Does writing full time improve your writing?

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  • #16
    Re: Does writing full time improve your writing?

    Originally posted by UnequalProductions View Post
    Okay. You have scripts in your head. I have dates with actress from Orange is the New Black in my head, but I only count the dates I've actually gone on as happening, and I only count the scripts that are available for me to give someone to read as written.

    Guess we just have different definitions of reality.
    No, you're still not reading what I wrote. Or you need to work on comprehension.

    I write it in my head, at my day job. I can see the words, the sentences and even the pages. When I get a chance -- usually after I get home -- I dictate what I have already written. Which is what I meant when said I put out hundreds of words a day, of fiction, and have done so for decades.

    The scripts (and other fiction) I have written and that other people have read are either on paper or on the computer. As far as I know, nobody has read any of them telepathically.

    And I don't have to go on imaginary dates. I've been happily married for 33 years.
    "I just couldn't live in a world without me."

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    • #17
      Re: Does writing full time improve your writing?

      Originally posted by UnequalProductions View Post
      Okay. You have scripts in your head. I have dates with actress from Orange is the New Black in my head, but I only count the dates I've actually gone on as happening, and I only count the scripts that are available for me to give someone to read as written.

      Guess we just have different definitions of reality.
      Just out of curiosity -- you really can't see a sentence in your head or have you never tried?

      "The quick, brown fox jumped over the fat, lazy dog."

      Read the sentence, close your eyes (if you have to). Do you see it? If you do -- modify it. Do you see the modified sentence? Now dictate it.

      That's writing.
      "I just couldn't live in a world without me."

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      • #18
        Re: Does writing full time improve your writing?

        Re: Does thinking time count? I say time spent brainstorming, planning, thinking and rethinking before typing does count as writing because you are refining your story so that your first draft will be more carefully honed. By the time you hit the keyboard, you've already worked through a variety of story point possibilities, rejected the ovely-familiar and chosen what you consider the best combination of story choices rather than your first story choices. (This assumes that after all the thinking, you do get around to putting it to paper.)

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        • #19
          Re: Does writing full time improve your writing?

          Originally posted by nmstevens View Post
          Well, if you actually want to write then even if you have a day job, you find the opportunity, the same way anyone finds the opportunity to do whatever it is that they want to do.

          I think that the more you do anything, if you're going about it the right way, the better you'll get at it, whether you're doing it full time or not -- whether it's making bird houses or playing basketball or writing screenplays.

          The point is, just "doing something" doesn't necessarily result in improvement.

          I remember, a long (long) time ago, I and several other students at NYU Grad Film were in a conference with our camera teacher Beda Batka and he was talking to one of the other students about some technical issue and asked him to come back later to talk to him about and the student replied that he couldn't come back at the time requested because he was going to go out and shoot something for somebody.

          And he remarked something to the effect that it would obviously be a better use of his time to be out shooting something than sitting in a room talking about shooting.

          And Beda told him that his father (that is, Beda's father) had been an avid amateur photographer all of his life, had gone out every weekend for as long as he could remember taking pictures. He'd taken countless thousands of pictures.

          And the pictures he took on the last weekend he went out were just as bad as the very first pictures he ever took. Despite all of his enthusiasm and all of his experience, he never knew and never bothered to learn how to take a picture.

          That's what made him an amateur and not a professional.

          The trick is taking however much or however little time you have to write and not just "writing" the way Beda's father went out and took pictures, but using those hours as if it were a course of study. As if every time you went out on a basketball field, or put brush to canvas, or sat down in front of a computer, you had come there not just to play a game, or paint, or write -- but to take everything that you'd learned up until then, everything that you'd gotten wrong and everything that you'd gotten right -- and do it better this time.

          NMS
          I always glean from your posts. Thank you. I think Beda's father would be a hobbyist vs. someone wanting to make a career. I've never thought about it in those terms but a hobbyist can be at something for years and never improve (because that's not the goal, enjoyment is) but the one wanting a career approaches that thing from a perspective of learning, with eyes open, striving with a goal in mind.

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          • #20
            Re: Does writing full time improve your writing?

            Originally posted by Joaneasley View Post
            Re: Does thinking time count? I say time spent brainstorming, planning, thinking and rethinking before typing does count as writing because you are refining your story so that your first draft will be more carefully honed. By the time you hit the keyboard, you've already worked through a variety of story point possibilities, rejected the ovely-familiar and chosen what you consider the best combination of story choices rather than your first story choices. (This assumes that after all the thinking, you do get around to putting it to paper.)
            I would say it definitely counts. In my rants above I didn't mean to imply that I keep dozens of completed, 110 page scripts in my head, but I'll often keep five pages there, ready to dictate when I get a chance. I sometimes enter scripts in a monthly five-page contest. Usually I don't write these until the last day. (Normally I have done some brainstorming before that last day.) The hours I work, give me about an hour at home before the entry deadline. So I have to "write it" on the way home. And by "write it" I mean I see the five completed pages and dictate them when I get home. Which is all I have time for at that point. Normally I'll get right on five-pages, if that's what I'm going for. Sometimes a sentence or two under or over.

            Years ago, on a screenwriting newsgroup, there would be script challenges. Somebody would have certain, stupid (usually) elements for the script to include. I don't know if it was the object but people would try to be the first to get their script up. Some were posted in five or ten minutes. When you're writing them that fast, whether you want to or not, you're brainstorming AND seeing the words before they're typed, and you're even seeing the formatting as you type.

            And some of these were pretty darn good scripts. At any rate, it was fun and helpful to push your limits to see what you could do. It might sound stupid, but it also built confidence.
            "I just couldn't live in a world without me."

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            • #21
              Re: Does writing full time improve your writing?

              Originally posted by Anointed View Post
              I always glean from your posts. Thank you. I think Beda's father would be a hobbyist vs. someone wanting to make a career. I've never thought about it in those terms but a hobbyist can be at something for years and never improve (because that's not the goal, enjoyment is) but the one wanting a career approaches that thing from a perspective of learning, with eyes open, striving with a goal in mind.
              Neal has given so much solid advice over the years, along with practical stories of his experience in the business, that he's probably already written a how-to screenwriting/marketing scripts book. (Just has to put it all together.) If he ever did, I'd buy it in a second and recommend it to everybody who wanted to write screenplays.
              "I just couldn't live in a world without me."

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              • #22
                Re: Does writing full time improve your writing?

                "Thinking time" and "brainstorming time" definitely count.

                When I get stuck on a scene, I'll sometimes go for a long walk. When I'm just walking, thinking about it, I can craft the dialogue, action, and dynamics of the scene. Then I sit down and type it all out so I can modify if from there. Ultimately, the process was much more productive than if I had just hit keys on my computer for all that time.

                As long as it's focused and result oriented, then I consider it "writing time."

                "Daydreaming time" does not count. I do my share of that, and it is productive in its own way, but there's a definite difference between passive "daydreaming" and focused "thinking".

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                • #23
                  Re: Does writing full time improve your writing?

                  Originally posted by Bunker View Post
                  "Thinking time" and "brainstorming time" definitely count.
                  Absolutely.

                  I went on a binge a few years ago where I read something like 60 pro scripts in a two-week period. That experience alone improved my skills markedly, I think. Doing that gave me more of a boost than I would have gotten by spending those two weeks aimlessly pecking away at a keyboard.

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                  • #24
                    Re: Does writing full time improve your writing?

                    Originally posted by StoryWriter View Post
                    Just out of curiosity -- you really can't see a sentence in your head or have you never tried?

                    "The quick, brown fox jumped over the fat, lazy dog."

                    Read the sentence, close your eyes (if you have to). Do you see it? If you do -- modify it. Do you see the modified sentence? Now dictate it.

                    That's writing.
                    Ah, okay. I'm picturing the sentence in my head. Now I've written it? This is so much easier. I used to think I had to sit at a computer and type out a script to have written it.

                    "Now dictate it." This is where the actual writing part comes in. It's just brainstorming until you output the ideas.

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                    • #25
                      Re: Does writing full time improve your writing?

                      Originally posted by Eric Boellner View Post
                      Damn, this is good. NMS, do you think it's important to spend a significant amount of "writing time" reading (scripts, books, news), rather than writing? That is, for the purpose of self-improvement, if you only have so much time, how important is the consumption of fiction versus the creation of it?
                      When I was working as a story editor I spent endless hours reading scripts. Since then, I find that I don't spend very much time reading scripts, except for work.

                      But I think that the idea is, whether you're reading or watching movies, or whatever, to not simply read or watch, but to study. It's easy enough to say that you're doing that, but to actually watch a movie analytically is something that takes practice. It generally involves keeping one eye on the screen and another on a nearby clock so that you can keep track of when story beats are happening, comparing you're own expectations with what the movie actually delivers, et al.

                      Analyzing a movie and just watching a movie for fun are two completely different things.

                      I had a friend at NYU who read scripts with a piece of graph paper and charted out all the emotional beats per page as he went through it -- big beats, medium beats, high points, low points.

                      Apparently, one of the Fleischer Brothers (of Popeye fame) used to do exactly the same thing -- map out the high and low emotional beats of all the scripts he read so that he could see, graphically, where a script was lagging.

                      So -- watching movies? Reading scripts? Sure, that's fun. Analyzing movies and scripts? That can be productive. But a little harder.

                      NMS

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                      • #26
                        Re: Does writing full time improve your writing?

                        Originally posted by UnequalProductions View Post
                        Ah, okay. I'm picturing the sentence in my head. Now I've written it? This is so much easier. I used to think I had to sit at a computer and type out a script to have written it.

                        "Now dictate it." This is where the actual writing part comes in. It's just brainstorming until you output the ideas.
                        I guess you "once again" missed the part where I said I constructed the sentences in my head, while I was driving or working, when I didn't have time to write after I got home. At that point I dictate what I've already written (You do seem to miss the parts that tend to disprove your points.)

                        If the sentences and paragraphs and formatting are completely constructed in your head before you dictate them to the page -- it's obvious that it was already written and that you're merely transferring it from one medium to another.

                        Since you like to play the "extremely obtuse game", I'll intentionally misunderstand what you wrote. So what you're saying (this is me being obtuse) is that if you write by hand, and you decide at a later time to type what you wrote by hand into your script formatter, it wasn't "actually" written until you typed it into the script formatter? Right?

                        And if you're writing with a partner (once again this is me being intentionally obtuse) and he's dictating a paragraph to you, it follows that he didn't "actually" write it, because (by your logic) it wasn't "actually" written until you typed into your script formatting software.

                        That could cause a lot of arguments about authorship. You might want to rethink that.
                        "I just couldn't live in a world without me."

                        Comment


                        • #27
                          Re: Does writing full time improve your writing?

                          Originally posted by UnequalProductions View Post
                          Ah, okay. I'm picturing the sentence in my head. Now I've written it? This is so much easier. I used to think I had to sit at a computer and type out a script to have written it.

                          "Now dictate it." This is where the actual writing part comes in. It's just brainstorming until you output the ideas.
                          Why are you incapable of imagining that not everyone is exactly the same as you? Some people literally see pages of text in their head -- or pages from books they've read. They even can see page numbers, and can turn to a specific page and "quote" what the "read" in their heads verbatim. They are "seeing"what they are reading. Here's what happening with StoryWriter. 1) He literally sees the text on paper in his head and 2) By "dictating," he means he types the words as he "sees" them in his head. Its not a difficult concept. Do most brains work that way? No, but I'm quite willing to accept that StoryWriter's does.

                          But sorry for the interruption, continue your snark.
                          STANDARD DISCLAIMER: I'm a wannabe, take whatever I write with a huge grain of salt.

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                          • #28
                            Re: Does writing full time improve your writing?

                            A couple of thoughts on the full-time thing, which I've been fortunate enough to do some over the last six years (but not always).

                            I've found that having a few other responsibilities doesn't hurt me at all. eg, if I'm teaching a class twice a week, the cost to my writing productivity is almost nil - particularly if I can schedule them when I want to.

                            The reality is that it's very rare that I get more the 3-4 productive writing hours in a day. The challenge is that when I've had other jobs, they take a certain amount of energy and time, so it's hard to really lock in for those 3-4 hours when you want to lock in for those 3-4 hours.

                            eg, most of this summer I've been working about 25 hours a week, which comes down to 4-5 hours a day. So in theory there's plenty of time to still get my 3-4 hours of writing done, but that's enough work that the writing takes a hit, because it's hard to sort it all out so that I'm fresh enough for the other work and also sharp for the writing.

                            How does that impact the quality of the writing? Honestly, I think it helps to be able to prioritize writing in a way that only happens when I've got very limited other responsibilities. I get into flow easier, never have to stop in the middle of something that's working, and it's easier for the writing to build momentum because I'm doing it well every day, and that feeds on itself.

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                            • #29
                              Re: Does writing full time improve your writing?

                              Originally posted by StoryWriter View Post
                              With me, it's not just "brainstorming". I can see the pages in my head. I work out the situations and relationships between the characters, especially the dialogue. And I pick the words I'm going to use.

                              When I get to a piece of paper or the computer -- it's written -- the rest is just dictation. I even know how many pages I wrote before I dictate it.

                              So I'm going to call that writing. I put down hundreds of words of fiction a day and have done so for decades.
                              wow, that's pretty cool...when do you rewrite? Can you envision an entire 120 page script down to exact word for word sentences on pages?? Do you ever use Evernote or a pen and notepad or just type out full pages? (Have any of them been sold?)

                              Just curious and fascinated...never heard of such a thing. (Have you ever heard of another writer in any format with this ability?...I can imagine such "envisioning" taking place with computer code programmers and I do know it is common with visual artists...but never heard of a writer using this ability to write complete sentences on a page. Do full scenes come to you fleshed out in vivid imagination, or, do they gradually build in your mind, with dialogue and paragraph breaks coming after plot points, character arcs, and so on?? Do you flip back and forth between seeing the script and seeing the scenes as if filmed? Fascinating...)
                              @oceanbluesky

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                              • #30
                                Re: Does writing full time improve your writing?

                                Originally posted by oceanbluesky View Post
                                Just curious and fascinated...never heard of such a thing. (Have you ever heard of another writer in any format with this ability?...I can imagine such "envisioning" taking place with computer code programmers and I do know it is common with visual artists...but never heard of a writer using this ability to write complete sentences on a page.
                                Orson Scott Card says he can do this; says it takes him awhile to figure his novel out, but once he does, he basically does nothing but dictate what he's been thinking. Says he can do about 8-10 pages a day. For a novel.

                                Harlan Ellison has said on multiple occasions he writes stories down as he sees them. Comes up with a title and then thinks about the story. Writes it down almost like dictation. Supposedly over 100 words a minute on a manual typewriter.

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