The Shed

The Shed

Today’s podcast is an excerpt from a recent Thursday Night Writes in which we discussed some of the causes of writer’s block, how to overcome procrastination as a writer, and how to keep your writing flowing through the chaos of the holiday season, so when you’re setting your New Year’s resolutions, they can be about how to take your writing to the next level, rather than how to get the engine started again. 

I realized I've been doing this wrong for 17 years. 

For 17 years, I’ve been talking about how the holidays are hell for screenwriters. And for 17 years, on January 1st, I have reached out to our community with a Screenwriting Challenge, to help you get your engine started again. 

And that's completely backwards. 

I need to talk about how to stop procrastination and writer’s block before it starts: how to keep your screenwriting going during the holidays! It is 100 times harder to get your screenwriting engine going again than it is to just keep it running. 

When I was a kid, we had this shed in our backyard. I was 13 years old. It was 1987. But nobody had been in that shed since 1980. 

The truth was, I was afraid to go into that shed. In fact, my whole family was afraid to go in there. My mom was afraid to go into that shed. My sister was afraid to go into that shed. 

All that was really in that shed was some old bicycles, a lawnmower, and some rakes… normal shed stuff like that. But the shed was scary because we hadn't been in there for so long. 

And that's exactly what happens to writers when they let that engine for their writing come to a stop. When you stop going into the shed, the shed gets scarier and scarier. 

There are many reasons it gets scarier. 

The cycle of procrastination and writer’s block means that writing gets scarier when you stop doing it! Part of this is simply the way your mind processes the unknown. 

Hey, can I even get in that shed again? If I do get brave enough to go in there, am I going to find anything good? Or is everything going to be ruined? Do I even have the courage to open the door to the shed? 

One of the reasons you get afraid is just that you haven't been in there for a while. You don't know what's in there. And when you don't know what's in there, it's a little scary. 

The second thing that makes it so hard to go back into the shed is that, on some level, you know that whatever is in there isn't in as good shape as when you shut the door a couple of months ago!

If you're writing on a consistent basis, it's like having well-oiled sharp tools. But if you leave them in the shed unattended, pretty soon they’ve got cobwebs all over them, and the blades are dull, and things squeak that didn't used to squeak. 

The same thing that happens to your tools in the shed is what happens to your skills as a writer when you stop using them.

When you're using them every day, it’s easy to keep using them. It's like if you run every day, taking a jog is easy. If you haven't run for six months, you finally take a jog and you think you're going to die!

The most important thing to remember is you’ve got to keep going into the shed. 

You’ve got to keep going into the shed, no matter what is going on in your life. 

And if you haven't been in the shed, then you’ve got to summon up the courage. Because every single day that you wait to go into that shed, the shed gets scarier. 

The shed may never stop being scary. But it will get scarier the longer you stay out of it. Your imagination will simply be able to imagine more horror there. 

Just like Jaws,