I haven't been writing much lately. I sort of hit a wall and don't know what to do.
I was making good progress for a while, but now when I go back and read what I've written I want to change certain parts. The worst part is, I'm not sure exactly which direction to go in. The ideas I come up with one day seem stupid the next.
I guess I'm discouraged and I'm not sure how to get myself motivated again...any suggestions??
First, understand what you are going through is exactly what every writer goes through. Don't get down on yourself for it, it happens to all of us, even the pros. It's nothing exceptional and, believe it or not, we all go through it EVERY TIME we write. Learning how to deal with it makes it easier to get through, but doesn't change that feeling that you're aimless and have lost direction.
The first thing you should have done is written out an outline. Or, at the least, a beginnning/middle/end to your story. Don't try to write a story just because you have a great opening, you need to know where your target is and get to it. Without that target, you have already crippled yourself.
The next thing you need to stop doing is REREADING YOUR WORK CRITICALLY! Just reread your work for mechanical reasons. In other words, to check on certain foreshadowing or character beats, placement of thread points, structure, those kinds of things. When you try to do more than that, you are falling prey to the biggest problem that new writers have. And that's trying to write a perfect draft on their first pass.
NO ONE WRITES A PERFECT DRAFT ON THEIR FIRST TRY! Get that out of your head. In fact, no one writes a GOOD draft. It doesn't happen. What you are writing right now isn't even a draft. It's an extension of your outline with dialogue and you should consider it as such. I refer to this as my "zero draft" because it isn't even ready for consideration as a script draft. With this zero draft, you will be able to look back and see your script IN CONTEXT. In other words, instead of looking at one scene with all the ambiguity of direction, you will have your direction there, in the pages, so you can see whether something works or not. And you'll also see whether you are still telling the correct story in the correct manner. Until you get it all on paper and can look at each scene/character/thread IN CONTEXT, you don't be able to see it.
The (bad) analogy is to imagine yourself in a huge wheat field, hacking a path through the seven foot high grass. You're trying to create an intricate crop circle, but being IN the wheat, you aren't sure what direction to follow or what design you are really creating. You just go on the design in your head, but you are uncertain, unsure. That's being in the middle of yoru draft. Now, when you have cut your way to the other side, you can get in your helicopter (all writers have those, right?) and fly above the field... NOW you can see what you've done and where you went wrong. You see every move you made, every design you attempted IN CONTEXT. You now know how to adjust it in the next wheat field; the next draft.
So, how do you do it? Simple. You just keep hacking. The pros have a saying about this. It's very simple. It's frustrating to newbies because they don't see how it answers the question, but it does and here it is...
Ready....?
Okay... this is it....
"Just write."
There it is. The magic solution. At this point, you just need to write, to get to the end of your 120 pages. Yes, you feel at a loss, you don't feel the next scene is going to be any good, the previous scenes all suck. But you ignore that, you just write that next scene. Even if you know you are writing it badly, just get from point A to point B so you can get to the next scene and repeat. And if you don't know which scene to choose for your next scene? Pick one and just go with it. In other words, stop outthinking yourself creatively and just do it mechanically.
Then, when you look back over your zero draft, you'll see it... you'll realize what you did and how to fix it. And you will DIVE into that rewrite with as much, if not more, excitment than when you started the script in the first place.
Give it a shot. And don't make excuses for why this won't work for you. It will. If you free yourself up and allow it.
Good luck.
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