CHAIN WRITING

As I've mentioned last week, I would tell you my new plan on how I am going to help myself get back into the groove of writing. Oddly enough this bit of advice comes from Jerry Seinfeld and was shared through Lifehacker here.

The gist of it is that in order to become good at anything you do it over and over. Everyday with no stopping in your path. So for instance, in this case, I want to write and get better at it while actually finishing a screenplay. After all that is my one main New Year's resolution that I want to meet for this year before 2008.

Now the tools that I need is a calendar and a red marker. For everyday that I write I get to place a red x on the calendar. The idea is to fill the calendar with red x's. Seinfeld's motto here is "don't break the chain." Simple enough, and it becomes a bit of a mantra to repeat to yourself. Whatever you do, you don't want an empty space on the calendar. that would be breaking the chain. Any moment where you skip a day just makes it easier to slip back into old routines and in my case become unfocused and downright lazy. Don't break the chain.

Now here is what I am going to do; I am going to set a timer to 20 minutes and just write my screenplay for that long. No worries, no self-editing, no nothing. Just write without looking back or pausing. It's my hope that twenty minutes become thirty and so on and so on. By the end of the year with fingers crossed I should have at least one completed screenplay. Stay weird!