What's your focus?

We've heard many times in our life, whether it be from a school teacher, or perhaps a parent, maybe even a coach, "Focus!" Which pretty much means, use your thoughts and place them on one thing. As writers, we need to do the same thing. So I ask you, when you sit down to write, are you focused? Or are you all over the place? Are you allowing other things to get in the way of you writing? In order to succeed you've got to have one focus. We think multi-tasking is a good thing, but studies show that people who multi-task end up not doing anything well.

But being a writer takes a lot of discipline. It's not just sit down and type away. If only it was that easy. It means turning off the TV, not going out with friends on many occasions, and holing yourself up to get those words on the page. You've got to make your writing the most important thing if you want a career.

Then there's also focusing on one style of writing. Is it comedies, dramas, sitcoms? Sure you can expand as you feel like you've learned a style. I sure have. But if you don't get good at one genre, then you'll never have a body of work, which means you most likely won't get hired or sell anything either.

If you feel like you've focused on your writing, have you also focused on getting your scripts to the right people? I admit, that's one of my weaknesses. Yes, I'm admitting this to whomever happens to read this. I'm great at sitting down and writing, but getting it out? Not so good. But what help is writing a great script if no one is reading it but a writing group and a few friends? Are you better at this than me? Do you make a weekly or daily list of who to send your scripts to? Then do you actually follow through?

I just read an article on things that millionaires do for success. And one of the things it said was that every week they created a list of a few really key things they have to achieve that week. Then every morning or night of every day, they created a to-do list to help them reach those goals. And then each Friday, they do it again so that by Monday, they do it again! I really like that and think it will help me focus.

See, if we don't have a focus, we really have nothing. We're all over the map. And no career can reach success if we're not focused. So ask yourself if you're focused and if you're not then be honest with yourself and ask what can you do to get you there. I'm sure you can do it. It just takes well, focus.

LOA is no LOL matter

Maybe some of you know what LOA is, but for those who don't, let me explain. It stands for Law of Attraction. Those who swear by it, which I am one, say that whatever we think, brings more of that to us. So if we're in a great mood, good things come to us. Bad mood and complaining about everything we see, then more things to complain about come into our life. The book The Secret talks about it, which you've most likely heard or read about by now.

So why am I talking about it in a screenwriting blog? Because I believe in it and I swear it's why I have had the successes I have had up until now. And it's why I will continue to have more and more successes. It's why I've had doors open for me that friends in the business are like, how in the world did you get to THAT person?! LOA. But I don't want to be an LOA hog. I want to share! So that's why I feel like I need to write about it. Because guess what? LOA states that if we share our joy, then more things to be joyful come into our lives!

The thing is, you can deny it and say nah, none of this happens. You're a hippie dippie fool believing in fairy land. And that's fine. You have your opinion. But if you don't see your career flourishing the way you want, then what do you have to lose? Or maybe you have success and you think, "I don't believe in LOA and look how great my career has been!" But it's possible you have been thinking in LOA principles without even knowing what they are.

But what if for a moment, you accept and believe in LOA when it comes to your writing. I mean, if anyone needs to, it's us writers. We're hard on ourselves and constantly doubt if we'll succeed, wondering when and if the world will ever love our talent. Does that seem like it will bring success if we keep thinking like that? Not in the LOA world. But what if by changing your thoughts, accepting only the positive about yourself, you actually saw your career flourish? I mean, what have you got to lose? I'm not saying to be blind and foolish if all you're hearing are negative things about your writing. But if you have the desire to be a successful writer, then you should be! LOA proponents even say if we have the desire, then the universe is just waiting to bring that to us. All we need to do is get out of our way by believing it. That the more we doubt and fight our success, and the more we complain about not being where we want to be in our career, the more we keep the universe from bringing our success to us.

Look, even science agrees in LOA, because there are numerous studies that say we are energy and that like attracts like. Just as good thoughts bring good, bad thoughts bring bad. So it's not just the hippies that are on to this. The scientists agree! So shouldn't screenwriters?! Why not see what happens if you consider it? Try for a week and see what happens. See what comes into your world. You have nothing to lose, really. Exept maybe a stalled career. And isn't that what you wanted any way?

It's all celery's fault

So this morning I was making my usual veggie and fruit smoothie. Yes, I live in LA it's what we do. So as I'm chopping up this and that, I go to take out my organic celery from the package and it won't come out. So instead of figuring out why, I decide to keep pulling the exact same way. Which as you know, means it won't come out again! So I finally take a moment to go, well, I'm doing the same thing over and over, so I'm going to get the same results, over and over, let's change it up and see what happens. Lo and behold, I try something new and it comes out easily. I stopped fighting it.

So it got me to thinking, how much of our writing is like the stuck celery? How many times have you tried to write something a certain way with no results? For instance, if I'm stuck on a scene, if I don't force it and go to sleep with that concern on my mind, I always wake up with the perfect solution. Have you tried this? It always works for me. My guess is that somewhere in the recesses of our mind lies the answer. But we can't uncover them by telling our brain to figure it out on the spot! No person can perform well like this, why would our brain?

And what about when it comes to trying a certain genre or a certain medium. I'm mostly a comedy writer. But recently I've had horror writing opportunities. Instead of telling myself or these producers, yeah, I don't do that, I went okay, why not? And partnered up with other writers whose genre it was. This also happened with animation opportunities. A producer at some networking event, not a screenwriting networking event, approached me and asked, do you write animation? I hadn't but, why not? So I said yes. We haven't worked together yet. But that got me to come up with ideas, which got me to meet with an animation artist on a project, which got me one of my managers who specializes in animation! If I had stayed only in comedy, I would have missed out all of those opportunites!

So sometimes I think we have to shake things up. We have to zig, when we've been zagging. We just never know what great opportunity lies in another area that we haven't even tried. And we have to stop trying so hard. The more we just let go, just let things happen without a fight, the more it will just happen.