Work ethic is a core part of any writer's life and career - you want to be good and get work? Got to put in the hours to get both, constantly improving your work and widening your net of contacts, be they editors, publishers, or for this blog's purpose, producers in film and TV. A writer must have a level of discipline to ensure they not only write, but get better and produce plenty of spec scripts.
Of course, what 'writing discipline' is is fairly fluid - does it mean setting page counts? Word counts? Is it how many hours you write every day/week, or even setting fixed times of day? Is it goals for how many drafts/passes you do on a project before sending it out? Well, Young Guns and Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron writer John Fusco, a name those with 90s and 00s nostalgia should know well, offered up this tip (which has seemingly been removed since, given some responses).
Now, in the interests of clarity, the purpose here isn't to cast aspersions on Fusco. Indeed, he's not the first writer to offer this particular advice: before him, George MacDonald Fraser (of 70s Muskeeters and Flashman fame, one of my favourites) opined that a fierce determination, with no exceptions, to writing was the correct path (he had written the first Flashman novel while working as a newspaper editor), as have others. The argument being that writing requires sacrificing any time in the day that could be considered 'you time', including leisure, family, friends and, here, sleep.
Like some responses this comment generated, I can't agree with Fusco here. I get the sentiment, but ultimately I think it's clouded by an important piece of missing context and doesn't take into account an unfortunate contemporary truth: when Fusco started and where many screenwriters start today is not only profoundly different, but that the very way life is structured is different. While this advice is to instill discipline, it may have the unfortunate side effect of doing harm to one's health.
If that sounds a bit hyperbolic, let me break it down more: I've tried to help writers from working class and other lower socio-economic backgrounds on this blog, to give them not only ways to learn craft without an expensive degree, but also ways to navigate the business and get something in return that doesn't require bankrupting yourself into making an all-or-nothing short or indie feature. Too much screenwriting and indeed filmmaking advice, I found, was aimed more at people from well-off backgrounds, who can afford to do all that with little in the way of major inconvenience or consequence. Your short doesn't make it to festival, or your feature doesn't cut it for distribution? Maybe your script didn't make it into some paid script contest? Oh well, Can always bounce back.
That's much harder when not only your money is tighter, but also when your circumstances aren't as carefree. Even before the cost of living crisis we are heading into, we had over a decade of stagnating wages, zero hour contracts, unpaid overtime as 'work ethic' and other predatory practices that lead to working people having both less money and, importantly here, less time. Less time for hobbies and, vitally, less time for personal needs: Friends, family, education and even the ability to change career paths, which no shortage of writers are attempting to do. We've got record levels of depression and mental health issues due to this toxic combination of elements, and yet, the type of advice Fusco is offering presupposes a person with different circumstances.
If you've got other commitments or are overworked or suffer from something that impacts your quality of life, how on earth is taking away what time you have for you supposed to be a good thing? Yes, writing does require graft, but there's a difference between making a choice versus a commitment. If you already have a full day dominated by work, what does sacrificing sleep actually accomplish? You can't write well if you're tired or worried about other things, and it's not like there's some kind of prize for doing it. You may be writing more, but writing is a process full of trial and error - there's no trick to making it 'go faster' or, as Fusco may be implying, prove that you're a 'real screenwriter'.
While I don't claim to have the body of work Fusco does, I can say from my experience I've never met a producer or development person who asked about work ethic or how long a script took to write. What did they care about? IF THE SCRIPT WAS GOOD.
THAT'S IT.
THAT'S ALL.
Work should be hard on the work, not on the worker. Don't let advice from people who entered the business 20, 30, 40 years ago put you into a compromising position (Fusco himself had his first pro-screenplay made right out of film school back in the 80s, Walter Hill's Crossroads) where you have to choose between your dream versus your wellbeing. It's a false conflict: work when you can and give yourself room to have a life. Be with your friends and family and enjoy hobbies, such as you can: plus, it'll help you find inspiration for stories too. Make your writing schedule work around your life, not the other way around.
Deadlines and targets can be very useful, but be flexible: look at your week and see what can be allotted that isn't going to make it unnecessarily stressful. If you can only write for two hours on Sunday, or on Friday evening, do that. Like I said, no one in the business cares how you write: just that you can write well. When you actually get paid and are in the industry, then you can think about setting down something more extensive. So long as it's on your time and dime/penny, well, you decide what to put in.
Write at your speed. If you're not enjoying the process and learning from it (what I think a 'dedicated writer' should strive for), then what are you actually achieving?
