Just hanging around
People ask me all the time about how do I manage my time, my assignments - and enjoy life with my wonderful family, too? In truth, procrastination has a lot to do with it!
If you’re a newbie, this may come as a shock to you - most of your writing will not be happening on paper, it will be happening in your head - and quite often in the back of your head.
It doesn’t matter whether you mow the lawn or pick up dog poop, whether you’re buttering toast or roasting in the hammock. If you’re a writer, you’ll be - consciously or subconsciously - always connected to that fictitious story world you’re currently living in. Regardless of what you do, where you are, who you’re with - your story is always with you, your characters are buttering toast with you (I wish they’d pick up the damn dog poop). There you have it - what may appear to be “just hanging around” to others is, in fact, a large chunk of what your screenwriting profession is all about.
That get me wrong - as a newbie you should be practicing the actual writing bit every single day. It builds your writing muscle and prepares you for when that first contract rolls in. Many pros will tell you that you don’t start writing the actual screenplay for months after the official “go” has come.
I wouldn’t want to put a time frame on it (sometimes the deadlines are ridiculously steep) - but the fact is, when you have a story in your head already, every moment you spend NOT writing is time well spent. That’s the time your characters are free to roam, to explore all the countless glorious “what ifs.” That’s the time you’ll get flashes of scenes, snippets of dialogue, ideas for locations. That’s the time you’ll scribble things on a napkin and toss it in a drawer.
And you’ll know when the moment’s arrived, the moment when it feels right to bring it all together and put it on paper. You’ll open that drawer, packed with notes by now, and you’ll open your mind and choose everything that most excited you during all that time of “just hanging around.”
I’m a great believer in the necessity of procrastination. Done right, it will never be a waste of your precious writing time. The one thing you must do is to put yourself on a story path first - pick the story, the characters, the inciting incident - see the world your story will be set in... and then trust yourself that the story will be with you, percolating, from that moment onward. Procrastinate away, folks.
In his TED Talk (added below), Adam Grant talks about surprising findings in his research on original thinkers. Here’s one pithy quote, “Procrastination is a vice when it comes to productivity, but it can be a virtue for creativity.”
Playwright and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin said, “What others call procrastinating, I call thinking.” The trick is not to force it, but instead to trust it that things are percolating at the back of your mind. Finally, please do use your common sense. If you’re still procrastinating three months after reading this - you may want to consider a profession that where creative thinking isn’t essential.
For me, procrastination is key and I treasure it. I’m entirely aware of what I’m doing when I’m procrastinating - and I’ve learned to be relaxed about it, to never feel guilty about it, in the knowledge that it is important. My second screenwriting principle says it all (see below).
If you’d like to peruse my other screenwriting principles, here ya go.
This is absolutely true, and thanks for the reminder. The more time I spend not writing the easier it is, in the end, to write. But not writing means actively *not writing* --not actively doing something else.