Learning to ‘trust the process’ can change your life. Trust me. (And the process).

I’m in the first draft of a feature script at the moment, with all the ups and downs that entails.
The ups include thoughts like: I’m writing a film script! I used to manage a cinema and now I’m writing a film script!! – inwardly screaming and running around the house like Olive when she’s told she’s through to the finals of the Little Miss Sunshine pageant.
The downs include rather different thoughts, like: What the f— am I doing? Should I really put that there? Is this rubbish? Oh god, it’s rubbish. Is this script going to be any good? At any point? I bet Mike White’s scripts are great off the bat! …and so on.
I often talk to other writers and creatives about how a) the voice of your Inner Critic never goes away but b) you can help it to become quieter, and less frequent, by doing such things as nurturing the voice of your Inner Best Friend instead.

When I’m in the thick of a first draft, my Inner Best Friend reminds me that they’re known as Shitty First Drafts for a reason. That nobody will see this draft but me. That it doesn’t need to be good, it just needs to be written. That it doesn’t matter if it’s rubbish for now, as long as I push on through. That I should just keep swimming. At which point I realise that my Inner Best Friend is, in fact, a fish. Called Dory.
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