Writing FAST - Jeff Bollow 2012

The big decisions
Decide which way to go
Strengthen

You’re about to make some big decisions.

And if you’re anything like me, decisions are trauma.

So forgive me if I get a little philosophical for a minute (hey, why stop now, right?), but I’ve learned a life lesson over the past few years. And I want to share it with you.

Before I held my first screenwriting workshops, I had never sold a screenplay. I’d been writing (off and on) for about fifteen years, but I didn’t even consider myself a writer.

I had written a feature-length screenplay that a friend and I co-produced ourselves. And I had seen that project from the first spark of the idea, all the way through post-production and marketing. So I planned to teach from the producer’s perspective.

But I’d never taught screenwriting before. And I didn’t have a name anybody knew. And... and I got scared.

No. Not scared. Terrified!

In the lead-up to those first workshops, I freaked out. What if they hated me? What if I choked? What if I got run out of town? I would be standing in front of fourteen people for a whole weekend. Being watched. Inspected. Judged.

What if I was terrible?

The fear began to consume me.

I was literally this close to canceling it and refunding the deposits I had taken. And I faced a decision: Run the workshops, or run and hide!

When, suddenly, a simple little thought popped into my head.

“What if they love it?”

I had gotten so carried away with the fear of what could go wrong that I forgot to look at what could go right.

So I decided to do the workshops — even if I did fail. If I failed, at least I’d learn something.

(And it’s the same thought that pushes me through this book.)

It’s funny. Not only did I rise to the challenge, but the workshops were an enormous success. The participants gave me overwhelmingly positive feedback (it totally blew me away). And — and this is the kicker — those workshops led directly to opportunities with three other film producers. Opportunities I would never have come across if I had chickened out.

Ideas spark ideas.

So here’s the lesson: When you face a choice you’re unsure about, just decide. Jump in with both feet, and keep moving forward. Be bold! Put yourself out there, and doors you’ve never seen will open. You never saw them because you didn’t know they existed. But they do. And they’re yours for the taking.

You can quote me on this:

Life will give you everything you ever want.

All it asks in return is a little show of bravery.

The big decisions

Every problem you’ve identified in your Problem List represents a decision you have to make. Should it stay? Should it go? Should it get enhanced, reduced, modified, twisted, adjusted, spun around, turned inside out? All of the above?!

So now that you’ve got a detailed Problem List, you’re left scratching your head.

How do you know which way is right? How do you know what to do? And from all the possible choices, how do you decide?

The answer? You keep it simple:

You compare the writing on the page to the idea in your head. Now that you’ve pulled apart your writing and made notes and lists of problems, you’re a little more objective about it. (Notice I said a little more...)

You didn’t fix anything, because we’re not there yet. And this is where so many writers go wrong. You start fixing as soon as you notice something’s wrong, and then you get lost in the middle of the rewrite.

And I know you do it. Because I do it, too!

Truth be told, this book was delayed — for exactly that reason! Even though I knew not to do it, I did it anyway. Listen, we’ve gotta be vigilant about this. If you want to write fast, you’ve got break your work into systematic pieces.

Inspect. Decide. Amplify. Break it up.

You can’t decide which way to go when you’re in the middle of pushing in another direction.

You can only decide by looking at the problems objectively.

And the way to do that, is to grade your work.