Question: Megan, how can you be actively writing 5 projects across 4 different media, for several hours every day, with fairly satisfactory progress, and still consider yourself blocked?

Answer: LIFE IS FULL OF SURPRISES.

Check it.

I have 5 active writing projects (1 play, 2 games, co-writing a screenplay, and writing a TV spec script) on my docket.  4 of those puppies have delivery dates in the next 3 weeks, which is crazy-go-nuts(tm), but do-able.  So, by some definitions, I don’t have Writer’s Block, because everything is getting done; I am writing.  But, for a while, even as I churn out dozens of ideas per day, which make their way into all these various projects, I’ve been feeling like I’m not just having Writer’s Block, I’m bricked up like a secret skeleton in a disused cellar.

The problem is with the kind of ideas I’m having: all the ideas are good.  Ewww.

Good ideas are are polite.  They fit well into the world of the project or product, have predictable word counts, are totally serviceable.  They are something most people can understand or recognize, so they are welcoming and kind.  They are often slightly clever, which makes you look pretty smart.  And, unless you add something else to them, (a splash of color and weirdness, a gash of violence or an explosion of joy), good ideas are also completely forgettable.

To write something that will really be interesting, some of the ideas you build your world with need to be bad.  They need to be awful, naughty, rude punks tearing up the city on skateboards, tagging everything in sight with spraypaint and going “You. Will. Not. Forget. Me.”

To keep things interesting, you need bad ideas, with their chaos and swearing, their disrespect and vulnerability.  But how do you lure them?  What’s the solution to good ideas?

Well… it’s more ideas.  If you don’t have an idea you really like for, say, the premise of your TV spec script… then we have a lot to talk about over coffee, but also you should sit down and write 100 premises for your TV spec script.  Yeah, 100.  Like the famous number of Dalmatians minus one.

The “100 ideas” method is straight-up stolen from an anecdote where Judd Apatow tells someone to do it.  He probably invented it, maybe?  It legit works.

By the time you get to idea #64 or whatever, or sometimes idea #3, you know that at least some of the ideas you’re having aren’t going to make it into the finished thing.  So, your job is no longer “to solve my spec script,” it is just “to come up with 26 more ways this story could go.”  You stop trying to be good, and just blurt stuff out.  It’s sort of like an interrogation method, where you keep asking “Tell me where the boy is” over and over until the kidnapper breaks.  Except you are the kidnapper.  And also you are the cop.  Writing is complicated.

Letting yourself think up 100 ideas when you only need 1 is beautiful, and very freeing.  When you know you’ve promised to have 100 ideas, you can have a bad one, a crazy one, a boring one, or a good one, and it doesn’t mean you are a bad writer, a crazy writer, a boring writer, or a good writer.  Thank god.

SAFETY IN NUMBERS, PEOPLE.  It sounds so simple, right?  Let’s do writing this way all the time!

No, let’s not.  I mean, I hope I won’t have to do 100 ideas for every 1 idea I need all month long… but whatever, if it turns out like that I’ll just drink even more coffee.

Xoxo, Megan

This is a pretty typical notebook shot for me: a scene or moment on each post-it, so that I can clump, unclump, and reclump ideas.  (Sadly for you, this isn’t a page with visible stick figure drawings, which pop up in my notebooks about as often as aging movie actors pop up in cameo roles on “Law & Order.”)

So, I had this whole set-up laid out on my “desk for the day” while on a contract gig, writing a game story at a client’s office a few weeks ago.  A colleague at the desk next to me glanced at the pile of scrappy post-its, then at me, and then at the massive flatscreen monitor on the desk, attached to a top-of-the-line computer which I hadn’t even powered up.

“What’s going ON over here?,” he asked.

“I’m working on the shape of the story,” I said, a little embarrassed to be caught in the middle of what’s usually a pretty private mess.

“There’s got to be a digital solution for this,” he puzzled, squinting at the brightly colored scraps of paper holding barely legible handwriting.  They were scattered chaotically everywhere, giving my desk a lively but decidedly amateurish look, as though a kindergarten book report had barfed all over it.

“I am sure there is a digital solution,” I said, “but this is so much more fun!”  I stopped feeling embarrassed, and started feeling lucky.  “It’s way more fun to move things around… and see different combinations… when you have real physical objects to play with, and aren’t just looking at a screen.” I moved a note from one pile to another.

His eyes lit up, and his brow smoothed with the dawn of comprehension.  “Right,” he said, “because you feel like you’re actually DOING something!”

It is easy to forget, especially on a computer, but yes: writing IS actually doing something.

Xoxo Megan

* I will post about projects I’m working on, about some of the people I’m working with, and about things I see and notice which make me be like “THAT’S THE JAM!”

* I will never post about “politics as theater,” photos of food I have ordered or cooked, or about anyone I am dating.

* I will post sometimes about The Writing Process, but only when I’ve discovered something that seems like it will be legit useful to other artists, not just when I have “a thought about the act of writing,” because eww.

* I might post the occasional smackdown, like when it seems really urgent to call out bad art that is trying to be naughty by sneaking around in good art’s clothing, or when I encounter barbaric professional practices which are important to document and recognize… but mostly this is a “thumbs-up” kind of place, not a venting place, because you are my guest here and I don’t yell at guests.

* Probably also I will occasionally link to really amazing stuff, like Homemade Star Wars.

* I will sign all my posts with my name, despite the fact that if you are reading them, you probably already know who I am.

Xoxo, Megan.