It’s been 2008 for a month already; time really does fly by. I’ve been pushing off writing an update in my blog for over a month now and for some reason today feels like a good day to break the long silence. For New Years, I spent almost two weeks with my sister and my best friend from high school on a long trip across Japan; we managed to visit, 8 cities in ten days. Thankfully Japan is a small country making extended traveling quite manageable and comfortable. Winter also happens to be one of my favorite seasons, so that made the experience even better.
Lately, I’ve been spending almost all of my free time drawing and writing; the drawing is to improve my visual story telling skills and the writing is to build my overall story telling skills; both are indispensable when it comes to film making. I’ve been working on a screenplay for the last few months and I’ve realized a couple of things about my writing habits that might be insightful for others.
I used to write only when I was moved by something, but since starting my screenplay, I’ve managed to force myself to write consistently regardless of how I’m feeling; although this has helped my writing tremendously, I’ve still a lot of weaknesses that I would like to improve on. They are:
1. Being over critical.
2. Losing focus and jumping around.
3. Not spending enough quality time.
4. Fear of the unknown
5. Having no game plan.
It’s natural for people to be critical of themselves, being Asian probably makes it ten times worse because if you are no good, you bring everyone who is related to you down by virtue of being connected to them; it’s the joy of being part of a culture that believes in collective shame. 
But sarcasm aside, self-criticism is important because it is our first line of defense between “us” and the “world.” Without a self-critical eye, we risk offending people or offending ourselves by projecting a poor self-image. Some people have asked me about the screenplay I’m writing and a few have offered to read it, but that’s not going to happen until I have produced something that has received my own seal of approval.
I use this journaling software, called The Journal that nicely files all my notes, outlines, half-written stories and many of my other unformulated ideas; most of my entries are incomplete. The reason being is that I get bored with my own ideas after a while. Although, it’s nice to have an overabundance of ideas, ideas are often a dime a dozen; it’s the hard work and persistent effort that turns an idea into a finished product, be it a story, a company or a consumer good. I’ve decided to focus all my energies on the current screenplay, regardless how hard it may be to finish or how bad it may be when I’m done because at least I’ll have finished a screenplay and can move forward from there.
“Not spending enough time” is more often than not the real reason people don’t succeed at achieving their goals. Realizing this, I’ve spent entire weekends, leaving my apartment only for food, writing. Although the likelihood of success is much higher with added time, what I’ve come to realize is that time spent is not enough; it’s about the amount of quality time spent. Writing, while chatting online, watching a movie or TV, or eating is sub-optimal writing. I like to multi-task and be as efficient as possible, but when it comes to things that require a lot of brain power and concentration, any distraction is deadly. I’m going to experiment with writing for blocks of time by plugging my Ethernet cable out so I can’t randomly surf the net while I’m writing.
Another problem that I notice when I write is my fear of the unknown or a lack of knowledge; this is especially apparent when I write myself into an area where I have little experience or understanding. For example, right now I’m writing a scene in my screenplay where the backdrop is a world oil crisis, similar to the one that hit the world in the early 1970s. Since I don’t have much experience with it, my writing sounds unnatural; when that happens I tend to want to do more research and learn more about the subject. While this is naturally a good plan of action, it can get out of hand if I spend too much time researching and not enough time writing. I haven’t figured out the perfect balance for this yet, but I’m working on it. Maintaining momentum is important so I try to write mostly from what I know and leave the rest to research when I’m done writing for the day.
Writing without a game plan is just silly. I used to do that a lot before, but I’ve managed to break the habit. In this respect, blog writing has been an immensely helpful practice. I generally don’t like to write blog entries that have no over arching theme or purpose, which is why I don’t treat my blog like a journal. Trying to write a 100+ page screenplay is a lot more difficult than I imagined it would be and if I don’t decide what I am going to write before I start writing, I end up with a bunch of threads lacking coherence and structure. So now I try to decide on a scene to write or an outline for a couple of scenes before I start writing, this way I know what I’m aiming for by the time I stop writing for the day. The practice of setting small goals or writing short outlines is annoying but indispensable.
That’s it for writing about my writing. Time to get back to the screenplay. Until next time!
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