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How much time do you spend to write every day? how much every week?
How much time do you spend to finish the first draft? How much time to finish the whole script?
For me....
I write 3-4-5 days per week about 2-3 hours per day. But i spend much more time thinking about it and work it in my head.........
I finish a first draft in a range of 100-220 days (feature, i dont write shorts , but i will do it sometime).
I dont consider my scripts to be completed ( all 4 of them) so i cant answer the last question................
I write every day. Usually, it's a total of about 20 minutes writing and 2 and a half hours of staring at the screen. I also write a lot in my head but can't get it typed out.
Lol... 2,547 days to finish my first feature (Not when I started writing, when I started my first feature-length script idea). As for shorts, depending on the idea, I could have all drafts done properly in about 4 or 5 hours.
As I've never completed one, I'm in a similar boat as you on this last one, Dimitris.
Mr. Blonde, I'm like you. I write everyday. Sometimes twenty minutes, sometimes two to three hours. It took me around three months to finish the one and only feature I have finished. I am still tweaking on it. I also write constantly in my head, virtually twenty four hours a day, it seems. Marvin.
Damn, all of the above are pretty dedicated, at least a lot more than me anyway.
My writing habits are too sporadic (which is merely a lame, umbrella euphemism for laziness, inconsistency and procrastination) so to answer your question...I can't.
Good topic though, be interesting to see what people say.
I'm with you - my day starts at 5:30 am and I'm rarely home before 7:00...
Add in eating, cleaning up and a little wife time, and I defy anyone to try and write on that schedule...
So my day starts at 5:30 on the weekends as well - I write pretty much whenever I don't have anything else to do on the weekends (errands, family things, etc.). I can get a fairly substantial block of time in on Sat and Sun. When I was writing my feature, it was pretty much an all day thing...
Now that I'm scaled back to working on a couple of shorts, I spend most of my time trying to repay reads here.
I think through as much of the script as I possible can in my head before I even hit a key stroke. This usually takes 3 to 6 months. Then I write every day 7 days a week until I see "FADE OUT"
My writing hours are wildly inconsistent because, as we all know, annoying things like making money to stay alive sometimes have to come first. That said, I always write every day, even if I only have time to open a script, re-read the latest ten pages, and do little dialogue edits and so on. I think it's important to just keep your fingers moving.
A first draft for me means about three months of mental preparation (not a single page written) followed by eight or nine days of writing all day every day. After that, I will rewrite whenever I can, for as long as I can, until whoever the script is for imposes a deadline.
I write everyday. Sometimes 3 hours; sometimes ten hours or more. When I'm not writing at the computer or in a notebook, I'm thinking about writing and I'm taking in life.
When I'm working on a feature, I try to write everyday. I try to write one or two full scenes in a single sitting but I'll write more if I find myself in a good groove. I'll usually work on one scene for half an hour before I think it's fit to walk away from. I seldom write less than that amount of time. I've finished the majority of my features within three weeks. Within two months, they'll actually be presentable. I'll finish shorts within a week, sometimes in only a few days.
Even when I don't have anything to work on per se, I try to write at least twice a week, polishing up older scripts or working on treatments. I guess I average three days a week at this point as well as all the instances I'll go back to a line or action I've written and change or add something to it.
Like some others, the majority of the "writing time" actually goes on in my head. I like to lay each and every detail out so that it makes sense. I like to write my characters the same way...in my head, long before a single key stroke takes place.
I think my best "head writing" time occurs at the gym, when I'm on a treadmill or elliptical machine for 30-45 minutes. I'll continually go over and over a certain scene in my head until I like what I've got. I'll do this a for a few days and then make certain tweaks here and there. When I've got it down in my head, I'll just put it on the computer, and it pretty much flows out the way I intended it to.
As for actual writing time at the computer, I'd say I write 10 pages or so every couple hours, which includes multiple edits. Every passage I write, I'll go over at least 10 times in the writing session.
I'm also like Col, in that I don't try to write every day at all. When I'm into it, I'm into it, when I'm not, well, I'm not.
I haven't written anything in a few months and the last thing I finished was for SoulShadows last year.
With all that has been going on this past year it's hard to concentrate on much.
For me the more busy I am the better I did and when I had too much time on my hands I did very little.
If you are studying for school at/for "whatever" or heavily involved in work and family, I understand that you might be spread too thin. One cannot be everywhere at once and unless we are superheroes, we can't be omnipresent and prolific writers.
All any of us have is today-- not even that. All we have is the moment. Nothing is guaranteed otherwise. So, it's a bit of a trick. Often when we're young, we think we have all the time in the world hence: Youth is wasted on the young. And then life happens and family and we're trying to make a go of it. We often are too spent to exercise our dreams.
In the words of John Lennon:
Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
My advice is don't look so much to "an end", but look around at "where you are".
If you are studying for school at/for "whatever" or heavily involved in work and family, I understand that you might be spread too thin. One cannot be everywhere at once and unless we are superheroes, we can't be omnipresent and prolific writers.
All any of us have is today-- not even that. All we have is the moment. Nothing is guaranteed otherwise. So, it's a bit of a trick. Often when we're young, we think we have all the time in the world hence: Youth is wasted on the young. And then life happens and family and we're trying to make a go of it. We often are too spent to exercise our dreams.
In the words of John Lennon:
Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
My advice is don't look so much to "an end", but look around at "where you are".
Sandra
A feeling that i never have. Inside me i feel im gonna live forever , of course onother deluded young person , but thats the way i feel. But i dont agree with Lennon i will change his quote to this
Life is what happens to you when you are making other plans.
P.S. I hope i will always find time to make other plans like writing. After all superior to talent is the time you spend to write.
It depends - when I hit a case of writer's block, it could be a week or two before I get back to it.
But I generally find that the last hour or two before I *know* I have to go to bed are the most productive. And if I get on a roll during the weekends, it really doesn't matter when I'm writing. In virtually all cases, I have to have music playing in the background that somehow keeps me focus (I know, that seems contradictory).
If I have an outline written (even one I know I may deviate from), it generally helps avoid writer's block. But I have to not know exactly how the story will go, otherwise I lose interest.
Long way of saying that it depends on what I'm facing when I turn on the computer.
Not weird at all - I have music on constantly as well. I think it's an ADD thing, really...
When I was writing my feature, since it's set in the '80s, I gave myself a steady dose of Heart, KISS, Billy Joel, Bruce, etc. to keep me in that head space.
Right now, since I'm working on more of a psychological thriller, it's been a heavy dose of Pink Floyd...
And even when I read, I have jazz on. Coltrane, Oscar, Bill Evans, Joe Pass, Stan Getz - all of these work well...