{"id":179,"date":"2008-08-24T19:05:37","date_gmt":"2008-08-24T07:05:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/24\/motivation\/"},"modified":"2012-12-21T11:44:53","modified_gmt":"2012-12-20T22:44:53","slug":"motivation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/motivation\/","title":{"rendered":"Motivation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at the Guild<\/a> forums, Ben Reid<\/a> has listed the various motivation styles<\/a> of he and his fellow Wellington writing group members. I was surprised to realise that I’ve tried all of them.<\/p>\n

Was each style a kind of stage in my development as a writer? Or a flailing about in search of One True Way to Write? Answer is currently in the Too Hard<\/i> basket.<\/p>\n

Meantime, some arbitrary categories:<\/p>\n

Inspiration as Motivation<\/u><\/p>\n

Watching films and television are equal parts inspiration and motivation… and de-motivation. Being motivated by a film or television programme is dead easy<\/a>. The line between inspiration and de-motivation is fiendishly fine: Wow, that was soo freaking cool, I wanna do that<\/b>!<\/i> can oh-so-easily become I have nothing to offer, I am a hack, I am nothing<\/b><\/i>.<\/p>\n

When it comes to making up character backstories or synopsising<\/a>, my first response is almost always that if I – that is, The Audience – can’t see it or hear it, why the hell do I have to write that shit? What I forget though is that once I’ve done the above bios or treatments, I find myself newly enthused – inspired, even – as I rediscover why I want to write the story in the first place.<\/p>\n

Sharing as Motivation<\/u><\/p>\n

I used to talk over various stages of my script with friends and family. If I wasn’t careful – and I certainly wasn’t in those early heady days – I discovered that their indulgent or polite smiles of heyyy, he’s a writer<\/i> would eventually morph into looks of if he tells me about his script, I will stab him in the eye-socket with my teaspoon<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Co-writing is something I’d like to do although very probably for the wrong reason: I think all I really want is for someone else to do the heavy lifting. (There might be a future post in this.)<\/p>\n

I don’t tell anyone about being competitive with my writing and career. It’s a secret.<\/p>\n

Discipline<\/u><\/p>\n

No matter how enthused – or sick to the back teeth – I am with a script, those ninety-plus pages and I need a time-out. It’s true: absence makes the heart grow fonder<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thinking ahead to the next project is more of an occupational hazard<\/a> than a motivator.<\/p>\n

And ooh, I just live for deadlines<\/a>. Especially if I’ve been wreaking havoc with my mouse-hand and sleeping patterns on Call of Duty<\/a> for most of the time I should’ve been writing.<\/div>\n

The past while, I’ve been just writing<\/i> – anything sometimes, any-goddamned thing just to bloody get something on-screen – hating every single keystroke, counting the pages until I can stop, and I know it’s rubbish, and that I’ll have to rewrite it.<\/p>\n

But I also know that every element that I throw out has broadened what I know about The Story. That every little darling whose throat I’ve crushed, gave me something, even fleetingly, towards The Story.<\/p>\n

And in those screeds of reluctantly tapped out script-moments, I know that I’ve taken just that little step closer to finishing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at the Guild forums, Ben Reid has listed the various motivation styles of he and his fellow Wellington writing group members. I was surprised to realise that I’ve tried all of them. Was each style a kind of stage in my development as a writer? Or a flailing about in search of One True … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Motivation”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[788,18,790,789],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scriptwriting","tag-ben-reid","tag-new-zealand-writers-guild","tag-sharing","tag-writing-group"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3295,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/3295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}