Keep Writing... KEEP WRITING!

November is a month of writing! The goal is to... WRITE! Whatever it is, let's get 30 days of writing each day, every day!

Join us in the Stage 32 November Write Club! But I know, I know... writing each day can be tough. Believe me, as a fellow writer I know the pain of opening Final Draft WriterDuet and staring at that blank screen. I think to myself, "Yeah! Let's do it! Let's write some 'ish!"

I sit up straight, stretch out my fingers, lay them on the keyboard and.... Nothing. AGGGGH!

Nothing happens. My brain won't stop moving, my brain won't stop thinking about something that happened at work, the lingering taste of chicken from my Chipotle burrito, the weird kind of hot late-80's mom jeans the attractive girl at Chipotle wears... I seem to be able to think about everything except the thing I want to write. But that's not the worst! No... the worst is when I want to write the next draft of that pilot I've been working on, but when I finally focus on writing all I can think about is the feature I wrote a year ago that I've been meaning to re-write!

Focus! Focus! We tell ourselves, usually followed by the gurgling of scotch and the THUD of passing out on our keyboard (or typewriter if you're some hipster).

But alas! In this month of 30 days of writing, we cannot let this stand! We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day! - ok that got off the rails a bit, but what I'm saying is that this is the month - this is the month where we brute force our way through writer's block.

How? It's 30 days of writing... so just write. Don't worry about if it's contributing to a pilot you swore you'd finish, don't worry if it's what you're "supposed to be writing" - for these 30 days, just put words to paper, we'll figure out what to do with it in December. Purge your id, get whatever thoughts you have rumbling around your brain out... do this for a few days and by the end of the week, you'll be blazing through the pages.

Whatever you do: Just. Keep. Writing. We're all there with you, and if you find yourself staring at a blank screen with a blinking cursor, just write anything. Maybe start off with something like:

INT. BEDROOM - NIGHT

An unconventionally attractive Jewish man leans back in his computer chair. He lightly taps at his keyboard, but gives the keys no weight. He stares down the blinking cursor taunting him.

UNCONVENTIONALLY ATTRACTIVE JEWISH MAN

Maybe I'll write a blog...

JENNIFER LAWRENCE barges in dressed as a CANDY STRIPER.

JENNIFER LAWRENCE

Oh good! I've been looking for you! I need you to do me a favor, it's something big, and I need it now.

....

Check in on the post in the Screenwriting Lounge and let us know how you're doing!

You can also peruse the comments in the blog and see how 30 days of writing is coming along for your fellow scribes!

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