Fighting My Inner Saboteur

The biggest challenge I face in my writing is fighting my Inner Saboteur. His cousin Inner Critic and I have plenty of issues we're working through ourselves, but I recognize his value. The Inner Critic can be constructive if you learn when to listen to him. Many a bad joke or poorly phrased line of dialogue has been thrown out thanks to his advice.

My Inner Saboteur, on the other hand, does just what you'd expect. Usually, it's just a matter of willing myself past distractions and delusions he throws in my way. But I have identified an area of my life where he may still hold the upper hand.

My screenwriting teacher at LAFSC had a saying, "Thinking about writing isn't writing, only writing is writing." In this case, he specifically means "pages". That is to say, if I'm not writing pages of my script, I'm not really writing (it's also worth noting he suggested that we must spend 5-10 hours a day "writing" to be real writers). I struggled with this adage for many, many months. While it sounds good at first, I have to fundamentally disagree with it in every way. I put dozens of hours of prep work into my writing. And yes, some of that prep work is done in my mind, some by jotting notes or saving text message drafts with short notes (I currently have about 60 text messages saved in my drafts for just this purpose). But there is a reason for it (just like there is a reason for this tangent about my screenwriting prof). It's because when I put something to page in written form, it's very tangible and real and very hard to change. It cements the idea in my mind. In college, I'd literally study for tests by copying my notes by hand (at least for classes where the info didn't quite stick the first time I wrote those notes, which was only a handful of classes). The connection between my hand and my brain has always been strong like that.

While I've come to grips with that saying, which drove me a little nuts for about 2 months during my time at LAFSC (does homework for other classes count as writing!? I shouldn't be eating, I should be writing! yes, those were actual thoughts I had), it brings me around to my original topic. While writing down notes and ideas really has a way of cementing something in my mind, nothing quite cements to me like script pages. Once those words hit the page, they begin to quickly dry in that shape. Now I don't necessarily mean dialogue and action lines and things like that. I mean mostly the story structure, the plot points and the order the story unfolds. Once I start writing something as the first page, it's very difficult for me to displace that scene from page 1 no matter how many rewrites I attempt.

And here is where the Inner Saboteur strikes me hardest. For the last several days I've been essentially ready to start writing script pages on my new spec script...and gotten nothing done. I haven't even started a document for it. In fact, this Inner Saboteur is so effective that he keeps me from even thinking about the script at all. I forget all about it for hours at a time. And this isn't something new. It has prevented my progress with every script I've ever written (admittedly, still a small sampling).

And yet, perhaps there is good to be gleaned from the Inner Saboteur as well. My delay has helped me to delve deeper into my story and really flesh it out. Maybe the Inner Saboteur knows of my cementing nature and works to prevent me from jumping into a story before it is ready. I made several breakthroughs tonight that made this script make a lot more sense (one whole storyline was very vaguely drawn up and wasn't working for days of preparation and meditation).

My awareness gives me the upper hand. Knowing what I'm fighting makes it easier to fight. Knowing that I'm fighting makes it easier to fight. But that's the value of deadlines. Having contests to submit this script to gives me a back end and keeps me focused. Procrastinators need a deadline or they'd put things off forever. Mine is just two months away. It's been fun, and a little enlightening Saboteur, but it's time to get back to work.