Get your reps in!
Sometimes scribbling is not just scribbling well, but scribbling a whole freakin' lot. In the creative profession, there's always a push for perfection, for crafting a flawless masterpiece right out of the gate. But I'm here to offer an alternative vision: quantity over quality.
When I was a young Gen-X gremlin fresh out of school, I wrote 14 screenplays before I finally sold one. At the time, I thought each one was a work of art. Looking back, they were absolutely not. But each was a stepping stone that sharpened my skills and toughened me up. It wasn't about crafting perfect pieces but producing as much as possible.
Like athletes train by doing the same drills over and over until they're second nature, scribblers need to keep pushing out material. Every script, every scene, every line of dialogue hones your skills. Don't get stuck trying to make every word perfect on your first pass. Write, then write again. The quality will come. It’s inevitable.
Every script you write schools you on something new about storytelling, character development, and gets you closer to your own unique style. Sometimes, it's the scripts you least believe in that will teach you the most. In every gig I've taken, no matter how uninspired the project seemed at first, I made it a point to learn something from the process.
One pitfall is getting paralyzed by perfectionism. If you aim for perfection on the first draft, you might never see the finish line. Instead, push through. Scribble rough and polish later. Keep a notebook for things you want to fix, but don't stop to fix them mid-stream. Keep that momentum going. When you’ve got a draft in hand you can always go back and make those tweaks.
Ray Bradbury, a heavyweight in the sci-fi and fantasy game, famously said, "The best hygiene for beginning writers or intermediate writers is to write a hell of a lot of short stories. If you can write one short story a week—it doesn't matter what the quality is to start, but at least you're practicing."
Same deal with John Grisham. He started his writing career by getting up early to pound out one page per day, a simple but powerful routine that led to his first novel, "A Time to Kill," and eventually a whole series of bestsellers. His approach hammers home the importance of consistent output over sporadic bursts of perfection-chasing.
Malcolm Gladwell's presentation of the '10,000-Hour Rule' speaks volumes. He says mastery in any field comes after putting in roughly 10,000 hours of practice. This idea was echoed by artists like The Beatles and Picasso, who produced massive amounts of work, much of which never saw the light of day, before creating pieces that were hailed as masterpieces.
When I look back at my early works, I'm struck by the raw ambition and the clear vision of my younger self. Sure, the execution might have been rough around the edges, but the drive and discipline to create was undeniable. That's something I try to instill in new scribblers, and even in my own kids who are diving into creative paths: value the process over the product.
So, to all you scribblers out there: Scribble, revise, repeat. Your next piece could be the one that breaks through, not because it's perfect, but because it's the sum of everything you've learned from the ones that weren't.
Always be scribbling.
