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 Process, Flow, Sacred Space, Writing | Tags: creative flow, Creative Process, Flow, how to get to flow
by Scott Benton, Screenwriter, Los Angeles, CA
It seems a lot of people try and reach a state they call “flow,” that seemingly limitless mind and spirit crossroads where creative work and play meld into one constant creative burst. If you asked a thousand people how to get there, you would get a thousand equally vivid roadmaps, and if you tried them, you might find they all work…or maybe none.
The truth is, as best as I can figure it, we’ve got to feel our way in, like pressing forward in a darkened tunnel until we can stand on our feet and walk confidently in the abyss without the fear of bumping into anything.
For me, I have found ritual to be the key, and the more I practice ritual, the easier I unlock that door. It doesn’t matter what ritual you choose. Most people naturally fall their way into a set of activities, mantras, invocations, talismans…you name it.
One friend of mine habitually pours himself a glass of wine and lights a single candle before sitting down at the laptop to bang out a story. My next-door neighbor takes out his favorite pen before scribbling out ideas—and Heaven help the man who takes that pen away. Another author I know of (Steven Pressfield) recites out loud the Invocation of the Muse, a translation he likes by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia). Some writers won’t ever leave the house to write, others can’t be anywhere near it. There are those that only work creatively in the morning, and those that work when the clock strikes 10pm. Find your perfect environment, and you’ll be well on your way.
As for myself, I have tried many different ways in, but now when I sit down at a coffee house—any coffee house these days—I go straight into it. I’ve done this for years, and I guess it has something to do with the ritual of it all, or the repetition of the process. Doing the ritual over and over seems to have programmed my mind to switch into creative play the minute I smell a boiling pot of java, or see lemon bars and cinnamon rolls in a display case. It sets off a trigger, I guess, and suddenly I’m not even thinking about. I’m writing.
But the important part is that I found my way in. I’ve been able to quickly get myself into flow for a three or four hour block of writing at a time. But it wasn’t exactly easy to establish this process. I had to do a lot of experimentation until I knew what worked best for me, and what didn’t work at all.
So what is your ritual? What do you need to do before you sit down to write something, or paint something, or bring your creative burst to the tips of your fingers, or onto the edge of your voice?
Don’t be afraid to try it all. You’ll feel it in your gut when it’s right, and you’ll know when you’re in, and when you’re out again. You can get there quickly if you try. You can do it when you only have a limited amount of time, and when you get inside that state of flow, you’ll get some of the best possible work done that you may not have even realized you could have accomplished.
Try it for yourself, and see if it’s the same key for you as it’s been for me.
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
