Screenwriting Creative Energy is a Strange Thing
Screenwriting Creative Energy is a Strange Thing
There are times when your screenwriting creative energy is amazing. You get in a creative groove where a story is really rolling.
Characters, dialogue and scenes are hitting the page and you are making real progress on your screenplay. It feels good.
You are in that screenwriting zone where you write hour after hour losing track of time and not writing garbage that is being forced.
The storytelling is deliciously sharp with each scene you knockout. You are at one with your screenplay.
Your vision is clear as a screenwriter and you know exactly where the story is going.
Then IT happens, your screenwriting creative energy can leave as quick as it came leaving you fumbling and bumbling as you try to write even a decent line of dialogue.
You become painfully aware of each minute that goes by as you are working on your script and writing garbage.
The story direction you were so confident of now seems like you keep hitting creative forks in the road or are going around in circles lost.
The screenwriting creative energy is gone leaving a writer with only forced scenes that are never truly good. They are poor words on a page going nowhere fast.
Characters have lost their moxie, dialogue its punch and scenes are as interesting as watching someone’s wedding video. I believe it happens to every screenwriter and writers in all areas.
You sit there thinking, “What the hell happened? I was in a great flow.”
Screenwriters have different ways of getting themselves out this creative funk. Screenwriters handle writer’s block in different ways that are too many to cover.
I’m friends with a few screenwriters and their ways are different than mine. It varies from drinking good scotch to yoga to willing their creative soul through it.
I admire people that can just push their way through writer’s block. I’m not one of those.
Recently I’ve been working on a novel and new screenplay that has been left to long as wild notes scribbled down from 3 years ago.
Writer’s block has had me by the throat last few days. I was not feeling inspired or even motivated to write any pages on either project.
Each screenwriter has their own outside life responsibilities to deal with that often come before writing anything creative.
Everyone has their own struggles that can throw their screenwriting creative energy way off. The important thing is to get that screenwriting mojo back some way.
Life is ebb and flow or something like that. So is screenwriting. You never know what can spark your screenwriting creative energy again.
It could be one thing or a mix of things. Recently for me it was three different things that got me back in the flow.
There is a raw uncensored blog called Seven Sentences that had a recent post “Pursuing Your Dreams In Stormy Seasons” (always good posts) that got me thinking after reading it.
I ended up talking to Slice of Americana Films coproducer Tim “Timbo” Beachum on something unrelated to the screenwriting or the entertainment business. I was recently in Virginia Beach for a visit and it was good to laugh about things that happened while I was there.
Then I get a cool text from childhood friend Ruben “Hollywood aka Smiles” Navarro who has been in Slice of Americana Films flicks.
Those three things broke my writer’s block. They weren’t earth shattering events or something major, they just seemed to get my mind back on why I write screenplays – it’s part of who I am.
This is indie filmmaker Sid Kali typing FADE OUT