My Writing Style

If you ask 10 writers how they write, you're going to get 10 different answers. I had taken the advice to write a specific page quota. Stephen King writes 10 pages a day. Because I try to write scripts, I wrote 3 pages a day (so that I could have finish a draft in a month's time). The problem I found, was that I wasn't so concerned with the quality of the pages that I was writing, I was more concerned with how fast I could finish it.

Now, some will say that, for first drafts, that should be your only concern. But for me, it becomes a big roadblock because I lose interest in the draft. I don't want to continue writing something that I know is bad. That's not to say I expect gold from the first minute I write either. It's just a self defeating process when you plow away at 3 pages a day and not look back at the story thinking to yourself, "Don't worry about it, you'll fix in the next draft" only to go back and read that draft and think to yourself "There's nothing here I can use". It sucks the passion out of the project for me. Pretty soon, you look at the page count and kick yourself for not writing three pages a day and you pull up the Final Draft program.

You start writing only to lose passion in it because you start to think about what you wrote the night before and how shitty it is. You plow through another 3 pages of shitty writing and want nothing more than to start over again but you're too far into the draft to give up. Then you start finding excuses not to write, because 3 pages a night is too much damn work with school to worry about.

Suffice it to say, writing 3 pages a day may get the pages done, but it don't write a script.

Frustrated with my current process, I decided to write a short script a few weeks ago in order to take my mind off of this current behemoth of a script. The short concerned a coulrophobic businessman being stuck in an elevator with a clown. It's not any good, but it got me excited to write a new story. Because I knew it wouldn't be longer than 20 pages, I wasn't concerned with making a page quota so I was free to write as much as I could for as long as I could. I was free to experiment.

And strangely enough it worked.

Here were a few things I discovered about my own writing process as I was writing this short script. I found that I liked to edit things and reread what I wrote as I was writing. It certainly goes against the conventional wisdom people tell you about writing, "Just get the first draft done, don't edit and don't concern yourself with making it good". I guess it's just not me. I like the hybrid of editing while I write, I like being able to throw a scene out that I just wrote and completely restructure it. I like this way, my way.

So here I am with another process. Instead of a page quota, I'm setting aside a certain amount of time each night to write. It seems to be working fine for the moment, but it is an incredibly slow process. There are nights where I did nothing but editing what I wrote the night before and look at the page count only to see that I'm two pages shorter than I was last night. But the work is something that I can be proud enough to say that it's a work in progress.

But I guess my main concern right now should be consistency. I'll do whatever thing is necessary to keep me writing.