I think the two actionable points. One, write everyday. Two, withhold judgment during the writing process. Just these two approaches helped me start and finish my first screenplay! The baseball movie I mentioned earlier. I wrote it with blinders, just worried about the next word, not thinking about the next page or trying to wrap my head around the entire story while trying to finish it at the same time. Which I’ve found just takes you out of the moment. Was it perfect? No. Was I happy with it? Yes. What I was most happy about was that it had all the ideas that I’d had in my head that I couldn’t get out and it was finally on paper, tangible in a physical form. That was an awesome feeling. To be able to read something that had just been in my head for years. But it also made what seemed so impossible… possible. Like it wasn’t as hard as I thought or made it out to be. The biggest mental blocksion of not having done it – starting and finishing something was now gone, it was nothing, powerless. No more blocksion. But of course there are more blocksions along the way but this first big one was now gone.
But maybe the biggest super power was overcoming the fear of it not being good or it being bad, self doubt, insecurity, vulnerability. At first, it’s just about managing the fears or shutting them out, by being present and in the moment while writing, the zone or flowstate. That seemed to be most manageable way to get fear out of the way. Yea but finishing that first script was a sign to me, that I could move fear out of the way long enough to get that story done. That’s probably the biggest self-realization.
You might have a love/hate relationship with your first screenplay. But hopefully you’ll mostly love it and hopefully this will be an experience where you are able to be gentle with yourself, have compassion and grace with yourself. We all want our work to be good, we all want it to be perfect, but that’s just an impossible standard to live up to… perfection. Maybe the standard is just “practice”. Just be. Just do. I’ve found wanting it to be good or having some kind of expectation around it, just takes me out of the work, it puts extra thoughts and stress on the activity that takes up energy that I should be using for the activity and keeps me from putting everything I have into it. And that seems like the recipe for getting pulled out of flowstate. Most people would say, our best work is when we’re in flow. I’d also add I think we can get the most development and leveling-up the more regularly and frequently we do the activity by being in the moment. Plus it generally feels way more satisfying, easier and sustainable.