This BS is the REAL Cause of Your Writer's Block!

Eunice Smith Speaking

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Because representation matters, and if readers are leaders, then writers shape the world, right? Because we write everything that you can read, we are the source of every story that has ever been told. Today we're talking about belief systems. Now, the other main belief system that I have seen trip writers...

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The big question is this... How do screenwriters like us connect to the people, the resources, and information that allow us to tell our stories, make powerful movies, and leave the legacy that our community deserves? These are the burning questions that I'm going to explore week after week. And I want to welcome you to the script your success. 

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Today, we are talking about the infamous thing that keeps most writers from their success, and I'm talking about WRITER'S BLOCK! Now, if you know anything about writer's block, listen, what I'm getting ready to get into hopefully is going to clear up something for you. Now, some people say writer's block is real. Some people take pride in having writer's block. I'm not one of those people who believe in either one of those things. To me writer's block happens for only one of two reasons. And sometimes it's both combined. Now in this episode, I'm going to talk about the first one. And then in the next episode, we're going to cover the next part of what's causing your writer's block. Writer's block comes from either your blind spots, or your belief systems. So writer's block is because of your BS, your BS, is the key to breaking through writer's block. 

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Now, what am I talking about? Belief Systems. When we think about a belief system, we often think about things like religion, or you know, home life or society. But when I'm talking about belief system, in this context for you, as a writer, what I'm talking about is this, who do you believe you are? What is it that you believe you're capable of? What things have you been taught? Or have you told yourself? Are your reality when it comes down to your ability to create success for yourself as a screenwriter? Now, you might be asking yourself, Eunice, what the hell are you talking about? How does any of that have anything to do with me being able to write? I'm glad you asked that question, because I need to keep it real. But here's the thing. You might get mad at me right now, because I'm getting ready to go in a place that maybe most people don't go. But that's okay. Because I would rather see you mad, than left behind. 

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Belief systems, if you, deep down in your heart are worried that you're not good enough. Now, you didn't grow up thinking that you weren't good enough, something typically happens, right? We have an issue, somebody told us, we ain't sh-t. Somebody told us our stories aren't good enough. We've been rejected enough times. Maybe we live in a household that doesn't necessarily encourage our creativity.

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Like I told you guys in a prior episode, I've been a writer since I was six years old. But I also grew up in the housing projects in the suburbs of Chicago. So I didn't have an environment that encouraged and nurtured creativity as a career path. Now, writing was like, Oh, that girl so smart, or she writes so good, or she really so good. And but then when I said I wanted to be a writer, as a career, like, Girl, if you don't sit down somewhere, you can be a writer. No, never. You could be a doctor, a lawyer, a preacher, teacher, fireman, police officer, something like that. But you could not be an artist of any sort in my house. So what does that do for me, it gives me the belief system, that I can't be successful as a writer and maybe even if I go for trying to create a life for myself as a writer,

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I'm not going to be looked up looked upon as a as a success in my family. So when that when that translates into something that I hold as the truth for myself, and I sit down to write

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a lot of times what happens is, I'm afraid I'm afraid of what might happen if I go down this path. I'm afraid of what my family might think. I'm afraid of actually failing because if I fail at at this attempt, then maybe they're right. And it's like, I would rather not try than try and fail. Can you hear that? I would rather not try than try and fail because then all the naysayers that say writing wasn't a viable career. Sh-t, they were right. And that is the number one thing that I have my clients bring to me as a concern is they didn't grow up in

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nurturing environment. Nobody ever kind of told them that they believed in them. Nobody ever said to them, you can do this. We didn't have a whole lot of representation like we didn't have all the Issa Rae's and Jordan Peeles and Shonda Rhimes and Ava DuVernays that we have today, so many writers over the age of 30, we didn't know that there was even a career path. And that creates a certain belief system. And that's part of the reason that I do this work is because representation matters. And if readers are leaders, then writers shape the world, right, because we write everything that you can read, we are the source of every story that has ever been told. So we're talking about belief systems. Now, the other main belief system that I have seen trip writers up is this thing where they feel like they gotta get everything just right, it's got to be perfect. Otherwise, I'm not doing it at all. And that need for perfection, getting every word, right, getting every scene perfect. Every bit of dialogue, all the interactions, like having all the answers right away, it can grind your wheels to a halt your creative wheels, to a halt. And that's a belief that perfectionism is a fear based response to not being good enough. And it's very similar to that other issue that we just talked about a couple of minutes ago, where nobody believed in you. So you will you start to not believe in yourself. But when we start to, to try to be perfect, what we're really saying is, we don't give ourselves permission to be where we are, and just grow through what we are limited by so that we can get better, right? So if it's got to be perfect in the beginning, how do you grow? You'll stop yourself from even trying, because it's not as good as you wanted it to be. Right. So one of the things that we often talk about is writing is rewriting. And that is so so valid, right?

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Because here's the thing, have you ever and I have the I have done this, I write a story. And I tend to write fast, right. And like I said, I've been doing it since I was six years old. So if you don't write fast, this is not a judgment. But I tend to buy fast I write, I've written like a 20 page short in like three hours. I've written feature films in a week. This is just how I write my process, right. And sometimes, I'll go back to that first draft, because like when you first write it, it's like year boy, it's on Depop. And that's going on, I gotta go on, right? Sit that Joker to the side printed out, let it sit, let it marinate, come back to it. And it's like II that is not good. Who wrote that. But here's the funny part, that's a part of the process. Because if I had, if I had allow my inability, because I'm gonna call it inability, right, I'm gonna call it an inability, a lack of talent. If I had allowed that inability, or that lack of talent to stop me from trying, I never would have gotten that draft done, which means I never would have printed it out. Which means I never would have realized this looked right. Once I realized that it wasn't as good as I had thought it was when I was writing it, then I could go and dissect it, then I could go and get a mentor, then I could get some coaching, then I could do some more study, then I could sign up for programs that offer the things that I was lacking, so that I could write as well as I thought I was writing when I was writing that bullshit. Pardon my French, that's just the reality. But if I had decided that, it needed to be perfect, before I started, I needed to have all the answers before I would write a single word, I never would have gotten to this shitty first draft. And then if I don't get to the shitty first draft, I don't get to the part where I started to master my craft. I never get to the part where I get to

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kind of seek assistance outside of my own talent, seek help and support outside of my own self. I never get to build the vast network that I have today. I never get to the point where I start to read you like in this podcast? Well, you can support us by liking, sharing, and giving us reviews on all major podcast platform. Look for us at script your success podcast.com And be sure to tell a friend research competitions because I don't have anything to enter into a competition. And if I don't do that, guess what? We don't have flipped the script for making competition because I'm so stuck on trying to be perfect. I don't want anybody to know that I'm not as good as I thought I was that I won't even put something out there into the world. I won't even give it a shot. Can you hear that? So two of the belief systems not being good enough, and then feeling like you got to be perfect. These are two things that have caught

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cause more writers to stop writing than anything else that I have ever seen. Now the last one I'm going to talk about in today's episode, let me let me just break it down this way.

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Comparison. And I'm gonna start this one with a quote and this one, I don't know if this is biblical, if it's if this is a biblical quote, somebody dropped it in the comments because I listen, okay, let's not go there. The phrase that I'm going to quote is comparison is the thief of joy. Now, why is this important to us as screenwriters as writers as creative individuals? The reason is, because this even before social media, one of the things that has been a standard practice, in the world of screenwriting, is competitions, you apply, to get into schools you apply to get support you you pitch for funding, you know what I'm talking about. And all of that has us constantly competing against our contemporaries, this person is better than me, that person won over here. And what we start to do is we start keeping score of other people's success instead of keeping, keeping track of our progress, and rewarding ourselves and celebrating ourselves for the progress that we've made. Right. So remember, I talked about that shitty first draft. And those drafts sometimes are the best that I could do at the time. And when you share them with somebody, and they give you their feedback that tells you you got a long way to go. And then you look at somebody who you think is your contemporary? Well, how is Sally doing so well? And I'm not doing as well, I think, you know, so you start to kind of have those degrading thoughts that self degradation that happens, right? Because I'm looking at Sally's progress, and saying to myself, I should have what she has, she's not better than me. She's not smarter than me, how was Tommy doing so much better than me, he must have some inside connections, he must have something that I don't have. And instead of me using my creativity, to identify ways that I can become a better writer, I start using my my mind and my energy to kind of first of all, look at other people's progress and decide to be envious. I'm in I'm becoming envious. I'm becoming jealous. And I'm taken away from my own journey to success, right? If I'm constantly comparing myself to somebody else's highlight reel, now I'm talking about social media, we see people highlight what they've accomplished. We see people talk about the competitions, they won the grants that they've won, the things that they've done that that are going well, right. And we look at that, and we start to tell ourselves, we aren't far enough, we aren't good enough, man, they're doing so much better. I don't know if I could ever be like that person. Um, sometimes I, you know, it's common, it's human nature, is what I mean to say. It's human nature to look at somebody, and sometimes wish you were where they are. But what we don't see is how many times that they fall flat on their face. How many times did they get rejected? How many times did they go for something and it didn't turn out the way that they thought it would? We don't know that and why don't we know because nobody ever highlights their low points. We just don't do it. So if you are comparing your low points to someone else's high point, and I don't care if it's your social media best friend, I don't care if it's a celebrity, I don't care for somebody in a in a screenwriting group. If you are comparing yourself to another person, and then telling yourself that you aren't adding up, you aren't good enough, you're doing yourself a disservice. Because here's the thing. Everybody's journey is different. What is going to take for you to get to where you are supposed to go, could be completely different from my path. But if you compare yourself to me, and you try to do it the way that God said, I'm supposed to do it, it might not work for you. Just like if I tried to take the path that Ava DuVernay took, or the ISA Ray took or Tyler Perry, it might not be my path, right? So why should I compare myself to them? That's the question. And that's another belief system is that we have to compare ourselves to others and do as others do, in order to achieve success. And that's really just not the truth. Your success is your journey. And you have to understand what it is that you want for yourself. You might not even want to be where isa or EVA or anybody else is. But whatever it is you want for yourself, understand where you are, understand where you might need some assistance, some coaching, some mentoring, and then continue working towards your goals because that's one of the surest ways to achieve success. Now I've talked about three blind spots

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I'm sorry, three belief systems that can kind of hold us back and cause writer's block, right? Because when we talk about feeling like we're not good enough when we think about being a perfectionist, when we start to compare ourselves to others, and then we sit down to try to write a story, all those negative thoughts, all that negative self talk, it can stop us from being able to bring things to the page the way that they need to be brought. And that's the real source of writer's block. But in the next part of this conversation, we're going to talk about the blind spots. And that's what you don't even know, you don't know. And that's the main reason that we're doing the script, your success podcast. So I want to thank you for joining me, and I hope you'll tune in again

Transcribed by https://otter.ai