The Day To Day Grind Of Screenwriting by Justin Trevor Winters Video Lecture | Screenwriting: From Beginner to a Pro - Career Development

the writer store featured a great QA
with documentarian Peter Hanson I
believe he did tales from the script and
one of his points and the QA was don't
underestimate the value of cynicism when
it comes to building your career so in
keeping with that for your screenwriting
career how do you balance the two so
that you're not too overconfident and
also too pessimistic so that you it's
like a self-fulfilling prophecy oh
that's a great question and actually I'm
gonna steal part of my answer from
someone I can't remember who told me
this but in my opinion and what they had
to say is that screenwriting is quite
oftentimes very challenging and very
difficult on a daily basis so you have
these waves of these peaks of
megalomania where you write 20 pages in
a day and you think you're an incredible
writer and you think you're unstoppable
and then you have these other days where
or weeks where you don't write a work or
you don't write a page or you don't get
anything done and you really reach these
valleys of self-loathing so I don't feel
like there's really an in-between
there's no real middle ground I think
you are mainly in the trenches most of
the time you are dealing with self-doubt
in my opinion as a writer and dealing
with the hardships that come along with
trying to create whether it's a feature
film or a novel or a television pilot or
project so I think sure maybe some
writers out there optimistic about their
ideas and and what the story that they
want to tell but I think the overall
psychology and mentality of a writer
from my opinion and from my experience
is is that of someone who is constantly
dealing with challenges on a daily basis
and so for me I don't know that I would
say I'm
mystic I'm very excited about what I'm
writing most of the time but that's on
the surface of things I think when you
dig deeper you know we are self-loathing
individuals you know we have we have
issues with self deprecation and and I
think for me that's that's usually where
I'm at so do you know when you're on
that scale do you when you're like just
wow these ideas are flowing through me
and you're just like typing away is
there like something in you that says
wow you know I'm I'm up there in terms
of like confidence and should I be
careful or how should I utilize this and
then the same when you get to sort of
the self hating I mean I think I
remember I could probably count on one
hand the amount of times that I've had a
stretch of writing where I feel like I
don't know where it's coming from
it's just so fantastic and I'm very
excited about it and it just flows out
of me you know I think literally
December of 2009 was one of those times
for me you know maybe two three months
ago when I was working on my most recent
project I had three incredible weeks of
writing you know so those are few and
far between I think really it's those
other moments where you are in the
valley of self-loathing that are there
just because it's so difficult to
complete a story I mean if you're lucky
you're getting three pages a day on the
script you know that you're writing at
least that's how I work so in trying to
answer your question I guess that you
know like I said before there is no real
middle ground for me so I try to just
dig myself out of those trenches and
write the best product that I possibly
can and you know I think the thing is a
lot of independent filmmakers and
writers have to especially you know for
the new normal have to write on spec on
a daily basis so if you write for three
weeks and
potentially not going to be anything
that you can use that's three weeks of
your hard-earned time and an effort and
and you know you have to account for
finances and everything as well so it
can just be draining on you you know
whereas I think that when you get into a
situation where you have a first-look
deal with a studio or production company
or you have someone who is option the
script and is developing it with you and
you can start writing and be financially
comfortable I think then it's more of
whether or not you can be creative on a
daily basis but at least you can put
aside the fact that you know you have
the income to be comfortable to be
writing
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