Laying Track

"The real leader has no need to lead - he is content to point the way." -- Henry Miller  

How many times have you someone say "keep putting one foot in front of the other." It sounds like a well worn yet good piece of wisdom.  And, what a marvelous game plan it really is for getting someplace.  Guess what?  Everything in life is that simple.  Keep putting one foot in front of the other.  The outcome is assured.  You'll get there eventually.  Getting somewhere eventually is better than never getting there at all.

While preparation, vision and planning count for a great deal of success quotient, planning doesn't get you there.  Moving gets you there.  Yes, there's a time and a place to plan and envision a successful outcome but actively moving forward toward a goal amounts to more than planning.  100 words a day is better than 0 words a day.  Don't keep yourself from your writing desk because you don't have a solid block of time to commit to writing.  Write for as long as you can.  

While every individual step may seem inconsequential, their cumulative effect is profound and certain.  Keep showing up at the blank page until it's as natural as brushing your teeth.  Some days will seem like a chore just to arrive at the page and attempt to focus.  You'll feel empty and uninspired.  The process may seem lackluster and even a wasteful use of your time.  If all you have is 20% then make the commitment to show up at the page and bring 20% to it.  You may find that once you get started you actually had 25%  The point is - do something.  Anything.  Keep covering ground.

The best selling author and writing guru, Julia Cameron calls this process, "laying track."  It's simply showing up and putting something down on the page.  There will be many days where there isn't anything magical going on.  It might even seem downright boring.  (Remember boredom is just masked resistance).  Just as a seed needs to establish roots before it can shoot out of the ground sometimes our writing needs to incubate, unseen in order to bloom at a later time.

Jhumpa Lahiri's first novel, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2000.  A gifted writer with a unique voice whose passion for story and character is fresh and exciting.  She brings out the universal humanity in her characters and engages the reader with rich detail and witty circumstances.

This week's suggested website:  - MediaBistro.com (www.mediabistro.com) This site is a good place to find freelance jobs online. Other features include forums, courses and industry news.


This week's writing prompt: Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time.   Revisit a character biography you've been working on.  Imagine that this character is looking for a job and meets the difficulties of today's economy head on.  Prepare your character's resume and give it some realistic level of polish.  For extra fun submit it to one of the online job boards and see what happens.  

Guest Blogger: Herb Goss

Guest Blogger:  TV Writer/Producer, Herb Goss

Writing is about starting.  Every day you must start to get anything done.  Many people tell you to pick a time to start and always begin at that exact time.  Now that's discipline, but you're a writer not an Olympic athlete so that might not be realistic.  Other writers have a page count that they like to hit.  I believe in both.  I try to write at least six pages a day and I like to start at 10am.  However, if I can't start at 10 am than I start at another time and if I can't write six pages than I write as many as I can.  You see the object is to have discipline which is the only way to write anything of substance and value.  The other rule is to be flexible because if you are not flexible then you'll find that you are constantly beating yourself up which is not conducive to having a good writer's life. But how to start?
It all begins with a blank page.  More vast than the infinite universe we live in this can be the most challenging part of writing.  If you don't have an idea to slam down then the first thing to do is brainstorm. Just start writing down the first thing that comes to your mind.  "A rabbit eating popcorn and getting thrown out of a theater on it's ears."  "Why are there two different spellings of theatre, theater?" Don't filter, don't censor. Be prepared to throw that all out because it's not important that the ideas be good but that you write the ideas down.  This gets you flowing and keeps you in the habit of writing.  Once the habit forms you wont' be able to stop yourself, unless you hear an ice cream truck because all motion stops when anyone or anything hears the song of an ice cream truck.

If you have an idea.  Start writing it down.  Get as many pages as you can.  You've started.  Sweet.  Now you have something to rewrite.  From that day forward, you'll never have to start from scratch.  You can start by rewriting what you already wrote, making it better.  After that, continue to write from where you left off or perhaps you can write an entirely different piece of your puzzle. Start, write, rewrite, six pages a day.  That's a six hundred page novel in 100 days.  Three months.  It's a 30 page spec script in 5 days.  Okay it's not that easy and fast but it's close.  Six a day.  Start, write, rewrite and then one day... finish.

This week's suggested website:  Zoetrope.com (www.zoetrope.com) In March of 1998 Francis Coppola launched a website where writers could submit their short stories to his magazine, Zoetrope: All-Story. A community of writers quickly formed around the website. It became so popular so quickly that a few months later he created sites for novellas and screenplays.  The Virtual Studio is a submission destination and collaboration tool for filmmakers—a community where artists can submit and workshop original work. It's also the best e-resource for information about the Coppola family and American Zoetrope.


This week's writing prompt:  Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time.  Write a one page short story in the first person point of view.  Doesn't need to be fancy or award winning literature.  Now here's the real challenge.  Switch genders.  If you're a male write in the voice of a female (many great writers still complain this is difficult and yet crucial).  Try to be convincing and not cliched.  Be sure to depict the character's inner life.  You won't have much time in five minutes and one page but try to give the reader a glimpse of your character's inner landscape.  It doesn't need to be perfect.  Practice switching into the "voices" of your characters from the inside out.  Have a great writing week. 

Screenwriting: 101 (Where Do I Start?)

I've always enjoyed being at the beginning of things: a new job, the first day of school, a brand new project.  I remember being filled with excitement at the possibility that something unexpected might happen whenever a new situation presented itself.  For many people, being at the beginning of a long journey or complicated process can be intimidating and scary.  But, if we move beyond our fears, doubts and distractions "beginnings" can offer unexpected magical power, wondrous surprises and foster our creative intelligence.

When working on a new project, I look forward to the prep time, the planning stages where everything is still possible and you're only limited by your imagination.  Before criticism and logic sets in.  It's a magic time when the world is your canvas!  If you like jumping off into the unknown, writing may be the perfect vehicle because it requires a certain amount of fearlessness.  Few things are as intimidating as the blank page. 

Recently, I have been traveling the country on the festival circuit promoting my film, WATERCOLORS.   Almost everywhere I go someone asks me,  "How did you get started?"  The simple answer is:  I just started.

If you've decided that writing for the screen is something you must do, and are willing to dedicate yourself to the many lonely hours ahead then training and practice will determine the measure of your success.  The practice is all up to you but for the training, there's help out there and lots of it.

The amount of literature available on writing for the screen (most of it very good) is exhausting to contemplate.  In fact there  is an entire industry devoted to teaching people of all ages to write for film and TV.  College degrees, workshops, online certifications, lectures, podcasts, books, etc. keep pumping out more and more content to supply the insatiable demand of aspiring writers.  And with all the new media being developed the hunger for content has never been greater!  This was not always the case.

I came upon the work of Syd Field early on in my career while studying communications and theatre in college during the early '80s.  Syd Field was the first to define and explain the foundations of screenwriting in a manner that was accessible not only to the seasoned professional but to anyone who ever had a great idea and dreamt of writing a movie.  His first book, Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting is still the book I keep coming back to after all these years.  His thoughts on character, plot, structure and the daunting task of crossing the desert that is Act II stand out in my mind today as clearly as they did thirty years ago.  It's a great place to begin.

In my view, Syd's book laid down the groundwork.  Over the years, professors, editors, writers, story analysts, network and studio development executives all contributed to the now massive canon of literature on the art of writing the screenplay.  My bookshelves are filled with them.  It's great fun reading them all and I absolutely believe that much valuable knowledge can be gleamed from them.  A few of the best I've sampled are Robert McKee, John Truby, Michael Hauge, Linda Seger, Christopher Vogler, David Howard, Pilar Alessandra, and the late Blake Snyder.

Ultimately, beginning a screenplay or novel just boils down to just a few simple things.  Firstly, taking the time to nurture and honor your creativity.  Even if you have to steal five minutes a day for your writing practice, make sure it's your five minutes, your privacy must be sacrosanct.  Secondly, you must sum up the courage to face the blank page and let yourself go. 

This week's suggested website:  The Writers Store (writersstore.com) The one stop shop for books, DVDs and everything on writing for the film and TV industry.

This week's writing prompt:

Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time.  Imagine your main character (or one your still developing) has just won a $10,000 shopping spree.  What would your character buy?  What stores who he/she visit?  (This may help you undercover some personal tastes and/or needs your character may not have "revealed" in the last exercise. )  Let your character indulge in any secret or illicit pleasures with the money too!  Write for five minutes.

Commitment to Daily Practice

A while ago, I promised myself I would write 1,000 words a day.  No exceptions.  I would commit myself to sitting down to the blank page everyday no matter what.  After all, a writer writes.  That's what defines us.  When we write we're writers.  When we don't -- we're garbage!  (Well maybe not all of us, I was thinking of myself in particular.)  I long ago discovered that when I'm not writing I'm a miserable, depressed, pathetic, self-loathing person.  I can't help but compare my measly efforts at writing with all the great writers of the past and present.  Reportedly, Winston Churchill wrote 10,000 words a day.  I struggle to imagine where he found the time.  So, that's what the mind does. It's programmed to make comparisons.  Higher/lower, bigger/smaller.  Typically our assessment of things is based on concepts of duality like "up" or "down" that we can easily grasp.  But that kind of thinking doesn't support a writing life.  It's like comparing fingerprints.  They're all just different; any comparison would be pointless.  My writing is uniquely my own.  My 1,000 words a day would be uniquely my own.  My little "stamp" on whatever was happening in the moment.


Needless to say I kept up the practice for a while with an admirable amount of idealistic energy and regularity.   After about a month I had a nice start to my novel.  You know, the novel.  The big, epic romantic one I've always dreamed of writing.  It wasn't easy.  Far from it.  After a few weeks I couldn't keep it up.  Some days I just ran out of steam or felt like I had nothing to say or I had said it all already.  Even more often I just felt like everything I was writing was just plain shit.


Now I've learned to squeeze the writing in where I can.  I'm a writer who tries to write everyday.   That's the best I can do without lying to myself.  I wish I could say that I was one of those disciplined, crazed romantic figures that I admire so much.  But my life seems quite ordinary and far removed from an F. Scott Fitzgerald or an E.B. White.  I write when I can in hotels, airports, cafes, or wherever I happen to be at the time.  Still, I managed to find the time to become  an award-winning photographer and filmmaker.   I have to keep reminding myself of that.  The world has given me a good measure of recognition for my creative efforts.   I'm grateful.


At the moment there are several ideas spinning around in my head (as usual).  I've begun to commit two of them to paper.  How much I write every day is unknown.  What is known is that I won't ever let myself go too long without returning to the page.  1,000 words a day is a great goal but I don't want to make not hitting that mark an excuse not to write at all.  After all, there is no excuse.