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"What am I doing? Is what I've written any good? I don't know where this script is going anymore. Should I even bother to keep working on this?"
These are some of the things I think about when I get the screenwriter's blues. As writers, we all get down and discouraged sometimes. Writing can be incredibly isolating work, and it can be hard to remain excited or even motivated to keep chipping away at what you're currently working on. When you find yourself feeling down in the dumps about your writing, some advice from other writers can be a surefire pick me up! Here are ten encouraging screenwriting quotes to combat screenwriter blues.
"Don't lose faith in what you are trying to do, even though you will get pummeled emotionally left and right. There are a lot of NOs to any YES. And that's OK."
"We've all been burned by bad feedback. Rude, insensitive, bossy, arrogant, wrong-headed, cruel even."
"Scriptwriting is the toughest part of the whole racket … the least understood and the least noticed."
"It is better to write a bad first draft than to write no first draft at all."
"Screenwriting is the most prized of all the cinematic arts. Actually, it isn't, but it should be."
"I think about the audience in the sense that I serve as my own audience. I have to please myself that way, if I saw the movie in the theatre, I would be pleased. Do I think about catering to an audience? No."
"If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed."
"One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I'm going to do my five or ten pages no matter what and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I'll have lost nothing—writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off."
"Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it's the answer to everything. … It's the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it's a cactus."
"People say, 'What advice do you have for people who want to be writers?' I say they don't really need advice, they know they want to be writers, and they're gonna do it. Those people who know that they really want to do this and are cut out for it, they know it."
Hopefully, these quotes were able to boost your morale and help to counter the screenwriter's blues. Most importantly, I hope these quotes show that most writers, even established ones, struggle. Battling with self-doubt is one of the biggest challenges for a writer, and some days you'll find yourself conquering it better than others. Be kind to yourself, and happy writing!
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