One writer I read describes what it’s like to write the next scene as “repainting the line down the middle of the road.”  I understood immediately.  You go back a few scenes or farther, you fiddle with the small stuff, you get the trajectory in your head again, and you write a scene, maybe.

Having an outline, even if it’s one that’s developing as you write, gives you something meaningful to write today.  Since rewriting is inevitable, that the scene you’re writing isn’t the perfect next scene doesn’t feel like such a waste.  It’s not a pearl on a perfect string of pearls.  It’s a stone in freestone wall.  About the right size and shape, but not forever.

Letting yourself make a mess allows you to move on.  Of course, it only feels like a kind of progress until your perfectionist reappears during rewriting.  He brings a sense of how much you left undone.  And gloom ensues.  I expect to be staring him down in a week or so.  But the outline, once again, however much it changes, is still the map and scenes are only turns.

Lately the only way to generate raw material - scenes - is to write them almost without regard to placement, time, sequence.

I’m working from an outline.  I see the story.  The plot needs that, the character needs this, the turning point is coming.  Who cares?  Just write the scene and connect all the resonant themes and oh-shit of the plot later.

Get the scenes written.  Make a mess.

Don’t wait to write scenes until the set up and sequence is just so.  Write the scene as an anchor, and cinch other story beats to it.

• The temptation to postpone writing those moments comes from the desire to make those moments big, deep, and resonant.  But you don’t get there by waiting; you get there by rewriting.

You’re being too easy on the protagonist.

Goals

To finish two scripts a year.
To get better feedback by providing more story planning and context to readers.
To raise the level of accountability for getting work done by setting higher individual goals.

Guidelines

When starting a project, the first delivery should be and outline and logline.

• You can use other means to communicate these, but we need (because you need) a plan for how you’ll execute the idea from beginning to end.  Think “craft.”  And a few key, presentable ideas about how to interest others in it.  Think “commerce.”

Submit full scripts for consideration thereafter.

Submit full scripts when submitting rewrites.

Aim to complete the entire writing and rewriting process over six months.

Schedule

If we stick to a rotation, we each have an at-bat every 12 weeks, or about 4 times a year.  Note though that we have 11 weeks during which to work before the script is due again because we all need a week in which to read it.

If you can’t deliver on the schedule rotation, warn us well ahead of time.  The more we plan for contingencies, the more flexible we can be.

Also in this rotation, there are four meetings during which we have an open slot to:

• Pitch loglines and developed story ideas (I’m contrasting these with “something I’ve been thinking about but don’t yet know the potential of.”)
• Reassign time to a writer who fell in a well for three weeks at an earlier point during the rotation.  Note that to be able to do this we all need to be ready to pitch a story summary at almost anytime, should someone, you know, fall down a well.

Recommendation A: Set internal deadlines for yourself to complete work between the dates when you’ll submit to the group.

Recommendation B: Always ask for feedback offline, that is, outside the meeting-feedback cycle, when you’ve reached an internal, personal deadline.

Assumption:  Family and work pressures will periodically get in the way our commitments to writing, but we should treat such moments as opportunities to get the writing done in spite of those forces, since for the foreseeable future, most of us will be carving time out of activities that are more enjoyable and manifestly easier.  Until we’re making this a living, we only answer to ourselves.