Why Am I Procrastinating?

I want to start today’s podcast with a personal story, something that happened to me early in my writing career. I had just sold my first screenplay, which meant I got to do the thing that everybody dreams of doing, the thing that I had always dreamed of doing.

I got to leave my job and I got to devote every hour of every day to the thing that really mattered to me. I got to spend every moment being a writer. 

And I was primed for success. I was ready to create, and create, and create and write screenplay after screenplay. I was filled with passion and excitement and I felt like the dream was finally coming true.
And what came instead of the dream that I had planned was months of the most intense writer’s block and procrastination that I have ever experienced. 
What followed was three months in which I accomplished pretty much nothing. And what followed was emotionally probably the hardest three months in my career.

I was very lucky.  My dear friend and writing partner, John Wierick, drove down to Venice Beach, took me for a walk on the beach and he said, “Jake, I’m worried about my friend.” 

And I said, “You know, I am really struggling. Every idea that I write is not as good as the one I just sold. I start something and then I abandon it. And lately, I am not even starting at all… And I am not having fun procrastinating, I am not flying to Tahiti or going for a walk or working out or painting or playing my guitar or doing anything that gives me joy.  I’m sitting in front of my computer just staring and not writing or I’m reading the Hollywood Reporter or the Daily Variety cover to cover or I’m playing that stupid MineHunter game” (if you remember 20 years ago that crappy little game you’d play on your computer where you clicked on little boxes on a grid and tried not to get blown up by mines) “this is what I’m doing with my days and I’m miserable. But somehow, I can’t seem to find any time to write, even though I have all the time in the world.”

And it was John Wierick who pulled me out of that tailspin with some very powerful advice. 

He said, “Jake, it doesn’t matter which idea you choose. It doesn’t matter if the idea is good or bad. And it doesn’t matter if it is the right one or if the script is any good at all.” 
He said, “You have to choose an idea today and you have to start writing it today and you have to finish it and you can worry about making it good later.”
And that was some of the best advice I ever got as a writer and it was the first step of pulling me out of a very, very dark time and really saving my career. 

And so, I want to do for you today what John Wierick did for me early in my career.

Because, for many writers in our community, we’ve, in a different way, just experienced what I experienced all those years ago.

Our lives suddenly and irrevocably changed. And we found ourselves suddenly with this strange thing that we’ve never had before called time.

And I’m hearing from so many writers their frustration with themselves, feeling like “I have all this time but I’m not doing anything with it. I have all this time but I’m still stuck. I have all this time but I’m watching Tiger King and checking Facebook instead of doing something that matters. I have all this time but I feel lazy and scared and I can’t seem to get myself focused on anything. I have all this time but all my ideas seem so unimportant in light of what’s actually happening out in the world.”

“I have all this time, but somehow, I don’t seem to have any time.”

And so, I want to tell you how I was able to pull myself out of my writer’s block. 
With the benefit of some good 2020 hindsight, I want to talk to you about what actually causes writer’s block and procrastination.