Hi Neil, I’m an aspiring screenwriter and I’m applying to some programs with writing requirements (so I’m working with a deadline). What do you do when you have an idea that excites you, but you suddenly can’t find the inspiration? You can’t find the emotional investment you did only days before? I’m writing, but right now the magic is gone and I want to get it back.
You keep writing anyway. Inspiration is real, and it matters, but it’s not going to be there every day. And the work still needs to be done.
Here, I will quote myself:
If you only write when you’re inspired you may be a fairly decent poet, but you’ll never be a novelist because you’re going to have to make your word count today and those words aren’t going to wait for you whether you’re inspired or not.
You have to write when you’re not inspired. And you have to write the scenes that don’t inspire you. And the weird thing is that six months later, a year later, you’ll look back at them and you can’t remember which scenes you wrote when you were inspired and which scenes you just wrote because they had to be written next.
