2023 Zero Draft Thirty September Challenge: Day 3

One month. FADE IN to FADE OUT. Creativity meets Productivity.

Zero Draft Thirty: Day 3.

Write an entire draft of a script in September — FADE IN. FADE OUT. Or any sort of creative goal you have in front of you.

Feature length movie screenplay. Original TV pilot. Rewrite a current project. Break a story in prep. Generate a month’s worth of story concepts.

Whatever you feel will ratchet your creative ambitions into overdrive…

DO THAT!

Download your very own Zero Draft Thirty calendar — designed and created by Steven Dudley — and track your daily progress!

On Twitter, use this hashtag: #ZD30SCRIPT.

Join the Zero Draft Thirty Facebook Group, 4,900+ members strong.

Today’s Writing Quote

“Write like you’re on deadline, even if nobody is waiting for your work.”

— Elizabeth Berger

Today’s Inspirational Video

“Dreams without goals are just dreams. Have goals. Life goals, yearly goals, monthly goals, daily goals. I try to give myself a goal every day. Understand that to achieve these goals, you must apply discipline and consistency.”

Damn. Straight. And in that spirit…

Today’s Anita Loos Award recipient: Kathy Holzapfel.

Via the #ZD30SCRIPT hashtag on Twitter, Kathy tweeted this:

Here is what I wrote:

No first draft of any written project — novel, short story, play, feature length screenplay, TV pilot script, poem — is EVER going to be perfect. It is ALWAYS going to need to be rewritten.

This is the key to getting your head on straight about writing anything, but especially something you’re going to write in 30 days.

The perfectionist in you may recoil at the very idea of writing something which is imperfect.

What we do in the Zero Draft Thirty Challenge is EMBRACE that fact. If our first draft is going to be imperfect… indeed, writing a draft in thirty days, there’s a very good chance it’s going to suck…

Then lean into that mofo and call it a ZERO DRAFT!

What you write in the next month is not even expected to be a first draft, rather it’s a pre-first draft.

A vomit draft. A muscle draft. A Zero Draft!

The point of the #ZD30SCRIPT challenge is to put down words and pound out pages. No judgment. No negativity. No perfectionism.

30 days of removing the weight of expectations with one single goal:

GET THE DAMN THING DONE!

One additional thought. This reality — It won’t be perfect — if you tilt your head to side and think about it another way … it can free you up.

If it won’t be perfect, then you don’t have to worry about it being perfect … because it can’t be perfect.

Therefore, you can … dare I say it … HAVE FUN with the writing of your zero draft.

Follow your characters. Play around with scene description. Try out a different voice. Experiment with style.

And even in the words of my favorite screenwriting guru Obi-Wan Kenobi:

When you sit down to a scene … don’t think. Instead, trust your feelings. Get in touch with your characters and their emotional states of being, then write from that feeling place.

And you are FREE to do that if you embrace this truth: It won’t be perfect.

For setting us onto this path into an important discussion, the recipient of today’s Anita Loos Award is Kathy Holzapfel!

Congratulations, Kathy! Feel to print this award and post it at your writing desk for inspiration.

To learn more about Anita Loos and her illustrious career as a screenwriter, playwright, director, and journalist, go here.

For your chance to win the Anita Loos Award, one given away each day during the Challenge, post something inspiring, here on the blog, via Twitter, or the Facebook group.

For background on how the Zero Draft Challenge came to be and what it is, go here, here, and here.

Zero Draft Thirty: Day 1
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 2

Now Zeronauts, Scamperers, Word Warriors, and Outlaws…

IT WON’T BE PERFECT!

TRUST YOUR FEELINGS!

SCAMPER ON!