2025 Zero Draft Thirty March Challenge: Get Your Head On Straight

It’s time to gear up for the latest Challenge which begins tomorrow!

Do you have a story you want to write? A feature length movie screenplay? An original TV pilot? A web series pilot? A novel? Short story? An epic length limerick?

The 2025 Zero Draft Thirty March Challenge is for you!

March 1: You type FADE IN / “Once upon a time…”
March 31: You type FADE OUT / “…They all lived happily ever after.”

It’s free! It’s fun! It’s Fade In to Fade Out!

For everything you need to know to join, click here.

To help prepare writers for the #ZD30SCRIPT Challenge, over the last few weeks, I’ve been running a series of articles to inspire folks to get ready.

Today: Get Your Head On Straight

Here’s the deal. 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. But as this famous screenwriting guru notes below:

It’s a FACT! 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!

Fade In. Fade Out.

So THAT is what I mean by getting your head on straight for this Challenge. Spend a month punting perfectionism and replace it with productivity. Word after word… page after page…

Just. Write.

The 2025 Zero Draft Thirty March Challenge officially begins Friday, March 1st at Midnight Eastern Time (U.S.). Here’s our official hashtag: #ZD30SCRIPT.

Tomorrow, I will post the first of 30 daily Zero Draft Thirty Challenge posts here on the blog during the month of March.

One month. A first draft of an original screenplay. TV pilot. Or a rewrite of an existing script.

Don’t forget the Zero Draft Thirty Facebook group. A terrific collection of folks who post things every day, even when we’re not in a challenge.

So calling all Zeronauts. Who’s up for pounding out a Zero Draft in March? Let’s do this thing!

Pound Perfectionism, Pump Productivity!