The Story Spot...

...has graciously posted me as their featured blog today, so I feel as though I need to get a new blog up for all the story spotters out there.

Usually, I give advice but today I'm just going to tell you my plan for the next couple of months, and you can take it or leave it. Hopefully you'll comment on it.

I'm currently in an epic battle to get EVERY GOOD IDEA I've had percolating in my brain down on paper. And It's been a pretty decent experience so far. I've done 60 pages on 3 scripts, including one I hope to finish today, and the other two I hope to finish by the end of the week. That's right, almost 120 pages of script in one week. I may not accomplish it, but I'm gonna give it my best effort.

Afterwards, I'm planning on writing two more feature scripts, including my latest commissioned. I've been sitting on it for a long time, and it's due pretty soon, yikes. I've told my brain to have no more good ideas until these are all on paper. Finally, I'm going to finish it up with a tv script and a "comic book" pilot script.

Okay, I lied, a little advice.

It's easy for a writer to become bogged down with too many good ideas. You become paralyzed by the inability to pick which idea to start. All the characters start talking to themselves and making you even more confused. When that happens, sometimes the best thing to do is just start writing anything, or everything, to get it on paper and get the voices out of your head (the ones that aren't supposed to be in there at least).

It's also really easy for a writer to have a lot of great ideas, but not be actually writing anything. I'm sure you know writers, producer, directors, composers, etc. who have not been working on ANYTHING for the last few days, weeks, months, or more. It's easy to make excuses, it's hard to DO SOMETHING.

Okay, back to me for the kicker.

If everything works out, I will have written at least first drafts of 5 tv specs, 4 original tv pilots, 5 feature scripts, and a "comic book" pilot this year.

That's a lot of writing, how productive have you been this year?

Now, I'm going to write "I WILL NOT ABANDON MY READERS" 100 times in Final Draft before trudging along with my goal of 30 pages today.