What I Learned from Four Months of Daily Writing

Back at the end of June, I wrote my first post here on Substack. It was written in despair the day after the disastrous Trump/Biden debate. I wasn’t sure where the country (or the world) was headed, but I knew there was very little I could do about it. So I just left it up to fate (although I did just send out 200 postcards to swing states this week, thanks to my wife, who filled them out while I was on a major work project).

Beyond that, I was mostly lost, not knowing where to go or what to do in my creative life. I just knew I wasn’t creating the things I felt I should be creating, I knew I was stuck, and I had no idea how to get myself unstuck.

The only thing I did know was that I needed to start writing every day.

I’ve just returned from a short trip to the Berkshires with my dad, so it seems like a good time to reflect on the last few months - how I got into the habit of daily writing, and what it has done for me.

View from the back patio of my timeshare last week - Great Barrington, MA

Back in August, I found my way to a horror screenplay writing class from ScreenwritingU, which engaged me in scene work related to a vague horror concept I had started with years ago, but I didn’t know where to go with what I had done, and there wasn’t any engagement from a teacher or other students.

I subsequently found a 30 Day Screenwriting Challenge from the ISA, and that got me started on daily writing - refining the concept of my story, and discovering for myself that it was actually possible to finish a screenplay.

Almost as an aside, I found that daily writing had profound effects on my mindset.

You might be familiar with the online comic, The Oatmeal, and the story of the Blerch. I think writing to me is as running is to Matthew Inman.

So I’ll just steal some of his lines, and reinterpret them liberally to apply to writing:

• I write because it’s the only way I know how to quiet the monster

• Writing is not about vanity

• Writing is not about wearing it like a fashion statement - writing is about finding strength and measuring yourself every day

• Why am I alive? Why am I here? What’s the point of me?

• The buzzing roar of the world is nothing compared to the noise inside my head

• When I write, the world goes quiet - demons are forgotten, krakens are slain, and blerches are silenced

For the most part, I’ve been writing every day. The more I write, the less anything else that I worry about matters. I still have to do my day job, still have to pay the bills, still have to fix the car and the house, still have to uphold obligations to my family.

But whatever it was that was in my head screaming for me to just write every day? It’s quiet now.

I don’t understand it.

But it’s working.

There is something to picking away at pieces of a story - pulling them out of somewhere, and finding places in your work to put them. Thoughts, memories, experiences - a combination of real things and made up things that no one else can do because they aren’t you.

There’s something calming about that.

It doesn’t matter who reads it later. Whoever finds it and reads it was meant to read it. I have limited control over that.

What matters is putting it together. There is a confident, secure energy that I feel tapped into when things work. And when they don’t, well, for some reason I know they eventually will.

I’m sure I will write stories that aren’t very good. But I think it was Elizabeth Gilbert that said that’s not my problem.

My problem is to do the work, and to keep learning from my mistakes.

I’ve been bathing myself in screenwriting podcasts, screenwriting books, and instructional texts on story structure. I think I’m getting a handle on it. It feels like building a house. Once you know how to make sure the house isn’t going to fall down, then you can start with the ornamentation and reveal your voice and style in your architecture and cosmetic choices.

My first screenplay is done. I have the complete story. It’s a deeper story than I ever imagined writing, and I don’t feel like I can even take credit for that. I just sat here at my writing desk every night with a few ideas and found connections between them.

As I mentioned, I’m not sure if the script is any good. I know my first draft has pacing issues, and there are two or three sections where I still need to figure a few things out, but it’s basically done.

What started out as a basic supernatural horror story turned into a multi-layered monster tale exploring grief, isolation, human connection, and small-town politics. It’s the kind of movie I’d like to see, and I hope others will want to see it get made.

Every time I start to get excited about it though, something comes along to try to derail me. I was in a Sundance lab last night for an analysis of The Babadook, and one of the writers in the room noted his manager told him that horror films today aren’t marketable if there’s not a monster in the first few minutes.

My heart sank hearing that, as my script doesn’t show the main monster until the third act - only its effects are seen earlier. I was actually surprised how quickly I turned from the heart sinking to an “oh well” attitude - that I did my best, and whatever’s meant to be will be, and I’m on to my next film.

Something else I realized is that I don’t need to contact my heroes, no matter how badly I want to tell them how much their work means to me. What’s going to happen is if I do the work, I’ll find my own heroes among my peers. It’s actually very exciting. I will just be another writer, doing my thing. Doing my work.

And that’s what this is about. It’s about me, sitting at a computer, saying something with my writing. This is what I learned. I learned calm. I learned what joy in work means. I always thought there’s nothing that I would enjoy doing every day for the rest of my life.

But writing has slowly turned into something I could see doing forever - at least that’s how it seems to be presently.

My adviser, Max, said that maybe instead of wondering why I have to write every day, I should be excited that I get to do this every day. He was right. I can do this every day! I can work on my stories every day. What a gift, right? It’s not a burden. It’s a privilege.

Inman said creating his Netflix animated series - Exploding Kittens - was the hardest thing he’s ever worked on. I just watched the trailer and I believe it. It looks so spectacular, and I was sitting at the table on my laptop thinking, “wow - that’s some great writing, and it must have taken him a long time.” And then I read that quote from him. It looks exhausting.

But the thing is, he probably worked on it every day. Just a little bit each day (or maybe a lot)?

I used to be afraid of tackling things I knew would take a long time to complete. I’m not afraid of that any longer because I see things actually get done.

And I can actually finish things.

I know it’s only one screenplay so far (and everyone says the first one you do is garbage), but at least it’s done. It’s done, and I can move forward on it and start my next one.

Every day. Just write every day. Even if it’s 10 minutes. 15 minutes. Just honestly writing. That’s all it took. Everything else is going to take care of itself.