Next year marks the final year of my 7-year apprenticeship in active creative writing. It was never a formal thing, just 7 years since I moved from talking about writing to doing it, 7 years since I learned how to love the craft and to spend countless hours working on fictional stories.
I’ve attended courses, read blogs/screenwriting books and received training but recently, when I thought I was as motivated as ever about writing, I still found myself pissing about when I should’ve been getting on with Draft 2 of my new feature script.
Now I realise it’s because the first leg of the journey for Deeper Learning (working title) was supervised. I completed an online course with (the uncontested guru of screenwriting) Scott Myers in July/August called ‘Concept to Outline.’ I took my new seed of an idea and grew it into a complete outline under his structured (and sublime) guidance. Then it was time for #ZD30, a collective challenge to all willing writers to finish an entire draft of a novel, or script or any piece of writing in 30 days. There are no assignments but there is an active community that supports its members through the grind.
So I had a good run of momentum for my script, I let it ‘rise’ for a month or so, and then…nothing. I just couldn’t get into it. I’d forgotten about the plight of the solitary writer. It was time to come…
