On Writing*

**not to be confused with Stephen King**  

Hi! It’s Janette (Dan) here. Writing about the process of writing feels strange. I guess meta? Like, once I write down my process of writing does it continue to exist? Sorry I’ve been reading a book about Greek philosophy, so for the past 24 hours I’ve been thinking and sounding like a pretentious asshole. 

Like many people who declare themselves as writers, the actual act of sitting at my desk, opening my computer, and writing words is akin to a miracle. 

Here’s a breakdown of my day so far, a day I have set aside to write this specific blog post:

• 7:15am - Wake Up. 

• 8:30am - Actually get out of bed after spending an hour on TikTok and Instagram. 

• 9am - Breakfast and a whole French press to myself. Because it’s not a true working day if my heart isn’t desperately trying to hammer out of my chest. 

• 9:45am - Look up from my book (the aforementioned Greek philosophy ) and realize ‘oh shit I’ve been sitting here for 45 minutes’

• 10am - Refill my coffee, go up to my desk and open my journal. I love to journal before I write anything “serious” (by serious I mean anything not going in my journal). It’s my stream of consciousness. The theory of journaling before writing is that it helps wade through all of your thoughts to get to the good ideas. My theory is that I think my life is INCREDIBLY interesting, probably far more interesting than other people’s, and that someday when I die in a very interesting way people will be enraptured by the journal entries of such an interesting person - Hyped up on caffeine, but still tired. I mean… I’m hooked. 

• 10:15am - decide I am too antsy to sit still and go downstairs to do yoga. 

• 11am - Shower. Get more coffee.

• 11:15am - TIME TO GET DOWN TO BUSINESS!! 

• 1pm - Actually start writing. 

Being a writer is truly exhausting, it’s the reason I require at least one nap a day. 

Once I go through all of that and actually start writing, things actually become quite easy. Giovana and I had a conversation about writing the other day and a very common thought amongst screenwriters is that having a finished product is amazing but the process of writing is excruciating. I completely disagree (as does Gio). It’s not the process of writing - I have quite a lot to say in case you couldn’t tell and I love doing that through other people’s voices; it’s the process of SITTING DOWN to write. That is the true struggle. 

Along with 4 hours of procrastination, other things I like to have on hand when I’m writing are a cup of hot coffee (cannot be iced), at least one or two books (just to have them near), and music of some sort. Music selection changes depending on what I’m working on. Writing in my journal, or something personal like this blog post, is way more flexible. This whole blog series is supposed to be about our writing process of our new script, a witchy romance called The Fox and The Moon. The other day while writing the opening together, Gio and I listened to the entirety of the Pocahontas soundtrack because our main character is a young Mexican American Indigenous witch.

I guess I failed this first assignment in a way because it took me almost nine paragraphs to mention the reason why I’m here, to talk about the process of writing The Fox and The Moon. We’ve really gotten away from the point here, haven’t we? 

Guess you’ll have to come back to the next post to read the actual process of doing research for a new script.