It happens all the time...
It’s 11:30 at night, and suddenly it strikes me – the perfect fix to a scene or to a piece of dialogue that I’ve been struggling with for days. I pull out my laptop—or better yet a notebook—and jot wildly before the inspiration leaves me. Then I lean back, and survey my work. It’s witty. It’s funny. It explains while the absent father has returned home TONIGHT, just in time to rescue my hero. “Oh, yes,” I think. “I am good.” All the pieces connect—it’s a perfect twist on an old cliché—original, but familiar at the same time. There’s no other word for it—I have just committed an act of GENIUS.
And then morning comes. Still awash with that feeling of specialness from the night before, I sing my way through a quick shower, then double-step over to Starbucks to review my midnight output. I may even look sideways upon those sorry OTHER writers sitting around me—up so early, working so hard on their mediocre scripts, only to eventually be REJECTED by this hard, hard town. Sucks to be them...
And then I read what I wrote the night before…
And BOY, does it SUCK.
WOW.
Seriously—I could have written better pages while snake-boarding down Mount McKinley. The lines are horrible. The characters feel totally stiff, and what was I thinking with this description: “She sashays into the room stinking of marmalade.” Good GOD—how on earth had that sounded so clever the night before? I must be the WORST WRITER IN HOLLYWOOD…
In the creative life of a writer, sometimes you’re ON and sometimes you’re very, very OFF—but the worst thing is when you lose your compass, and just don’t have a clue...
For me, those moments come most often late at night—which is why I’ve developed a strict NO WRITING AFTER 10 PM policy. And if I’m really sure that my late-night mental rant has the trappings of something great, I’ll put the idea in a notebook but even then will not let myself touch my actual script.
It took some time to realize this about myself, but my late-night creativity is usually FAR INFERIOR to what I’m able to pull out on an average morning. This still seems a little counterintuitive to me, as I’m naturally a night person and generally stay up very late—and yet, my nighttime writing sessions have been (with few exceptions) consistently disastrous…
The reason I mention this is that first REALIZING then later ACCEPTING my natural “writing rhythms” has been hugely useful for me in learning how to best-utilize my time, and in putting myself on a writing schedule that WORKS FOR ME. I know so many writers who, in an effort to accommodate their day jobs, scrape themselves out of bed at five in the morning only to prop themselves up at the kitchen table and get ABSOLUTELY NOTHING DONE. At least nothing good. And I know other writers who hit the laptop in that extra hour before The Daily Show begins, and only to find themselves similarly disheartened by the quality of their output.
I truly feel that it is important for all screenwriters to take some time todiscover their natural writing rhythms—and then to do what they can to set up their schedules accordingly. Writing is not a job like other jobs—you’re not filling out forms and adding up numbers, here. To be the best writer possible, you need to find those periods of the day at which you are your SMARTEST and MOST CREATIVE. Honestly—I don’t know any professional writers who haven’t done this, even if they have a different name for it. In fact, most every artist I know has a TIME OF THE DAY at which he or she operates at his or her peak.
Writing can be a finicky thing. And although I generally think all screenwriters should keep themselves seated in front of their laptops for as many hours as possible, many of us have tough schedules that require us to pick and choose those sections of our day that we can fully devote to working on our scripts.
So—here’s all I’m saying:
Rather than identifying the free hours in your schedule and then trying to squeeze in some writing, why not spend some effort discovering the period of the day that you are at your creative BEST, then do whatever you can to clear some time during THAT part of the day. Trust me—even half-an-hour of work when you are at your SHARPEST beats many more hours raking through scenes when you are simply OFF. I promise--you'll happier with your pages.
Do what you can to write when your MIND IS
WORKING--and REALIZE when you’re just being a MIDNIGHT GENIUS.
