Writing About Hating Writing
“Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.”
- Otto von Bismarck
I’d say the same thing about the writing process.
Right now, I’m writing more than usual.
I have some time off in Europe and I’m using the time to get some short film scripts out so that when I get back to Australia I have something I can direct and produce.
My friend Myles is a director who doesn’t tend to do much writing. Concepts and stories he does but he likes the idea of handing over a story idea to a writer to write it out...
A few months back, I was that writer and the challenge was to bang out a pilot screenplay for a TV drama.
Apparently, I’m pretty good at this writing gig. And to be honest without wanting to sound self congratulatory, I don’t disagree.
I like having written something, having nailed an idea, having structured a good story or script or comedy routine or whatever it might be. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of having created something like that from thin air - except maybe actually seeing it through to performance or production.
So after I had shown Myles the script, and after I had shown him another short that I wrote a little earlier, he had a lot of praise which is always nice, and any criticism was criticism that i had already identified myself. I respect his opinions, so that was all very nice. However, then he asked me “Do you enjoy the writing?”
That’s what I want to write about today.
Because you see...my answer was a very confident NOPE.
And I was telling the truth.
The actual process itself...is excruciating for me. And I’d love it not to be.
The truth is that every script, comedy routine, or story I have ever written has gone through a phase on me hating it.
I get about 10% into the writing process and I can’t help but look at this half developed ugly duckling script in progress and feel genuinely shitty about it. It is the worst time in the writing process. Its not that I feel uninspired (though that’s part of it) its that I think its a genuine waste of time.
Maybe if I bang out a few thoughts here it will help me to make sense of the process and learn to stop worrying and love the process - or at least not lose all hope when I’m in the middle of it!
Ideas are easy. Stories are hard.
When I get an idea for, say, a short film, it pops into my head like a flash. But like a flash it is usually devoid of substance - and alive with promise.
Never-the-less, ideas are the spark that make a story worth writing.
Without a story for the idea to inhabit, its just an idea living out its days in the purgatory of good intentions. I suppose that is the reason that I write at all. Undeveloped ideas have a way of hanging around my head telling me how shit I am for not every finishing anything or doing anything worthwhile with my days. Little bastards.
It probably wouldn’t be such a big deal if at least some of them were produced from time to time. So I have decided that that’s exactly whats going to happen.
So I’m working on one of them now - Its about a grown man’s fear of having a baby. Working title: SPERMICIDAL.
Nice. Now lets see if I can vault it over that great big daunting wall that separates ideas from stories. Intentions from deeds. Doers from wankers.
Bloody wall.
I would love to discover one day that there is a process that works for me unfailingly. I haven’t found it yet.
But here are some things that I have heard and thought over time that seem to help.
The are a combination of ways to keep perspective and ways to keep going.
A conversation has a life of its own. You have to have faith in that.
I’ve no idea where I heard that, but it chimed with me immediately.
Because the act of writing is a form of conversation.
No novelist has ever sat down to write with the entire novel already in his head: He is having a conversation with a piece of paper.
And the more you write, the more you know about what you are writing. Don’t beat yourself up because you don’t know what’s going to happen next, or three chapters away. Generally, you’re not supposed to.
In fact, that is exactly what I am doing right now.
My mind doesn’t hold the answers to the challenges and hurdles to writing. Yet somehow, it appears that my fingers do if i set them free on a keyboard. Not at first but eventually they always do.
I have no idea what is going to be on page 13 of my next script, but I’m confident my fingers will tell me.
Get the tone down.
I like to know the tone of what I am writing. Once that’s down, the writing flows a lot easier.
As soon as you figure out what actor you’d ideally like delivering the lines, lines tend to come by themselves in a way that they don’t when you writing them.
Music helps here too. Get a theme song, or a style of music to write to.
Maybe put a play-list together.
I was writing about a young guy trying to get his first gig in the advertising industry, I was meandering around for the feeling, an underpinning tone.
I always have an instinct for this - its just a matter of putting my finger on it.
When I hit on the REGURGITOR song I SUCKED A LOT OF COCK TO GET WHERE I AM I knew I had hit the tone, and the writing flowed. It just said it all.
At the moment I am writing this script about a guy is confronting his fear of having a baby and his girlfriend might be pregnant. Its a short film about guys and the way they think, and I knew I wanted to say it like it is without being a downer and without the guy looking like a scared arsehole. It was important that he ws likable and I knew I wanted him to occasionally step out of the context of the movie to address the audience directly so we empathized with him. I started thinking about Woody Allen films - and I remembered BULLETS OVER BROADWAY with John Cusack. But then I suddenly realized that the tone wasn’t quite Woody Allen, it was something else.
In the end it hit me what I wanted was embodied in another John Cusack film, HIGH FIDELITY. Perfect.
Whatever works.
Find it early because it will become your anchor.
Writing is a bit of a misnomer.
Writing (the physical act) and writing (the evolution of an idea into a story) are two completely different concepts sharing a common name.
Lets call the physical act writing and process of creating a story WRITING.
If you want to WRITE, write.
Start the conversation, and then make sure to bare the next point in mind:
Always move the story forward.
This is a good one.
Every-time you WRITE, no matter how little time you have, always make something new happen.
Later you might correct it, or strike it completely, but it should be your goal every time you put even a little time into writing.
Sure, re-read what you wrote yesterday, but then writing something new - don’t change yesterday’s writing.
If a conversation doesn’t move forward and progress sentence by sentence, idea by idea, then its a conversation I don’t want to be wasting my time having.
Same goes here.
Writers block is for amateurs.
"Writer's block is a condition that affects amateurs and people who aren't serious about writing. So is the opposite, namely inspiration, which amateurs are also very fond of. Putting it another way: a professional writer is someone who writes just as well when they're not inspired as when they are."
— Philip Pullman
Well if that’s true - and it sounds true to me - that means you probably ought to have some tools at the ready for when you’re not inspired.
Time yourself. Write for 10 minutes and see how much you new stuff can write (sheer quantity) into your scripts. Intend to throw it out. Maybe you will, maybe you want. What else are you going to do with the next 10 minutes anyway?
Write down everything you know about the script before you start WRITING.
But be aware that at that point your not really WRITING yet, you are simply writing.
Break it up and organise it.
Screenplay, as they say, is structure. So start structuring. Then you can see easily what you have and what’s missing.
I use a program called SCRIVENER to do this and to do all my writing in. Mac only, but I highly recommend it.
So anyway - I gotta get back to this screenplay.
For me, I think the most important concept is Always move the story forward.
Everything will come out of that. The other ideas are just ways of making that happen when self doubt or loathing take it out of you.
Doug Suiter
Berlin, Germany
29 July 2009
The Trance of Productivity - Part 3
Its basically a technique to help things get done, when you’re the only person who has anything to gain or lose from the outcome.
You’re reading Part Three. Part One is here, Part Two is here.
This has been going great. When its working as it should, the result is a kind of ‘train’ of productive work. It feel like a train, it runs like a train and unfortunately it can get derailed like a train.
So I’m running with the train analogy today in what is the last part of my three part article of The Trance of Productivity which basically says: Always know what you’re doing NOW...and always know what you’re doing NEXT.
In the last few days of experimenting with this little time management technique I have identified ways - legitimate ways - in which the train can get de-railed. And now I want to deal with those.
First, a word about having a notepad or a sheet of paper to refer to. Turns out its crucial. Its the tool. You need that, and a clock to get things done. You don’t have to get things done, but if you have found you have been wanting to get things done and failing get a notepad and a clock. Brilliant.
So, with this notebook thing, one thing I have noticed over the past couple of days is that there is a big difference between big tasks and little ones.
It helps to separate those tasks into under 10 minutes and over ten minutes. There’s no need to get more specific than that - I don’t want to create some overly complex system here... Its just something I’ve noticed that helps.
But then there are things that don’t even fit into the ten minute catagory - in fact, they are so small it seems stupid to even write them down so the temptation is to just do them right then and there...and the danger is that these little things derail your train.
Then there are other small things that don’t lend themselves to being jotted down for doing later - like a knock at the door.
So lets look at those now.
Things that are quicker to do than to jot down.
This can be a trap. Is it really quicker to do than to jot down? Really? Well actually, sometimes it really is.
For example I was making boiled eggs for breakfast and to be honest, I totally screwed it up.
I know - I’m a genius.
For some reason I I thought 2 and half minutes was about right for a soft boiled egg. Turns out, thats a half raw egg. So it occurred to me a little later at my computer that there’s got to be an iPhone app egg timer. iTunes was right there. Yes, it was quicker for me to just type in EGG TIMER and download it there and then than it was to write it down and do it later. And why not? I don’t want to be a fundamentalist, I’m just trying to improve my time management.
It would have been stupid to write it down and look at it later.
If you Twitter, that’s another good example of something that’s just quicker and more logical to do then and there than to write it down, creating an extra unnecessary step.
Of course, the danger is that you do something ‘small’ and then it leads to something else.
In these moments it helps to think about it like this: what you are doing is putting the train on hold, doing the quick digression and then getting back on the train. Any more than 60 seconds and you’re the train you were on is going to leave without you.
So go ahead and tweet, but don’t then start reading other tweets and suddenly you’re on the wrong train. If you want to, jot it down and do it NEXT.
Not now. Your NOW is scared.
Things that you suddenly realize you could be doing now and NOT doing them now would be stupid.
These are things like putting on the kettle before you get into the shower. Again, being fundamentalist about all this is only going to result in a not as good situation. If you say “No, no, no! I am having a shower now and I will put the kettle on NEXT!” you’re wasting time. The kettle could be hot by the time you’re finished in the shower with just a slight digression.
So what do you do?
You get off the train. Again - briefly - and being fully aware that that is what you are doing.
There’s nothing wrong with that, if your aware of these moments and expecting them.
If you are writing and suddenly realize that you could be uploading a file that will take an hour to send, take a second to break from the train, start the upload and get back on the train. Never forget that you just stepped off a train and it will leave without you if you don’t get back on.
So if you go to upload that file, but you realize that you have to download new software to do it, realize what is happening. You are getting on a different train. Stop. Write it down for later, and get back on your train.
Those that require your immediate attention.
These things come up all the time. You suddenly need to use the bathroom! Fine. Its gets cold and you need a layer of clothing. Fine.
Just don’t forget that there is a train you just stepped off to do that.
The trick is just to be aware of what you are doing in that moment. It’s a ‘sub-now’ moment. It isn’t a derailment unless you let it be one.
Your attention is hijacked.
You get a phone call. Classic.
Be aware that you don’t have to answer it, but if you choose to - Just before you pick it up - think about what you are doing NOW, because it has just become your NEXT. NOW you are talking on the phone. And you should never have a NOW without knowing your NEXT.
If you don’t make that small mental note, you probably just had your train derailed.
You lose focus on what you are trying to do NOW.
That is a sure sign that you need to break down what your doing into smaller NOWs and NEXTs.
OK, so your cleaning up the kitchen, but specifically you picking this up, next that etc...
Get your NOW and NEXT small enough to you feel focused.
NOTE - You can stop when you feel focused or it’ll get ridiculous - NOW I am blinking, NEXT I am walking... :P
So how you know if your doing it right?
If you are looking at a page full of things that you want to do and feeling stressed out and paralyzed - you’re doing it wrong - in factyou are completely missing the point.
Remember that the notebook is not a TO DO list.
It is a repository of ideas of things you consider to be worth your time so that they don’t turn into a collection of things you wished you could find time for.
You shouldn’t even be looking at that list unless you are writing in it, or referring to it for your NEXT thing to do after the thing you are about to do NOW.
Enjoy the fact that you only have to think about the thing you are doing NOW and NEXT. Forget later. There is no later. There is now and next.
And if you are doing it right, it should feel liberating.
You should be amazed at what you’ve achieved in a single day.
And lastly, every now and then, get off the train and stroll around...
Lets be clear - I’m not interested in becoming a productivity machine.
Its just that when I want to be productive I want to be good at it. And sometimes I just want to lay down and read a book, or listen to a podcast to surf the net or watch some TV or go out with my girlfriend or whatever.
At that point you’re not even on a train. There is no train. You’re not being productive - and you’re enjoying it!
And thats a good thing.
The best of life goes beyond the scope of this little time management technique.
That’s all it is folks! A little time management technique - in the end, is all this is supposed to be.
Doug Suiter,
Berlin, Germany.
Sunday 26 July 2009.
The Trance of Productivity - Part 2
Its basically a technique to help things get done, when you’re the only person who has anything to gain or lose from the outcome.
You’re reading Part Two. Part One is here.
I said in part one that I had this great little trick I use whenever I want to do the brainless and tedious task of cleaning up a mess. THE CLEAN UP TRANCE. Stupid name, simple concept. But for me, it works like a charm
A quick recap of the CLEANUP TRANCE:
1. Close your eyes.
2. Turn to face the mess.
3. Open your eyes.
4. The first thing you see, no matter what it is, that’s where you start. Be ruthless. Go pick it up.
5. As you are walking toward it, think about where to put it. You have to decide before you reach it.
6. Now pick the thing up and start walking to where it has to go.
7. As you are walking to where it has to go glance around - do it without thinking. Whatever you see next is your next target.
8. As you are walking from where the first thing has been put to the next target, decide where the next target goes. You have to decide before you reach it.
9. Return to step 6. Repeat until the mess is no more.
I am almost embarrassed to write this down because it seems on the face of it to be such a basic thing to be able to focus on, and yet I used to struggle to actually clean shit up. Really. So this deliberate approach is brilliant for me. The best part (and the reason I call it a trance) is that when you click into the loop of doing something, and deciding on what is next the process takes on an almost self perpetuating quality and you’re not even trying to focus - your just hooked into it and it cycles along until before you know it you’re done.
So I thought I’d try to expand this - and use it to focus myself on a day to day basis.
Would it work?
Well, yesterday I woke up, cleaned my house, restrung my guitar, made a list of stuff I’d like to complete, practiced guitar for an hour, bought a guitar e-book by the wonderful Desi Serna which I have been meaning to buy for ages, started planning for my flight and accommodation for when I travel back to Australia, completed the restructuring of my hard drives after having a drive die on me, completed my Final Cut Pro instructional website which I’ve been meaning to do for the last 3 weeks since the hard drive disaster, began the ugly process of arranging my tax, cooked some pasta, recorded a podcast, created a new forum for the release of the new Final Cut Studio, gave away 2 prizes in the podcast which sponsors had offered weeks ago and Matched an editor to a job through the Final Cut Pro Talent Registry.
So the short answer is, hell yes it does.
And what I discovered was that you really don’t need that convoluted series of 9 steps to get the essence of it.
It all comes down to a simple concept:
Always know what you’re doing NOW,
and always know what you’re doing NEXT.
This concept is my new best friend.
For example, right now I am writing this article. That’s what I am doing now.
Next I am going to spend an hour practicing the Pentatonic scale on my acoustic guitar. Its something that excites my lately and that I enjoy, so I want to do it.
But while I am doing that I will also decide - BEFORE I BEGIN PLAYING THE GUITAR - what it is that I am doing next. But until then I am not even going to consider what it is that I am going to do after that. It is to much to think about. It doesn’t matter.
Always know what you’re doing NOW,
and always know what you’re doing NEXT.
I am not saying don’t plan.
In fact it would probably be good that you spend 15 minutes of each day - before much of the day goes by - jotting down the things you want or need to get done that day. (And if you’re going to do that - try to include one thing that you know you ought to do but have been dreading).
Even the writing of that list should not commence until you know what you are going to do once that list is written. Otherwise you could waste your day writing a freaking list.
A huge benefit of consciously deciding what you are going to do next is that you would never consciously decide to do something like, say... troll through your friends facebook photos for the next 2 hours. You might, however decide to check your Facebook page. Nothing wrong with that.
The problem comes when you just happen across Facebook. You can literally spend hours there without direction, without purpose, and with the vague idea that you probably ought to be doing something else.
My girlfriend was going to quit Facebook because it was sucking up all her outside of work time. That’d be a shame though because Facebook in and of itself is not a bad thing. In a lot of ways its brilliant - for finding old friends, old photos of yourself or your friends that you thought you lost.
Here’s the trick (its the same as always): If you do decide to check your facebook page, have something in mind that you are going to do after that, and have it mind before you login to your account.
...or to put it another way:
Always know what you’re doing NOW,
and always know what you’re doing NEXT.
Am I an idiot? Maybe. Is this so basic a concept that I am the only one in the world who has to think it through? Maybe, but I’m thinking not.
Here’s the thing. A lot of the time I find myself doing something...which leads to something else...which leads to a slightly unrelated thing...which leads to and unrelated thing...which pretty much describes the pattern of a distracted mind.
Now I am sleeping, but there is still a ‘NEXT’.
Another benefit I found in this process is that just because what you might happen to be doing ‘NOW’ is sleeping, doesn’t mean that there is not a ‘NEXT’. In fact, before you sleep is the best time of all to have something in mind that you re going to do next.
I don’t know about you but the moment I wake up is the least reasonable I am all day.
I don’t want to get out of bed. I play games in my mind, making up reasons why I can and should stay in bed at least a little longer. And when I finally get up, it always takes a little while for my brain to follow.
This morning when I got up, however, the first thing I remembered was the next thing I was going to do when I got up. It was the last thing I thought about yesterday and it was right there when I woke up in the morning. That’s right - I was going to clean the kitchen. It still had all the dishes from the pasta from the day before. Before I started of course, I decided what I was going to do next. Next I was going to put on the coffee percolator.
Dead simple.
However, during that time, I thought about checking my email - and I would have, except I knew that wasn’t what i was doing now. I did it third or fourth or something. Had I stopped half way through cleaning, it would have been just a few easy and brainless steps to complete distraction.
There’s always a bigger ‘NOW’
I don’t want to overcomplicate this, but once you’ve got the hang of knowing what you’re doing now and knowing what you’re doing next, you might realize that life is more than little tasks. So this idea of “what’s now and what’s next” might seem a little short sited.
What about “what’s coming up down the road?”
Well the way I think of it, its the same basic concept.
Sure, now I am writing this and next I am practicing my guitar. But at the same time I am aware that now I am traveling and next I will be setting up my life in Sydney Australia. So I am traveling knowing that’s what I am doing in the larger NOW and I am setting up a life in Australia in the larger NEXT. As I arrive in Australia it will be my new large now and I will define a new large NEXT.
Most people just trundle along but thinking about where you are and where you’re going next doesn’t require that much effort.
As George Bernard Shaw put it, “Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.”
So there’s layers of scale to this. And they go both ways.
Here’s an example in the opposite direction. Let’s say NOW i am cleaning the kitchen and NEXT I am going to work on a pitch for a television commercial. OK. That’s decided. But in order to stay focused on cleaning up, what am I going to do? I’m going to think in terms of a smaller NOW-NEXT. Or to take us all the way back to the start, I’ll do the old “CLEAN-UP TRANCE”.
This idea of a ‘Productivity Trance’ is really just a mental approach for getting things done on a day to day level.
So lets keep it simple.
I can pretty much forget everything I’ve written here as long as at any given moment I can answer this question:
What am I doing NOW, and what am I doing NEXT?
Give it a try!
Doug Suiter,
Berlin, Germany.
Friday, 24 July 2009.
UPDATE: PART 3 OF THIS POST CAN BE FOUND HERE.
The Trance of Productivity
This is all about my little practical experiment in time management.
You’re reading Part One.
Its basically a technique to help things get done, when you’re the only person who has anything to gain or lose from the outcome. Enjoy!
I have this little trick that I have been doing for a while now to distract myself away from distraction.
I invented it a few years ago accidentally and if your the sort of person that can just easily get down to work and do what needs to be done then chances are your going to laugh at this. If not, you might actually find it kind of useful.
I call it the CLEAN UP TRANCE.
It came about because I am a very, very, very easily distracted person. So a simple task - like cleaning up a room for example can stretch out into a day long project. I can’t seem to get myself from the point of picking something up to the point of putting it where it belongs without somehow being distracted by...pretty much anything.
So I figured my way out of it one day by inventing a little ‘mind hack’ that I still use to this very day...
You can try it. First you will need a mess.
Once you have a mess, follow these steps:
1. Close your eyes.
2. Turn to face the mess.
3. Open your eyes.
4. The first thing you see, no matter what it is, that’s where you start. Be ruthless. Go pick it up.
5. As you are walking toward it, think about where to put it. You have to decide before you reach it.
6. Now pick the thing up and start walking to where it has to go.
7. As you are walking to where it has to go glance around - do it without thinking. Whatever you see next is your next target.
8. As you are walking from where the first thing has been put to the next target, decide where the next target goes. You have to decide before you reach it.
9. Return to step 6. Repeat until the mess is no more.
You’re laughing at me, aren’t you?
Or maybe you’re not.
I’m telling you if there are people like me out there who need to think like this and need to hear it said. Sure, I made up the above steps but not before years and years of simply not being able to finish a goddam cleaning session without ending up going through a bunch of old photos that I stumbled across in the process or stopping to check my emails or to put on a coffee or whatever other million things defocussed me from what I was intending to to.
But as fundamental as being able to stick to the task of cleaning up sounds its one of those things that I struggled with for years without knowing why but all the while feeling the frustration of having realized that I had wasted an entire day on not quite cleaning up a mess.
The most astonishing thing to me is that not only do things get done in the way...but they get done very, very quickly. 15 minutes of clean up trance is a LOT of cleaning up.
The trance bit is where it’s at. It’s tricking your mind into a loop of doing the next thing as the first thing is being completed. You close the loop, it repeats and it’s self sustaining and there is simply no time to get distracted because your thinking about the next thing as your doing the current thing.
Now the reason I’m thinking about this now is because I am having a similar feeling about other things that i am doing in my life.
I am wasting time and getting distracted and I am wondering if this CLEAN UP TRANCE thing, which has worked so damned well (as stupid as it is) can be ported over into other areas of my life.
Can the CLEAN UP TRANCE be adapted to a larger scale endeavor? A TRANCE OF PRODUCTIVITY.
I’ll give it a shot tomorrow.
Basically what I need is a MESS - or in the broader sense, an unaccomplished goal. Now I have several of those so I’ll have to look at it as a series of messy rooms.
Then I need to look at each as a pile of things that need to be done.
I need to then look at that pile of what needs to be done and attack the first thing that I look at without regard to what it is.
Then I would have to take action to start it happening. As I start to take that action, I need to line the next thing up in my mind.
That’s it. Then I repeat.
OK, I’ll let you know how I go tomorrow
This is an ongoing experiment...
Doug Suiter,
Berlin, Germany.
Wednesday, 22 July 2009.
UPDATE: PART 2 OF THIS POST CAN BE FOUND HERE.