The Busy Work Curse
Sounds like the title of a bad short film. If you like it then use it, but that is not the subject of this post. Busy work is. Busy work and why it is one of the great curses that afflict every writer from time to time.
Busy work is the work that you do that keeps you from doing the work that you are afraid to do; writing your no budget screenplay.
I am busy doing research, can’t write today.
I am busy going over last years collection of bill receipts, can’t write today.
I am busy writing the treatment for the new screenplay that I am planning, can’t finish the one that I am working on.
I am waiting for the hairdresser I found online who moonlights as a demon slayer to come by and get rid of that entity who lives inside my playstation 2.
Really?
Seriously?
Let it go.
Push all of these excuses aside and make your busy work the actual act of writing. I am guilty of this myself. I have a dozen scripts that have died thanks to the curse known as busy work.
The only busy work that is acceptable in this universe involves Jennifer Love Hewitt, a dwarf, a camcorder, silly string and Snapple. You figure it out and if your imagination has Jennifer holding the camcorder at any time you are both wrong and sick.
Busy work is writing.
Writing is your job.
We avoid it because if we are good at it we open up and lose ourselves. We are not only revealing things about our characters, but about ourselves as well. That is a scary experience and on some level each of us who write realize this. Not one of us who manage to do this for a living will look back on the experience of writing and wish that we had done it less often. (Do I have to mention Jennifer Love Hewitt again? Why did she have to do that new show? I was recovering from watch the Ghost Whisperer. The medication was working and now its little maid outfits. Why does it have to be on demand too?)
Okay I am back and that will not happen again. Well again today.
Here is the perfect counter to busy work.
Don’t you wish that we could all have an Annie to help us get off of our butts and write every single day?
Sounds like the title of a bad short film. If you like it then use it, but that is not the subject of this post. Busy work is. Busy work and why it is one of the great curses that afflict every writer from time to time.
Busy work is the work that you do that keeps you from doing the work that you are afraid to do; writing your no budget screenplay.
I am busy doing research, can’t write today.
I am busy going over last years collection of bill receipts, can’t write today.
I am busy writing the treatment for the new screenplay that I am planning, can’t finish the one that I am working on.
I am waiting for the hairdresser I found online who moonlights as a demon slayer to come by and get rid of that entity who lives inside my playstation 2.
Really?
Seriously?
Let it go.
Push all of these excuses aside and make your busy work the actual act of writing. I am guilty of this myself. I have a dozen scripts that have died thanks to the curse known as busy work.
The only busy work that is acceptable in this universe involves Jennifer Love Hewitt, a dwarf, a camcorder, silly string and Snapple. You figure it out and if your imagination has Jennifer holding the camcorder at any time you are both wrong and sick.
Busy work is writing.
Writing is your job.
We avoid it because if we are good at it we open up and lose ourselves. We are not only revealing things about our characters, but about ourselves as well. That is a scary experience and on some level each of us who write realize this. Not one of us who manage to do this for a living will look back on the experience of writing and wish that we had done it less often. (Do I have to mention Jennifer Love Hewitt again? Why did she have to do that new show? I was recovering from watch the Ghost Whisperer. The medication was working and now its little maid outfits. Why does it have to be on demand too?)
Okay I am back and that will not happen again. Well again today.
Here is the perfect counter to busy work.
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