Accessing that smushy part of my brain
Good morning! Happy February.
I managed to get up at seven (woooooo), and I'm out on the porch as I draft this, quietly drinking my coffee. Ricky's out of town, and I've been holed up working on a grant application, revising and re-revising one ten page chunk—the sample—of my current script. I find I do my best work the first hour I'm awake, while my brain is foggy and a little smushy and I don't have the capacity to judge myself yet.
Is the secret to writing maybe just figuring out how not to judge yourself??
I guess that's the secret to the first draft, and maybe the second draft too. But at some point you have to be a critic. Be incisive. Cut the shit that isn't working. Tell yourself to start all over again, sometimes. That comes easily to me. That's who I am. But the smushy just-letting-the-words-come-out thing is so hard for me, man.
Who am I kidding? All of it is hard. At every stage I tell myself, this is the hardest part. The outlining. The first draft. The second fucking draft. And on and on. It is never not hard.
I wish I could keep my brain smushy the whole way.
Aline Brosh McKenna, screenwriter (and now director!) and co-creator of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, offered a bit of advice on the Scriptnotes podcast that really stuck with me. She's talking about TV writing vs film writing, but it's relevant to any kind of writing I think. The bit about things playing better the way they "splurted" out of you...
One thing I really thought a lot about with writing in a TV environment as opposed to a film environment is sometimes I found, as a screenwriter, I would overly machine things because I had so much time with it. And so I would tinker with things to make them scan perfectly when actually they play better just the way they splurted out of you.
And in TV, especially when you’re writing comedy, if a room pitches a joke and it works, you don’t change a syllable. So it may not scan perfectly, it may not make sense perfectly, but that’s the comedy milieu in there. And so I find that screenwriters way more than TV writers, just because of time, just tend to overly machine their dialogue and sand off all the rough edges. And I like the idea of sometimes it’s the imperfect perfect thing. So, there’s a lot of like dithering and busy work that is really tempting to do when you’re getting ready to send a script out. And I think sometimes you can ruin things that are lovely because you’re trying to make them perfect.
As I whittle my ten fucking pages into a perfect fucking diamond, I'm desperately trying to channel this.
🙄
*****
This month in podcasts: Scriptnotes is pretty great. My favorite ep is the one with Dennis Palumbo on Psychotherapy for screenwriters—you have to pay the $2 subscription fee to listen to it, but you can read the transcript over here. Very very helpful shit about procrastination.
This month in print: Speaking of Dennis Palumbo, I just scarfed down his Writing from the Inside Out. If you enjoy self-help-ish tough-love-y "on writing" books like Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird or Stephen King's On Writing (or even if you hate them), I highly recommend Palumbo's.
This month in tacos: Should you find yourself in Boyle Heights, or hey, willing to make the trip, the shrimp tacos dorados from Mariscos Jalisco are soooo good. Yesterday I bought two and scarfed them down standing right there on the street. Then I spent the whole drive home dreaming of more. They're hard shell tacos, fried but not greasy, topped with slices of avocado and fresh salsa roja. Sort of like the perfect chips and salsa with shrimp inside if that even makes sense.
This month in puffer jackets: I found this H&M puffer (new with tags! in OLIVE!) at Crossroads and wore it nonstop on an weeklong trip Boston. I was straight up channeling this lady, and I felt like one million bucks. I've never actually owned... a warm coat? I think I was maybe cold the whole time I lived in NYC. Or was I just young. Anyhoo, the short version is mostly sold out but the long one is avail in a bunch of sizes. Email me if you want a pic of me wearing it which I'm sort of proud of because the coat is so good but also too vain to post publicly.
*****
xoxo,
Laramie
I managed to get up at seven (woooooo), and I'm out on the porch as I draft this, quietly drinking my coffee. Ricky's out of town, and I've been holed up working on a grant application, revising and re-revising one ten page chunk—the sample—of my current script. I find I do my best work the first hour I'm awake, while my brain is foggy and a little smushy and I don't have the capacity to judge myself yet.
Is the secret to writing maybe just figuring out how not to judge yourself??
I guess that's the secret to the first draft, and maybe the second draft too. But at some point you have to be a critic. Be incisive. Cut the shit that isn't working. Tell yourself to start all over again, sometimes. That comes easily to me. That's who I am. But the smushy just-letting-the-words-come-out thing is so hard for me, man.
Who am I kidding? All of it is hard. At every stage I tell myself, this is the hardest part. The outlining. The first draft. The second fucking draft. And on and on. It is never not hard.
I wish I could keep my brain smushy the whole way.
Aline Brosh McKenna, screenwriter (and now director!) and co-creator of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, offered a bit of advice on the Scriptnotes podcast that really stuck with me. She's talking about TV writing vs film writing, but it's relevant to any kind of writing I think. The bit about things playing better the way they "splurted" out of you...
One thing I really thought a lot about with writing in a TV environment as opposed to a film environment is sometimes I found, as a screenwriter, I would overly machine things because I had so much time with it. And so I would tinker with things to make them scan perfectly when actually they play better just the way they splurted out of you.
And in TV, especially when you’re writing comedy, if a room pitches a joke and it works, you don’t change a syllable. So it may not scan perfectly, it may not make sense perfectly, but that’s the comedy milieu in there. And so I find that screenwriters way more than TV writers, just because of time, just tend to overly machine their dialogue and sand off all the rough edges. And I like the idea of sometimes it’s the imperfect perfect thing. So, there’s a lot of like dithering and busy work that is really tempting to do when you’re getting ready to send a script out. And I think sometimes you can ruin things that are lovely because you’re trying to make them perfect.
As I whittle my ten fucking pages into a perfect fucking diamond, I'm desperately trying to channel this.
🙄
*****
This month in podcasts: Scriptnotes is pretty great. My favorite ep is the one with Dennis Palumbo on Psychotherapy for screenwriters—you have to pay the $2 subscription fee to listen to it, but you can read the transcript over here. Very very helpful shit about procrastination.
This month in print: Speaking of Dennis Palumbo, I just scarfed down his Writing from the Inside Out. If you enjoy self-help-ish tough-love-y "on writing" books like Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird or Stephen King's On Writing (or even if you hate them), I highly recommend Palumbo's.
This month in tacos: Should you find yourself in Boyle Heights, or hey, willing to make the trip, the shrimp tacos dorados from Mariscos Jalisco are soooo good. Yesterday I bought two and scarfed them down standing right there on the street. Then I spent the whole drive home dreaming of more. They're hard shell tacos, fried but not greasy, topped with slices of avocado and fresh salsa roja. Sort of like the perfect chips and salsa with shrimp inside if that even makes sense.
This month in puffer jackets: I found this H&M puffer (new with tags! in OLIVE!) at Crossroads and wore it nonstop on an weeklong trip Boston. I was straight up channeling this lady, and I felt like one million bucks. I've never actually owned... a warm coat? I think I was maybe cold the whole time I lived in NYC. Or was I just young. Anyhoo, the short version is mostly sold out but the long one is avail in a bunch of sizes. Email me if you want a pic of me wearing it which I'm sort of proud of because the coat is so good but also too vain to post publicly.
*****
xoxo,
Laramie
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