This is the 3rd blog post in my screenwriting series, it all started here

“When all your schemes about making a masterpiece are reduced to – I’ll prostitute myself in any way I have to survive this catastrophe. ” Woody Allen on filmmaking

Day 6 -

In an effort to avoid writing today, I spent a great amount of time creating this graph that will show me exactly how many words I need to have written each day.  This allows my brain to not have to add another “900″ to each day’s writing.   I wasn’t keeping track of the daily words the first 5 days, I only know that when I started Day 6, I had a little more than 4500 words.  Here it is:

Now, I fill in the actual amount of words each day, so that I know…. what exactly?  I guess now I will know exactly how many words I wrote each day. (and I will be happy to share this graph/chart/thingy with you as soon as it’s all filled in.)  This doesn’t really matter except to show you what great lengths I will go to in order to avoid writing my screenplay.  I mean, I’ve resorted to setting up graphs and doing MATH for God’s sake! What the hell is wrong with me?

I did get something pretty cool in my inbox that will probably help you way more than this stupid graph I spent far too much time creating.

I got an email from Script Magazine today with the subject line ”Learn Jerry Seinfeld’s Productivity Technique”.  And, of course, since I had spent the better part of my day being completely unproductive I opened it right away to see if Jerry could teach me something that might actually have an impact on my writing.  Guess what?  This is pretty damn cool.

“Seinfeld explains his method for success: each January, he hangs a large year-at-a-glance calendar on his wall and, for every day he writes new material, he has the exquisite pleasure that can only come from drawing a big red “X” over that day. The idea is to never break that chain.”

The entire email is online if you’d like to read it: click here

*AND* the Writer’s Store created a calendar that you can print out and begin your own Don’t Break the Chain fun.

Download your own “Don’t Break the Chain” calendar for FREE here.

The other thing I stumbled upon while procrastinating, er, uh, looking for inspiration about writing is…. this awesome Woody Allen documentary. Woody Allen is the absolute definition of prolific.  He’s been doing one film every year for over forty years.  Documentary filmmaker Robert B. Weide said this about Woody;

“He’s working on the quantity theory, that if you keep making them and making them, keep knocking them out, they won’t all come out great but every now and then one will come out good.”

“He doesn’t really think he’s that great.” Weide says.  Which is crazy, right?  But it also gives me comfort in a strange way.

In the film, Woody talked about his time working as a comedy writer at the Tamiment, a resort in the Poconos, where they did a show full of new material each weekend. “You couldn’t sit in the room and wait for your muse to come tickle you.  Monday morning came, there was a dress rehearsal Thursday, you had to get that thing written.  It was grueling, but you learned to write.”

Watch Woody Allen at Tamiment on PBS. See more from American Masters.

So that’s what finally got me back to writing today.  Woody Allen telling me “You can’t sit in the room and wait for your muse to come tickle you… get that thing written.”

Thanks Woody.

NEXT: The Shittiest Screenplay of Them All - Screenwriting Days 7-11 – Click here*