Give Yourself Permission

As a script consultant and coach, I find that I play many roles. Story analyst, editor, d-girl and therapist. And what I find, consistently, is that writers are awful hard on themselves.

Good writers write bad stuff. It happens. In fact, it happens a lot - and Rouge Wavers, today the topic is giving yourself permission to write badly. Sometimes the spirit moves you and sometimes it just doesn’t. The important thing is to keep writing until you can coax the muse back.

Writers who don’t believe that they can and do write badly set themselves up for a lifetime of bitterness when they are only sporadically rewarded for their brilliant writing. They are full of a terrible combination of hubris and self-delusion. Then there are writers who are deep into the self-loathing thing and believe that everything they write is crap; it’s just that some crap is slightly less crappy. Whine, whine, whine.

Yes, the more time you spend writing – as in years – the more your writing improves. Your writing muscles become lithe and firm. But particularly when it comes to a screenplay, not every idea, character or scene you write will be golden – quite the contrary. You want to have a safety in place so that you are evaluating your work each day so that you don’t wind up with an entire script which is an embarrassment. But these are your pages and you are entitled to write ridiculous dialogue or scenes. Give yourself permission to toy with a really bad idea until it becomes apparent that it was a really bad idea. You need that process.

Something I learned a few years ago to cushion the moments when I just didn’t know what I was writing was using “placeholders” which is to say that when you arrive at a given scene in the new script you are writing and you just don’t know exactly what will happen in that scene, just slug the scene and write something like: “They argue here.” And move on to the next scene. Placehold it. You can come back to it later. You can placehold scenes, you can placehold dialogue in a scene, you can placehold just about anything. You’ll come back to it. Writing a script is like the birth of an island far out at sea. It emerges little by little, with more and more showing. Layers of lava create more substance. It takes a long time, dear writers, before that island (go with me) is the verdant, tropical paradise you had imagined. Yes? We know this.

So during the process, allow yourself to not know all the answers, and allow yourself to write some bad pages. In fact, it could be the entire script is a bad idea. It’s okay. All artists are entitled – if not expected – to sometimes create a heap of dung. Recognizing that it happens is not a problem for most writers; obsessing on it is. Let it go. Use placeholders. Know that your writing will improve with time. Yes, writers do need to check in with the reality of the market, public opinion, etc., this is not a carte blanche, damn-the-standards endorsement.

Recognizing that the material is not so good is the key to growth as you move forward; the inability to recognize it is death. So get notes from friends, get a professional opinion and/or give yourself the distance to view your work with a more critical eye.

Some say that writing is rewriting. So what does that make the writing part? Groundwork. Take the beach first. Your lumpy, rocky, little Dr. Seuss island, steaming with lava and smoke may just yet become a lush tropical paradise. Where others see terrible mistakes and a really dumb idea – you will see creative opportunities and new vistas. Or maybe you’ll see something that needs to sink back beneath the waves without further ado. Don’t judge yourself so harshly. Bad writing happens to all writers. The important thing it so honor the impulse to write - without judging the work ahead of time and the trick is to acknowledge that the material isn't so hot and to simply move on, without self-condemnation.

So make another cup of hot coffee and damn the torpedoes – the very act of creating something out of nothing is heroic and beautiful.

For more inspiring words treat yourself to zefrank at www.zefrank/theshow and search for Bittersweet - it's tops!

If you enjoyed this post, follow me on Twitter or subscribe via RSS.