I've heard people say never start another script until you've finished the first but if I get stuck I often start another while brewing ideas in my head.  The Coens famously wrote Barton Fink while stuck writing Millers Crossing so there's your answer I guess.

I read a book a few weeks ago and have sort of used that information and come up with my own writing disciplines that work for me.

But the guy made a good point. He said that you have to form the habit of writing like you would anything else. He said that he wakes up at 5:00am and sits down. 5:00am to 8:00am is his morning writing time. And he wakes up, sits down at the desk, and either writes or he doesn't. But he doesn't allow himself to do anything else but either write or just sit at the desk.

The point isn't to wake up at 5 in the morning and write until 8. The point is that we often use our lack of inspiration or lack of motivation as an excuse to get up and go do something more "worth while". And so, if you make yourself sit there for a certain amount of time every day no matter if you are writing or not, it'll become a set thing in your every day life and then the challenge won't be trying to motivate yourself to wake up, but to think of new ideas.

I usually have trouble coming up with new ideas. But I've discovered that once I get a good idea, if I run with it and develop it, a million other ideas will start shooting off in my head for films. And so rather than start developing multiple scripts at once, I'll make a note of the idea, and when I start to struggle with my main idea, I set it aside and work on the other.

That's how I deal with all my problems with writing now. That's how I deal with trying to juggle multiple scripts at once...I don't. I just move back and forth depending on which one I have an idea for.

The point is to train yourself to give a certain amount of time each day to writing, even if you don't have anything to write...just sit there and think. Maybe one of those boring times an idea will pop into your head.

So, it's a simple idea...if you wanna be a disciplined writer, you don't count scribbling down a few ideas or scenes in class as your writing time. No, you just simple show up.

Discipline comes from making the "show up" part a habit.

-Landon

I have head that so many times that It cannot be anything else but truth, I think I am still fighting the problem I have with it is that at the moment I am enjoying the learning experience and enjoying writing shorts, even allowing my mind to drift off to February 2011 when I am collecting my first Oscar But when I read Syd Field tell me that writing is a job and I need to put 3 -5 hours a day in then it stops sounding like fun - I already have a job and this is supposed to be a release from that. Don't get me wrong I want to do it I just need to get my backside into gear and do it.

So I take it then that while everyone is writing a feature they do not write any shorts now and again for submitting to SS? I have been trying to get an idea going since the start of Dec, i have been on page 12 since before Christmas but have written 2 shorts since then - I guess this is not helping.

I tell you it's the hardest thing for me to sit down and write. Unless I just come up with an idea and write it out that exact moment then I just can't seem to focus. Rubix made the point to just sit there even if you don't get anything done and I think that's what I'm going to have to do. Most of the time I end up sitting there as my mind drifts off into so many places except where I need it to go. So far I've only written one script and it took me a year. I'm working on another and I think it's been about three or four months now with two pages written that is the opening scene. Not that I don't want to write I just can't get myself focused to do it. So I think I'm gonna try that idea and just set aside a designated time to either write or sit there and watch the clock.

And doesn't just really suck when you're trying to focus on writing and you have a song in your head that you just can't get away from?

I just write until i feel the need to stop. Sometimes i write 2 pages one day, and not even touch the screenplay until a week later and write 20 pages. For me it just depends on how much I'm up to writing.

I don't really write out an outline per say for most of my screenplays. I do work out a beginning and a ending and fill in the rest.

^^ I'm the opposite - I plan my scripts a lot, probably even too much. I find that if I know what I'm writing, then the actual writing of a screenplay becomes a lot easier, and I have no problem writing 5 - 10 pages a day. For me, planning takes longer than the actual writing phase... I usually plan for about a month or two (and just let the idea develop both in my mind, and on paper), and then usually bang out the first draft in about a month, or just over.

I'm currently planning my new feature, and have been for the past two and a half weeks...

It seems the consensus appears to be to write every single day no matter what, and whether that is a time frame you make or a page quota, then you do what works for you.

However, there is an important part of the writing process being sort of left out here. Not writing.

"Now wait a minute," you might say, "how's that work?"

Very often, when I start something, I write on it non-stop until I write myself into a corner. That's the place you reach when the story just stops and either the characters can't do something, or they're doing something completely illogical for the sake of the plot. You can see them in your head staring at each other and asking themselves what the heck just happened or what they're doing here.

That would be the dreaded writer's block. What does one do in that instance? Some say do something else? Some just quit. What would be the ideal?

Step away from it. Give your brain time to process what did work and figure out where the story went terribly wrong. Whether this is writing something else or just giving your brain time to process, there's no wrong answer. Everyone is different, but not writing is just as important a step of the process as the writing. When you complete a script, it's important to take at least a week or two off of it, so you can recover from that high which is the right brained writing process and then reapproach your precious child like a relentless psychiatrist ready to tear it open and expose all it little problems...and then correct them. But without that "not writing" time, you won't sufficiently distance yourself from the story you slaved over so lovingly.

I get stuck at several points when writing something, and typically step back at several times. If the story works, I can knock it out in a couple of weeks. If it needs work, it might take years. My longest is seven years, because the story continually lacked something in the middle, and version after version after version failed to work. After watching several movies that followed the same basic plot that I was looking for, I was finally able to iron out the problems, but that work more than any other continued to be a work in progress, and once I did finish it to the point of being totally done, it remains one of my personal best.