Your Sitcom Mission... Should You Choose To Accept It by Vorhaus John & Wright Simon & Hill Declan

Author:Vorhaus, John & Wright, Simon & Hill, Declan [Vorhaus, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Every 1's A Critic Ltd
Published: 2011-12-22T00:00:00+00:00

How to Beat Writer's Block Forever

Almost the minute I started writing, I started wasting time, on everything from emails and Xbox to Minesweeper and stupid fricking solitaire. I'm not alone in this. All writers waste time. Sometimes we do it because we're not quite ready or able to solve the story or script problem at hand, and we need more time to let our thoughts marinate. Often, though, we squander our hours because we are afraid. Some writers spend their entire lives at this, rather than ever commit to putting words on the page. I didn't want to be one of those guys, so early in my career I came up with this handy motto:

Procrastinate Later

And that was helpful, it really was. It reminded me to start my writing day with the writing and save the screwing around for afterward. No two words advanced my practice of writing more swiftly and surely than "procrastinate later." They might do the same for you. But they only solve half the problem, because they don't do much at all when the whole writing paradigm breaks down and we find ourselves sort of just staring at the screen, lost. It's called writer's block, and every writer I've ever met has had it at one time or another. If you're not among that number then you are unimaginably blessed. For the rest of us, writer's block is a thicket, and it would be useful if we could find our way out. Fortunately, the path is marked in just two words:

Don't Write

Wait, what? Don't write? How can not-writing possibly solve the problem of not being able to write? Isn't not-writing exactly the issue? What the hell has Vorhaus been smoking?

Vorhaus has been smoking nothing. Vorhaus knows that writer's block takes place at the intersection of too much fear and not enough information .

TOO MUCH FEAR: When a creative problem gives us difficulty, we naturally start to worry that this is a problem we can't solve. Maybe it's a joke that eludes us, a snarled plot twist, or an emotion we only imperfectly understand; whatever, it walks us to the brink of our creative ability and leaves us staring into the void. At which point, apprehension becomes albatross: a weight around our necks. It keeps us from writing – literally stops us cold – because how can we think effectively when we're under this dark, glowering cloud of self-doubt? We become caught in a negative feedback loop, and that's what writer's block really is: not the absence of words, the presence of fear.

NOT ENOUGH INFORMATION: Interestingly, the thing that triggers this vicious circle is often just not knowing enough about the problem we're trying to solve. We haven't sufficiently stoked our inner engines with the right kind of data. Maybe we need more research about the world of our story. Maybe we need to deepen our understanding of our characters. Maybe we need to broaden our search for story beats. Maybe we just need to go deeper into ourselves and our "inner data," and figure out what the heck we're trying to say.

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