Filed under: Creative Block, Creative Process, Writing | Tags: Creative Process, Just Write, Writing, Writing Process
by Scott Benton
A long time ago I decided I wanted to write. When I sat down to put my thoughts on paper, I quickly realized I didn’t have the slightest idea how to begin.
So I took classes on writing. I sat in lecture halls for hours listening to experts talk endlessly about writing. I read books on writing, I listened to bootlegged audiotapes of Robert McKee who talked about writing—and this is a man who knows about writing.
But after all that work, I still didn’t know how to write.
So I read those books again. I figured I missed something—somehow I managed to overlook the one primary rule I needed before I could begin. But after reading those books a second time, I still didn’t have the key. I didn’t know what I was missing.
All I knew is that I wasn’t writing.
The writers I knew had already made an important discovery, but I had not caught wind of it. They could have easily told me their discovery, but I wouldn’t have listened. It’s something I had to arrive at myself, as you will arrive at for yourself. They knew the code, as I’m telling you now, and it won’t sink in right away for you either. But at some point, and trust me on this, it will make sense. It will become your mantra, your elixir, the answer you seek.
SHUT UP AND WRITE.
That’s all there is. I know it sounds crazy. I know it goes against everything you’re feeling in your chest right now. I know you have the excuses worked out. They’re lined up nicely like a page of Robert Frost, as I had them lined up in my own mind.
SHUT UP AND WRITE.
The truth is you’re scared. The truth is I was scared. The minute you sit down in front of the blank page you realize what every other writer before you has realized: there’s something terrifying about writing. The fear stands in front of us like an impenetrable fortress; like an impossible barrier cutting off all forward progress. We wrack our brain for an answer. How do we move ahead? How do we go straight through?
SHUT UP AND WRITE.
I learned that shut up and write is nothing you can tell another person. I learned it was something I had to tell myself, and once I did, I wrote with abandon. I had gotten myself bogged down in process and theories and lectures and instruction. What I hadn’t considered is that writing is something you learn slowly. Bit-by-bit. A little at a time, and it’s something you learn by doing.
Writing is a craft. Writing is an art. Writing is sweat. Writing is toil. Writing is work. You can get from Los Angeles to New York in a new Ferrari or in a beat up Honda, but either way, you’ve got to leave the garage first and get on the road.
SHUT UP AND WRITE.
I didn’t find this in a book or lecture. I didn’t hear it from friends (even though they probably said it many times). It wasn’t until I said it to myself that I was able to start, and I found the more I wrote, the more I stopped distracting myself. Eventually, I saw how much I could do. Good or bad has never mattered to me, nor has it mattered to many writers when they sit down to work.
But the first step is to admit that no matter what, you are already a writer—a good one. Stop trying to learn the craft. You’re already there. You have something to say. You have enough life experience. You can sit in front of a blank page and write something—anything you like. You’re a writer this minute. Not next year, not in the distant future.
Right now.
If you want to do yourself a favor, then sit down and have a conversation. And in that conversation, make sure to tell yourself that above all else, you must first
SHUT UP AND WRITE.
Filed under: Creative Block | Tags: comparing to others, envy & creativity, jealous of other's creativity
by Lisa A. Riley
“Envy comes from people’s ignorance of, or lack of belief in, their own gifts.” – Jean Vanier
Envy can catch us by surprise. It can rear it’s head at a collogues art exhibit; reading an article featuring a local writer we went to school with, or during an interview with a celebrity on TV. Feelings of jealousy reawaken our own fears, insecurities and self-doubt. Those dormant skeletons of unfulfilled desires, we tried to bury under excuses. You know the ones, not enough time, not enough money and the voice that recites that familiar mantra, “you’ll never be successful.” Those unforgotten, but faint passions that hadn’t quite left us alone, come to focus. It seems that in the green veil of envy, resentment, projected at another, keeps us paralyzed. Preventing us from facing our own road blocks and pursuit of our dreams. We interpret someone else’s accomplishments as further proof that it has already been done and why we ought not to bother.
Jealousy easily enables us to avoid possible success and instead breeds inaction. When we focus on the wishful misfortunes of those who have gone before us and thrived, we avoid looking authentically at our own dissatisfaction and self-doubt. In spite of that, envy isn’t all that dreadful, but can in fact be a catalyst. If used as a mirror it can serve as a means to shake up those dusty dreams, hopes and artistic pursuits. Instead, gifts us with another chance to revisit them. By choosing to harness the energy in jealousy, which compels us to negate and judge, we stimulate renewed inspiration. Envy is a plea for action, utilize it to take the first steps or pick up where you left off.
Jealousy demands acknowledgment and appreciation of our own talents. If we listen closely to the true message of envy, once again we are aroused and prompted to manifesting our creative calling.
Content © 2008/2009 by Lisa A. Riley, The Art of Mind’s Blog. All Rights Reserved.
Filed under: Creative Block, Creative Process | Tags: anxiety, Creative Block, creative resistance
by Lisa A. Riley
So you’ve decided to get an early start, wake before the rest of the world begins their day and be productive. You grab a cup of coffee, a quick bagel and head over to the office (or studio.) You sit down in front of the computer facing the stark emptiness of your blank screen. You gaze for a moment and then take a few sips of coffee, waiting for the caffeine to kick in. Facing the screen, eyes fixated on the blinking cursor, your fingers in position, waiting with anticipation like a runner waiting for the sound of the gunshot. Nothing comes to mind. Your eyes conveniently notices the flashing email icon in the corner of your screen, suddenly drawn like a magnet, you decided to check your email. After sifting through streams of uneventful junk mail, you attempt to return to that window that appears now a little intimidating. The clock ticks a little louder as you glance over and notice an hour has already flashed by. At another attempt to focus on formulating a sentence, you some how justify getting up to throw a load of laundry in the wash. Upon returning to the computer, you realize you need a refill on your cup of coffee and proceed to the kitchen where you notice a stack of dishes long over due for a washing. You convince yourself that after the dishes are done, you will be more at ease to sit down and focus on your creation. As the minutes passed and the early start is no longer early, you realize you had succumbed to the seduction of convenient distractions.
If this sounds like a familiar scenario, well, you are not alone. Many of us have experienced this form of procrastination. Where we give into the rationalization that once these convenient distractions are completed and put to rest, we can create. When in reality, this is an indication of our own internal resistance to facing the act of producing something. Feelings of self-doubt, criticism and negative beliefs can produces anxiety around the creative process. Such discomfort may rise from our own demons emerging to remind us how mediocre we might be, how worthless our work is or worse of all how “uncreative” we really are. For that reason, we naturally look for diversions to keep us from facing this discomfort.
I have often caught myself in this avoidance cycle when it comes time to paint. The familiar anxiety that I struggle through before I can let go and allow myself to just create without expectation, without judgment or projection of the worse. I don’t always arrive at that place easily, sometimes it takes hours before I allow myself to lean into the discomfort and finally put the brush to the canvas. I learned that leaning into the flame as oppose to retracting away from it, is the best solution. If one allows his or her self to sit long enough with the uncomfortable feelings, and create anyway, they might just discover that those feelings eventually subside.
I propose the 20 minute rule commonly used in 12-step-programs. When the craving suddenly appears, sit and wait for 20 minutes before taking any action. The power of the craving, which initially felt intense when it first came on, will eventually feel more tolerable to withstand. I think the same can be applied when faced with that need to seek a convenient distraction in order to excuse us from facing the thing we fear. If we learn to sit with it instead of blindly giving into diversions, we work through the resistance. That might mean sitting at the computer or canvas despite the urge to do something else and create nonetheless. You might just find that creativity will eventually win over the feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt and criticism. Then before you know you it, the creative energy flows effortlessly.
By practicing this technique, you eventually learn to work through the uncomfortableness, normally driving you to distractions, embrace all that goes along with the creative process and you might actually have that productive day.
Content © 2008/2009 by Lisa A. Riley, The Art of Mind’s Blog. All Rights Reserved.
by Scott Benton, Screenwriter, Los Angeles, CA
I know what you’re thinking. 
You’re thinking, “I can’t write, paint, sing, play music, sculpt, put a speech together, build a model from scratch, cook, craft a cabinet…” You name it. I know you’re saying you can’t do any of these things, because deep down you’ve told yourself that if it isn’t done right, it just isn’t worth doing at all, or even starting. You’ve been meaning to do these things for years now, and maybe you will, but not today. Soon. Later on. At some point in the very near future.
And that’s exactly what I thought for ten years too.
For ten years I sat down frequently to do my writing. I desperately wanted to learn how to write a full-length screenplay, and I tried everything imaginable to get myself there. I took classes, I read books, I did research, I got up at 5:00am and worked on note cards until I absolutely had to get to work. I used up as much time on my weekends as I could sketching outlines, writing notes, trying this, trying that.
And it all sucked.
I did this for ten years not knowing why I couldn’t write a script. I figured I just wasn’t a writer, but I still had this burning desire to figure it out. So I kept trying, and trying, and trying, and like in a dream, after all that time, and after all that work, I looked down and realized I hadn’t left the starting gate. I was right where I always was, no further along than the day I started writing. After ten years, I still hadn’t finished one thing.
Why?
Because I thought exactly the way you’re thinking right now—right this minute as you’re reading these words. I thought it had to be perfect. I thought it had to be smart. I thought it had to be meaningful. I thought it had to be art, and it wasn’t. I thought this way every day until I convinced myself I had failed. Utterly. That I had ultimately wasted my life. That I should leave town immediately because I had proven to myself I cannot write anything.
That was before I had my epiphany.
I was standing at a map I had taped to the wall of the United States. I knew the game was up for me, and so I took a dart and paced off ten steps and turned around. I decided to throw that dart, and wherever it landed on that taped up map, I was going to go to that town and start my life over again. When you fail badly, maybe it’s time to pack up and do something different. People start their lives over all the time, and there I was about to hit the reset button.
But as I stood ready to let that dart fly and spin towards my future home, a thought pressed up through the darkness of my thoughts. It angrily stepped onto the little screening room in my mind, with giant subtitles that shouted out:
JUST WRITE THE BAD VERSION…
So I put down the dart, and I had a long conversation about the writing. I made a deal with myself, and one that if I didn’t keep, I promised to kick myself out of town and go wherever the dart landed.
The deal was this: I would write, but I would only write BADLY. I would do whatever it took to get a screenplay completed, even if it was the worst script ever written in the history of bad scripts. It didn’t matter if it made sense, or was written in gibberish or numbers, I was going to get something done. I would allow myself to stay in town as long as I kept writing and didn’t stop—and you know what?
I got a 750-page book done, and then a screenplay, and then another screenplay, and it seemed like I couldn’t stop writing.
That was the key I discovered, and something other writers talk about as well. When I say other writers, I’m not talking about my friends next door, or an uncle, or some unpublished nobody. I’m talking about the real deal. I’m talking about people you already know. They all say the same thing. Here’s a quote. See if you can guess who said it.
“The first draft of everything is shit.”
So that’s not some friend of a friend, or a t-shit I saw on Venice Beach. No, that’s Ernest Hemingway—Hemingway. One of the most famous writers ever. So if you doubt what I’m writing, how about Hemingway? He said the same thing. He knew he had to write badly in order to write anything at all. He knew that when he finished something, and read it back, that it was going to look and sound terrible, but he pushed through anyway. He wrote the bad version first, and then he went back over it.
And that’s what I had to do, and that’s what you have to do. Stop trying to convince yourself you have to do the perfect version of anything. Always do the bad version instead. At least then you have something to work with, and something to improve. Until you do the bad version, you have nothing. I had ten years of nothing, and it’s not fun. Once you get this simple idea into your own head, this nothing trap becomes an easy tangle to extricate out of.
Give yourself permission to do the bad version too, and then you won’t be able to stop.
Look at my own writing here. I’m sure you’re tearing it apart. I wrote it knowing it would be terrible. I put it together knowing it would have mistakes, and contain unclear thinking. I wrote knowing you would break it down. I wrote knowing there were twenty, fifty, one hundred, ten thousand other writers who could do it better than I can. I know there are pacing problems, formatting problems, maybe a typo here and there, or the overuse of clichés.
But I don’t care, because I know the first draft is not the final draft, and I know I’m going to go back and do some more work on it, to make it the best writing I can. And you know what? You’re still going to criticize it, and it might even make you feel nauseous (do you know the correct word would be “nauseated,” and not “nauseous?” If you look it up in Strunk and White, to say you feel nauseous means you are making OTHER PEOPLE SICK).
So I made a mistake. It’s imperfect. It’s the bad version. It’s wrong.
So what.
Give yourself permission to write or paint or dance or play or build the bad version of everything. If you can cross that imaginary bridge and get yourself to the page, or the easel, or the floor, or the piano, then you’re going to find a couple of things starting to happen.
First, you will find you won’t STOP writing. You’ll find you can’t possibly quit painting. You’re going to see that you’ve written ten songs in a week. You’re going to remove another stack of books from your shelf because you need the space for your new sculptures. You’re going to finally get yourself going, and that, my friend, is one powerful key you can’t pass up in order to make more significant progress than you can ever imagine.
Second, you’re going to get better. A lot better. You already know the more you do something, the better you get. It’s a simple law of nature, and it never fails. It won’t fail you either.
So just do the bad version. You’ll be glad you
