandemic. And since writers struggle with feeling isolated too? Double whammy. What we’ve found at Called to Write is that having a tight-knit community of writers committed to the cause of writing — even on the days when it just, well, flat out sucks — really helps us see it through. And the thing is, the bad days are so much less important when they’re surrounded by better days. Writing regularly in the company of other writers ends that sense of isolation.
Between our online writing sprints and our weekly, organized Zoom meetings, we have a sense of being in it together. Thank goodness.
Tip: Find, create, or join a community of writers to help you stay motivated to write.
Yes, some of us believed having tons of enforced time at home under lockdown would result in equally epic tons of writing time (King Lear, anyone?), but quickly found that was NOT the case.
If anything, we struggled with a disorientation of time and place that felt impossible to manage. Whether you were home alone on your own or in a house filled with unexpected constant companions, making a regular writing schedule happen was Just. Not. Working.
Oddly enough, in our community, we quickly learned that adding MORE structure for our writing than we usually use was what solved this problem. We added extra writing sprints (we went from one per day to four per day). We shifted to weekly meetings instead of twice monthly, and switched over to Zoom so we could see each other’s faces. We added Progress Journals to track our work and create extra accountability. And what we found is that adding extra structure and support for our writing made it easier to rebuild and maintain our writing momentum.
Tip: Set up designated writing time and lots of extra structure, support, and accountability to help you see it through (as much as you need).
Getting enough sleep is so important. But so is getting up early to write. These pandemic days are blurry. They squidge together in the most unpleasant way. Grabbing each workday by the horns and showing up to write, usually early, makes it far less important if the rest of the day goes off the rails with distance learning, weird shopping challenges, or other issues.
This is one reason why we ran a Morning Writing Challenge even in the middle of election week. We knew it was likely to be stressful, incredibly distracting, and possibly upsetting, but at the same time, I was determined not to let the state of our republic stop me from writing. And the big way I’ve been doing that — election week and otherwise — is getting up earlier and earlier to write, and going to bed earlier and earlier as a result.
Here’s the big reason why: Early in the morning, we’re far less likely to get sucked into news, drama, or Other People’s Stuff. Putting your focus on your own work (keeping your eyes on your own paper, so to speak), keeps your writing moving forward, regardless of what’s going on in the rest of the world.
Tip: Figure out how much sleep you need, and design your schedule around it.
Bonus: Get up early to write and reap the rewards of quiet writing time.
Something we’ve always taught about at Called to Write is the power of working in small increments of writing time, as a way to build or reboot a regular writing practice. And, as Vizzini from The Princess Bride says, when something goes wrong, you go back to the beginning. Well, some things went wrong this year. So we go back to the beginning.
If you got off track with your writing in 2020, use the tool of working in small increments of time — even 5 to 15 minutes — to rebuild your writing practice. You can also experiment with working with small sections of your book or project too, if you’re revising, for example, which doesn’t lend itself as well to small increments of time. I jump-started my script revision by focusing on 15 page chunks; far less overwhelming than imagining tackling the whole thing in one go. It’s just a Jedi mind trick but it works, so I’ll take it. :)
Tip: Use small increments of writing as a tool to help get yourself going again.
This has been a rough year. I know I’m not the only writer who wondered whether it was even worth it to keep writing in the face of the massive challenges we’ve been dealing with globally. It’s impossible not to question our actions when faced with life-and-death circumstances, oppression, and political crisis. What’s important? How should we be spending our time? Will our writing even have a place to end up? What will readers, viewers, publishers, and producers even want, after all this?
My perspective is that all writing is needed and has a place (I’ll make an exception for hate speech). As creators, we entertain, heal, inform, and grow through writing, and we do the same for our readers and viewers. And it doesn’t matter what we’re writing. Fiction entertains, comedy lightens hearts, feel-good movies lift spirits. Serious pieces offer food for thought. Non-fiction teaches. Our writing has a place and a purpose, and if we’re called to write, we simply have to trust the muse and seek to fulfill that calling.
Tip: Remind yourself why you’re writing and what’s important to you about it.
Since it’s the first day of the year, and like many writers you probably have goals and resolutions on your mind, I want to highlight a few common mistakes writers tend to make when setting goals for the year, to save you the trouble of possibly making them and stymying yourself or creating unnecessary frustration or disappointment.
Know in advance that I *am* a fan of goal setting when it comes to writing (and that’s what we’ll be doing with our Make This Your Year to Write process), while at the same time I also know it benefits from forethought.
Here are some considerations to take into account as you plan your goals and resolutions.
It SOUNDS great to say you’ll write 250 or 1000 words or 3 script pages a day (I’ll write a book/3 scripts a year!), but is it really that great?
When you set a goal for the entire year’s worth of writing focused on a word or page count goal, you’ll most likely be neglecting the reality that writing projects typically also require all kinds of OTHER work that is critical for moving a writing project forward (and counts as writing), like research, development, editing, revising, plotting, structuring, character development, and more.
What happens when you set a word count goal but you’re at a place in your book where you need to edit and revise? Do you end up writing “new words” even when they aren’t relevant to your book… and end up feeling like you’re spinning your wheels?
What happens when you set a page count goal but you need to restructure your script in order to move it forward? Do you work on two scripts at once… and thwart your forward progress as a result?
The issue I have with word and page count goals set in a vacuum is that they have the potential to create an inherent conflict with yourself; if you focus on meeting the goal, you’re not doing the work you actually need to be doing to move your book or script along. Or if you go ahead and ignore the goal and do the work you need to do, you create an uncomfortable tension within yourself and feel like you’ve let yourself down.
👉 Antidote #1: Design SMART goals that reflect what you’re currently working on and the stage you’re in.
I gotta be honest, I’m not a fan of “don’t break the chain” resolutions and strategies. I’ve seen too many writers triggered into an obsessive, uncomfortable place trying to keep their streak going. These kinds of goals and resolutions don’t account for days when life goes sideways on us, like getting sick or even just needing to take a day off.
Plus I find that often writers using these streak maintaining methods can end up feeling rebellious and grouchy being locked into something, not to mention a horrible feeling of “losing” all their progress if they miss a day. If anything, breaking a streak, accidentally or otherwise, can quickly become a major deterrent to writing. Once the streak is broken, writers sometimes use it as an excuse to give up on themselves and their goals.
👉 Antidote #2: Set goals that match your life, are flexible, and allow you to pick yourself up and get back to work if you miss a day here or there or get thrown off track for whatever reason.
(I focus my writing time on weekdays and take most holidays off, and take vacation time off as well.)
Another common mistake is not setting goals that are actually attainable. I love Jon Acuff’s advice in his book Finish, where he recommends either halving your goal or doubling the time you give yourself to accomplish it.
All too often writers set “high” goals that don’t allow for real life to happen or put so much pressure on themselves that they more or less implode, giving up on their goals entirely and feeling discouraged and disappointed.
Having said this, sometimes I see writers who only seem to be able to give themselves permission to write when they are under pressure or in special circumstances (think of binge writing to meet a deadline, only writing during a writing intensive, during NaNoWriMo, or on a writers’ retreat). If you’re wired this way, you might want to consider working with a coach to identify the underlying reasons you’re afraid to write the rest of the year. It’s extremely likely that some level of resistance is getting in your way and that designing a regular schedule with small increments of writing will be a bridge to a regular writing habit and a path to making writing happen more consistently and productively, without the associated burnout that binge writing usually produces.
👉 Antidote #3: Make your goals so easy they’re pleasurable to fulfill.
One of the greatest disservices we inflict on ourselves is not giving ourselves time and space to learn from what has worked for us and what hasn’t.
If you set writing goals, and didn’t achieve them, rather than chalking it up as failure and resolving to push through a second (or tenth) attempt, instead reflect on where things went awry.
It usually isn’t what you think it is.
You’re not lazy, or too busy, or don’t have enough time (common myths that stop people from writing).
Odds are you instead set goals that weren’t achievable or didn’t have a workable action plan to help you write all year round or didn’t know how to handle the natural and common resistance that emerges when you’re pursuing a big dream like writing. Or maybe you hadn’t actually picked a clear project to work on yet! There are many, many reasons why writers don’t follow through on their goals, and taking time to learn from those experiences helps you set goals that actually work this time around.
👉 Antidote #4: Review what worked and what didn’t this year and see what you can learn from it (and yes, you get something of a pass because of the pandemic — and — I’m sure there’s still something to be learned.)
Another common mistake writers run into with goal setting is choosing goals they don’t have control over. “I’m going to sell my book (or script) this year!” isn’t an outcome you can control or predict. You can, however, set a goal to send out 50 query letters. Or to make a list of 100 possible publishers for your book. Or vow to submit your script to a specific contest deadline or make 50 pitches. These are goals you can set and control.
👉 Antidote #5: Put your focus on goals and outcomes you can take action on by yourself.
Related to mistake #3, not setting realistic, achievable goals, many writers neglect to reverse engineer their goals and make sure they actually work. Often this involves a fair amount of fantasy thinking around how long it actually takes to fully develop a story, do a read through of a script while taking notes, design a full revision plan, or assess how much work there actually is to revise a draft.
So if a writer says, for example, “I’m going to revise my NaNoWriMo draft by the end of January!” when they haven’t read through their November draft yet and don’t really know what they have, or what it’s going to take to get through a revision, it can be pretty discouraging to realize that revising the draft chronologically isn’t going to get them very far, and almost certainly not by the end of January.
Plus, if you don’t have a plan, you may find yourself procrastinating well into your completion timeline because you haven’t properly assessed all the steps required to get you from A to Z.
Want to finish a book revision by September 1st? Or write two screenplays by December 1st? Work backward from your intended deadline and map each stage of work to a calendar and writing schedule to see what seems doable. Adjust the goal as needed. Then pad the heck out of that schedule so you’ve got some flexibility for real life to happen along the way.
👉 Antidote #6: Map your goals to your calendar so you know what to do when, and are motivated to see them through.
From my Make This Your Year to Write course: “It’s important to start with a long-term vision before setting goals, because [you] want to make sure that your shorter-term, year-long goals are in alignment with your long-term vision.
“Think about it. If you set goals for the coming year that have nothing to do with where you want to ultimately end up, you can end up in an entirely different place than you intended. That may sound obvious, but I can’t tell you how many writers I’ve worked with who set goals that take them to the wrong place, often because what they think they should be doing or what someone else wants for them isn’t necessarily a match with what they want for themselves.”
Antidote #7: Design your overarching career vision first, then create your goals. (Hint: we’ll be doing this in my Make This Your Year to Write course.)
It’s super important to me to help writers set goals that work so we can make regular, consistent progress toward finishing all our writing projects and getting them out into the world where they belong.
A new article over on the Final Draft blog with five screenwriting takeaways from 2067 to draw on as you craft your own sci-fi scripts.
1. A compelling “what if” premise
2. A hook that keeps your audience wondering
3. Global and personal stakes tied together
4. A time travel explainer moment
5. An inevitable but surprising and satisfying conclusion
[read more on the Final Draft blog]
Image courtesy of RLJE Films
To give you a taste of what we’ll be working on (and give you a jump-start!) here’s the first step of the Make This Your Year to Write process:
We start first with reflection to establish the foundation of where you are right now.
This is important because most of us have a tendency to focus purely on the goals and resolutions we’re setting for the new year and what’s next, but skip over the realities of what’s happened for us over the last year and what our current writing life looks like. (And yes, this HAS been a highly unusual year, but there are still insights to be gained from what worked and what didn’t.)
Without learning from what is, we create a recipe for pie-in-the-sky goals we are less-than-likely to succeed with. And we want you to succeed, right?😉
So first, to begin this process, we’ll look at where you are right now, and where you’ve been, before we move on to what’s next.
I call this completing the year.
We’ll do this by answering a series of three simple questions:
First, we’ll start by having you look at what your writing has given you. What gifts has it brought to your life, and what opportunities?
While you consider this, think back over the preceding year, and also your writing career as a whole.
For example, when you think about the trajectory your writing career has taken, are you enjoying it? Are you happy with the track you’re on or feeling dissatisfied? What has being a writer brought to your life that you would not have otherwise had the opportunity to experience?
While you’re contemplating your relationship with your writing, also ask yourself, what are you most proud of?
Here again, look at both this current year and your writing career so far.
And please don’t be hard on yourself. If you have a hard time coming up with something you feel proud of, see where you can stretch your awareness. There is always something to be proud of, even if it’s something like, “I always kept my goal to be writing at the forefront of my mind.” Or, “I am crystal clear that writing must be a high priority for me in the next year.”
One of the biggest mistakes we tend to make as writers is to keep our eyes only on how much further there is to go, without remembering to take stock of what we have accomplished and completed.
We want you to examine what you accomplished, regardless of how big or small.
How many words, pages, books, scripts, blog posts, days of morning pages, queries, etc., did you write? What did you put out into the world with your writing? Are there intangible things you accomplished with your writing?
Take the time to look back over the last year and make notes about what you’ve accomplished.
If you don’t have any tangible progress, make some notes for yourself about what you DID do this year you feel proud of.
Here are your writing prompts for Step One, assembled in one place for your writerly convenience. Remember, you can write out your answers privately in a notebook or journal, or on this page in the comments section below — whatever feels and works best for you.
What has your writing given you over the last year? And in your writing career so far?
What are you most proud of? (This year and career, both.)
What did you accomplish with your writing over the last year? Make an inventory of your writing accomplishments.