Gilles - Writers rehab: a 12-step program for writers who cant get their acts together

How Writers Rehab Can Work Best for You

Introduction

Writers on the Verge

Step 1 You admitted you were powerless over your inability to write and that your writing life had become unmanageable.

Its Time to Stop Bullshitting Yourself

Step 2 You came to believe that a Power greater than yourself could restore you to help you regain control of that plot that wouldnt bend.

Step 2 You admitted you were powerless over your screenplays and that your writing life had become unmanageable.

We Want What We Want When We Want It

Step 3 You made a decision to turn your clichd, underdeveloped protagonists and meandering subplots over to the care of God and a firm grasp of the 3-Act structure as you understood Him and it.

If You Want to Drown, Why Torture Yourself by Swimming in Shallow Water

Step 4

You made a searching and fearless moral inventory of the troublesome 256-page romantic subplot you thought would add a magical realism to your bloated 981-page first draft that didnt get started until page 189.

Scared Money Never Wins

Step 5 Admitted to God, to yourself, and to another human being the exact nature of your inability to stick to a project once youve begun without throwing in the towel and starting something new only to give up on that one too.

Dont Be an 80-Percenter

Step 6 Youre entirely ready to have God help you create complex characters who resemble 3-dimensional human beings rather than trite, shallow, stick figure characters weve seen a million times before.

Disappointment and Anxiety Are Messengers That Youre About to Go into Unknown Territory

Step 7 Humbly asked God to remove your shortcomings, especially with regard to your inability to take criticism, to lose your ego, and to confront the deep-seated problems of what youve written.

Lose the Attitude, Ego & Superiority Complex

Step 8 You listed all the people you had harmed by asking them to read your hastily written, weak, poorly thought-out first draft. Then you made amends to them by giving them a tight, well-reasoned manuscript that had gone through no less than four rewrites.

If You Want to Be a Knight, You Have to Slay a Dragon

Step 9 Made direct amends to those whove read your inferior work wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others, especially you if you encounter them in the future and they remember whatterrible tripe you wrote and will view you as a hack.

How Much Time Can You Spend in Your Head, Lost in Your Thoughts, Floating Aimlessly?

Step 10 You continued to take personal inventory and when you were wrong about not taking constructive criticism and feedback you promptly admitted it to those who took the time to read your script.

The Best Part of Doing Cocaine Is Going to Get It

Step 11 You sought through prayer and meditation to improve your conscious contact with God, as you understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for you and the power to carry that out by changing your disingenuous behavior and learning to get some backbone when dealing with agents, editors, managers, directors and producers.

When People Pleasers Stop Pleasing People, People Arent Pleased

Step 12 Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, you tried to carry this message to other blocked, stymied, broken writers , and to practice these principles in all your affairs.

Hitting Bottom: Nothing Changes if Nothing Changes

Epilogue

A Special Step 13 for Writers of Comedy You admitted to God, to yourself, and to fellow writers the exact nature of your inability to understand how to write a comedy, funny lines, comical situations, and comedic characters.

Comedy Writer: Heal Thyself!

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