Brad isn't clever. 30 minutes. Unfiltered. Every day. Rinse. Repeat.

Without a doubt, the one piece of advice I keep hearing, seeing and reading more often than all others is this: write. Just write. I heard it from several different people at the Austin Film Festival last year.

Mitch Hurwitz (paraphrased): “My first spec script was terrible. My second script was terrible. You just have to keep writing.”

Paul Feig (paraphrased): “My first spec script was an hour long Alf special. It was terrible.”

I think it’s natural for many people to say they want to do X, but never actually go through with anyone remotely related to X. Those people may have all the skills in the world and may be better at X than current experts in the field, but without actual product, there’s no evidence. There’s no evidence for others to see, but more importantly, there’s no evidence for those people to see themselves… No validation.

One can read books about the subject, interview people about the subject, do ANYTHING but engage in the actual subject. It might be helpful and give you some sort of relevant knowledge, but it WON’T make you an expert at actually performing the subject. It’s an easy situation to understand: reading all the books in the world about weight training won’t make you an weightlifter or a bodybuilder. In order to start down that road, you actually have to turn your time in at the gym, in addition to whatever else you do to prepare.

I’ve found this situation to be similar with improv. I LOVE reading books about improv. Some of them are quite helpful and I took copious notes. I filled two separate 200 page notebooks with notes from some of these books and lessons. However, it didn’t help my improv as much as actually standing on stage and doing scenework with others. The knowledge gleaned was of benefit to me, but not in the same way as actual experience. I could use the two in tandem quite nicely, but it would never work to just read books for a year and then jump into a show.

Sooner or later, you have to act. Sooner or later, you’ve got to do it. There’s no way to know you will be good. You may not be good for a while. I’ve done a lot of bad improv, but I’ve also done a lot a good improv. I’ve written some terrible papers, but I’ve also written some great ones. Each experience helps. Each is beneficial.

When I dropped my second major in college (Biomedical Engineering), I started enrolling in other classes that I thought would be entertaining. One of those classes was a Creative Writing course. It was an excellent experience and involved lots of workshops as well as group discussions with successful authors.

What advice came up the most? “Write. Every day.” It’s my understanding that many authors have piles and piles of awful material that never sees the light of day. Apparently there’s a ton of stuff sitting in JD Salinger’s house. (Unfortunately, I have a bad feeling that most of that will see the light of day… If it’s stuff JD never wanted printed, why should it be?)

My rationale for the being is this: if there’s nothing worth keeping to myself in these writing exercises, then I should post it to this Tumblr page. This isn’t the only record of material I’m writing each day, but it is A record. This is proof to myself and anyone else silly enough to read it that I’m putting in my time every day. I’m making the effort to grow as a writer.

What do I want to do write now? Ideally, write for a sitcom. Will I be able to do that one day if all I ever do is post to this blog? Probably not. So that’s not all I’m doing. Training myself to write more will spill over into the writing I do to prepare for a possible career in sitcom writing. I have to learn to generate a lot of content and then filter through it to find the stuff worth holding onto.

If there’s one thing I found most true about improv: it’s that SOMETHING can be made out of ANYTHING. I’ve gone into scenes with absolutely no clue about where everything was going (as improvisers often do) and just put my faith in the belief that something would happen. It’s akin to just jumping out of an airplane with a parachute. For a while, the situation seems a bit overwhelming and pulling the rip cord won’t work immediately. Things have to develop, and with experience, your chute will open on stage almost every time. I’ve crashed before, but I think those failures are almost more worthwhile than the successes I’ve had. I know what it’s like to stand on stage and do an absolutely terrible job. I’m not afraid of that anymore. I’m afraid of holding back too much information. It’s better to throw yourself out the plane and try to land.

I have all sorts of filters going now… Filters worrying about my use of passive voice, cliches, trite sayings, parallel constructions, even filters worrying if I’m making sense right now. Who cares?

The exercise is to write. I am doing just that. I am learning with each keystroke and thought I transcribe from my mind to the screen. I might learn some from reading it, but not as much as going through with this whole constant first draft feeling. It’s ok to make mistakes. If I don’t take risks, then I may not have that one sentence 3 paragraphs down the line that actually turns into something relevant… another blog post, another idea… a story.

My first day, I wrote somewhere around 750 words. Yesterday, I only managed something like 487. I think I’ve already done better tonight, even though I’m using about the same amount of time. It’s all just a matter of typing everything that comes to mind. If I wanted to condense down the content of this little essay into a fine nectar worth posting to my blog, I can worry about that in the future.

This is unfiltered. This is unedited. It’s good. It’s organic. It’s me. It’s more me than I’ve ever allowed myself to be with writing.

I’m supposed to be a good writer by now. I flew through secondary school with only one teacher who offered helpful writing advice. Most of the rest thought I was doing a good job as is. In college, more professors took an axe to my habits and I grew a lot. I think some of them took a pen to my paper not because mistakes existed, but because they wanted to make some sort of point that college kids are far from perfect. It’s true. We are. I didn’t learn as much from those professors, but I did keep writing more each semester… and I think I got better primarily from that experience.

Hell, I can say I wrote a 60 page thesis. How many people can do that? How many WANT to do that? I know what that involves, and I’ve grown from it.

I’ve mentioned before in blog posts that I’m a fan of word economy. If I can explain something to you in 200 words or 2000, I’d prefer the 200. It’s easier for you to remember, and demonstrates an additional skill of relaying the critical elements of concepts.

It’s an important skill to have. Right now, I’m not sure where I’m going with this entry. Rather than sit still and reflect, I’m just going to keep writing. I’m going to keep making words appear on the screen in hope that something comes along.

I’ve found that listening to ambient rock has been the most helpful as far as environmental music goes. Ambient post-rock, perhaps. Specifically, Explosions in the Sky works quite well with me. It’s not because I’m a huge EitS fan. The music just works. It fills the background void and changes enough to keep me from losing interest. It feels kind of like peripheral vision. I can see a blurry object out of the corner of my left eye right now, and that’s fine. I’d prefer that instead of shifting my focus and attention just to see the fine details. I enjoy having EitS in the background without shifting my attention on the exact melodic patterns and rhythms. A poor analogy, but one I’m writing with confidence for this entry.

1418 words. There’s a little over 30 minutes. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll write some about how I tend to associate songs with specific instances in my life. I can’t hear Explosions in the Sky without thinking back to the few times I’ve seen them live. Good peripheral memories.