First Challenge Check-In!

[spb_text_block title="PODCAST - First Challenge Check-In" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] The First Challenge Check-In! By Jacob Krueger [/spb_text_block] [divider type="standard" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block title="The 2017 Screenwriting Challenge!" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] We’re now 5 days into the screenwriting challenge, and we’re so excited about the tremendous response that we’ve had, and how many people have been doing such amazing work. We’re going to use today's podcast just for a little check-in to answer some questions from people who might be struggling with the challenge and maybe to give a little bit of inspiration for people who are doing it. If you don't know what all this screenwriting challenge is about and you want to learn about it, go to writeyourscreenplay.com/challenge for all the details. Here’s the most common question we always get about the challenge: What if I want to participate and I missed the deadline? Should I wait till next year? Of course the answer is no, it’s never too late to start. Oftentimes as writers we end up pushing off those things that really matter to us. It always feels like it's not the right time, and we think maybe it’ll be a little quieter next year, it’ll be a little easier next year. My life will slow down, my kid will grow up, my family will be less crazy, my job will be less intense, and of course this is never true. It's like if you wanted to become a mighty river, but you keep telling yourself there's just not enough water. Really the creation of a great river begins with a tiny little stream. It all begins with a few droplets, and as that riverbed starts to get deeper and deeper, it starts to make room for the kind of volume of water that we really want. One of the things that is really interesting is a lot of people think that they’re going to quit their job and do nothing but write, but the facts are that actually that is one of the hardest things to do as a writer. For many writers, that first year, when they actually sell their first script and are able to quit their job is the hardest year, because they often don't have the infrastructure underneath them to sustain that kind of volume. So you can look at this time now, even if you're too busy, even if you're feeling behind, you can look at this time now as a time to start building that riverbed, a time to start allowing those few droplets that you have to carve a path that eventually the water will come to fill. This is truly an “if you build it, they will come” situation. If you're hesitating, if you haven't bought your journal yet, if you haven't started yet, go grab a piece of paper right now. Take 7 minutes right now. Because here's the thing -- you have 7 minutes. You can't bullshit yourself out of 7 minutes. You can bullshit yourself out of an hour. You can bullshit yourself out of time to finish your script. But you can’t bullshit yourself out of 7 minutes, and those 7 minutes are going to end up changing your life. Here's the other really common issue that comes up with the screenwriting challenge. A lot of people have been doing the challenge, but they really hate the things they are writing. Sometimes that feeling of judgment can cause us to lose steam. As writers we play a really strange game with ourselves. Instead of dwelling on our successes, we often focus on our failures as evidence that we’re not meant to be writers. Usually this has more to do with fear than anything -- fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear that we don't have what it takes. When your judgment of your writing is based on fear, it has very little connection to reality. You may dismiss really brilliant writing as terrible, simply because you're afraid that other people aren’t going to like it.