[NoHo Arts District, CA] – Episode three of the Writing for Actors blog by Scott Edward Smith focuses on “the Blog Paragraph and Logline.”
Scott Edward Smith reminds us that writing is a “craft,” and explains the importance of procrastination in the writing process.
A big part of writing is not actually writing. Writing is embracing the “craft of writing” Like a woodcrafter, there is much more to creating a chair or table than the actual physical work. There is the vision. Working out in your head what you want to see.
You have to do the work. If you’re a musician or dancer, you rehearse. If you’re an athlete, you work out. You don’t get the luxury of not doing the prep. It’s 6:00 AM, you gotta get up, and you’ve got to practice or you’re not going to win. It’s just as plain as that. Writers can get away with a lot of stuff. Coaching can be an important part of the process if it’s appropriate for you.
You have to give yourself permission to go through the “writing is a craft” process. And that’s where procrastination comes in. I was at a writer’s conference and Margaret Atwood was the lead speaker. When they got the Q & A part, of course, one of the questions that came up was, “What’s the secret to the success of writing?” And her answer was, without missing a beat, “Procrastination. Learn the art of procrastination.” Of course, she said it to get a big laugh, and I thought it was incredibly funny, but I left that place realizing that what she said is exactly true. If you don’t understand the art of not doing what you want to do and how it is beneficial to you, you’ll never write. Because you’ve got to be in a place where you can think about the writing as opposed to something like, “I’m playing golf and I’m not thinking, I’m not writing.” Well, you can play golf and actually do a lot of writing.
For a lot of people, and this is true about me, the actual sitting down in front of it, the pumping out of words and dialogues and scenes comes very fast and furious. Especially with Intimate Fame, my Audio Drama series, because I have to produce these once a month as 90 minutes to two-hour dramas. And I think that’s a big challenge. And then I think about how today a lot of television is getting produced at this level and speed. So, you’ve got to kind of get past the procrastination stuff and just realize that you have to do it. I can spend two days hiking or wandering around or just cleaning the house, it doesn’t matter, thinking I have nothing to say, but I do. During those hours that I have cut out if I write, I write. Maybe I discard it, maybe I keep it. But outside of that time, it’s never gonna leave me. I’m not going to lose it. You should always be thinking about it. Then when it comes, it’s fast and furious. The long part to me is the edit. You get on that side of it and then you start parsing it down and you get into the characters, which we’ll talk about in another Writing For Actors episode.