I’m back

On taking it one day, or page, at a time

As I write this I am recovering from 8+ weeks of very fragmented sleep. Everyone warns you that having a baby creates a liminal space in which you are neither awake nor asleep and you become the most tired you’ve ever been and that is… true!

New parents always get the same advice — “sleep when the baby sleeps” (easier said than done) and to just try to take things “one day at a time.” It’s good advice! And also a little bit of a cliché, which is what usually makes something good advice

So as I struggle to get my writing (and my newsletter about writing) back up to speed I find myself thinking about this very good advice (for new parents but also for life) to take things one day at a time.

It’s actually really good writing advice too.

One page at a time.

When we’re really struggling it can be all too easy to panic and start to project outward. “Is it going to be like this forever?” Reasonable question to ask, especially in a fog at 3AM. But it’s not the most helpful thing in the world to, while sleep deprived, project outwards… “This must be how everything will be from now on.”

You’re asking about the unknown, and there’s nothing like the unknown to trigger existential dread in a person. Particularly a sleep deprived person.

And if there’s one thing I know a lot of writers have in common, it’s a little too much existential dread.

Writers are constantly self-interrogating (part of the job) and it often comes with exactly this kind of fortune-telling / “existential crisis in advance” that’s not particularly helpful —

“Will I ever figure this out? Will anyone ever read this? Will this ever be any good?”

All things I’ve wondered. And all things that… surprise surprise… didn’t particularly help me solve anything at all. Especially not creative problems. Solving creative problems requires… being present!

Back when I lived in New York there was an acting program / multi level marketing scam / light cult (I don’t know exactly where it landed, I never took the class, but all acting programs kind of exist in this nexus) that some of my acting friends got very, very into that had one basic teaching, that good acting comes from mindfulness, and in order to remain mindful, anytime you thought you were drifting out of the moment, you’d tell yourself…

“I’m back.”

As much as I feel like it’s maybe an insane acting technique… I kind of like “I’m back.” Worrying about how people reading the movie isn’t being here with the script you’re writing, so come back. Worrying about whether you’re ever going to figure out how to get something you wrote actually produced isn’t going to help you do the task you’re currently trying to get accomplished, so come back.

All that we really have to work with, as writers, as artists, as human beings is the present. So like it or not, we have to take it one page at a time.

Because when you’re writing, this page is all that really matters. This page is the present moment. And all you can do is write some words down on it. You can’t solve the ending while you’re in the middle. You can’t solve Hollywood’s decreasing production pipeline while you’re writing. You can’t even solve the your own existential crisis about your career while you’re writing. All you’re doing is writing.

So when you find yourself, like me, looking (too far) ahead to be useful, come back to the present moment.

What is happening right now?

Who is in this scene?
Does the character want something?
What stands in their way?
How are they going to overcome that?

Your job as a writer isn’t to solve it all. It’s to solve this one unit of measurement — TODAY’S PAGE.

Inside you there are two writers. PRESENT WRITER and FUTURE WRITER. I’ve written about Future Writer before. Future Writer exists to solve problems. Present Writer exists to make them.

Present Writer’s job is just to get some stuff down. Future Writer’s job is to come in and clean it all up.

[I’m doing this right now by the way, Present Writer’s draft of this is rambling and all over the place, it’s Future Writer (hello it’s me) who has come in and made it legible and coherent and hopefully a heck of a lot tighter than what’s currently in front of me]

Get a page done. That’s the only thing you need to do in the present.

When you are dealing with something very immense and very challenging — writing and then making a feature film, parenting a newborn child (these are equivalent in difficulty, I’m sure) — you need to break it down into manageable, survivable units. This hour right now. This scene.

All there is to worry about when you sit down to write is RIGHT NOW. We can worry about the next scene and the next day and the next diaper change later.

Page by page, day by day, is how things get done. Even when it feels like there are a million more remaining.

I promise being a new parent hasn’t made me any more woo woo (I was already woo woo) and I promise this isn’t a parenting newsletter.

I’m just here telling you all, and myself, “I’m back.”