So I've finally started revisions on my feature film and realized that this is the first time I've sat down and REVISED an entire feature. Simon Kinberg is right. The internet is one of the writer's worst enemies. In particular, episodes of Batman Beyond (really good show, by the way. Fist bump for Batman!). But it's gotten to the point where even episodes of Batman Beyond will no longer fill the emptiness in my soul. I HAVE to write something (But they just put up seasons 2 and 3 of Generator Rex on Netflix! Stop that. Shut up, brain.) One of the reasons that I'm stuck on this revision is that I know my second draft can't be as bad as the first one. It has to be PERFECT!!! Right? But I can't get it perfect until I experiment with different scenarios, so I'm trying to give myself permission to write badly, even if I know it doesn't work. But boy, does it make me annoyed when I have a story that doesn't work. It's like an itch you can't scratch, a pimple you can't pop, a mystery you can't solve, and it hovers over you like a dark cloud that drives you MAD!
The answer? Just start writing something. Staring at a blank page is the surest way to clog your creative juices. But when you start typing a few words, even if it's just a few, the creative floodgate loosen bit by bit until the flood arrives. There's something about typing out words that helps grease the gears. Outlining only gets me so far. When I'm stuck on the outline, that's the time to start writing script pages. Even if the first few pages are crap, writing out the story seems to unlock a new creative door in my brain and I think about the story in a new way. There are ideas I get while writing script pages that would never come to me in the outline stage. When you have writer's block, write like an idiot and eventually the writer's block will melt away.
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