Screenwriting : Goal Oriented Creativity Group by Bruno Catarino

Anyone else struggles to finish a project, or to work on multiple projects at the same time?

I do, and I'm sure it has to do with a lack of short term goals, as well as accountability. It's easy to lose excitement for a project when you've been working on it for weeks or months, and you're still a long way from finishing it. It's also overwhelming when you're working on multiple projects at the same time, and struggle to context switch between them.

Potential solution: manage my creative work like I'd manage my day job as a software developer. But I don't think I can do this alone. I'll need other writers doing the same thing, so that we can hold each other accountable. I already found a few people interested in trying it, but would be nice to double that number, so that's why I'm posting this. Hoping some of you may see themselves in this, and might want to try this with us.

Here's the (WIP) proposal:

- You split your project(s) in small "tasks" that can be achieved in a day or two (write a scene, outline the first act, rewrite a small sequence, etc).

- Before each "cycle" (usually 2 weeks), each of us does some "grooming" on their projects (meaning you create new tasks you need, flesh out tasks you may have created initially but weren't sure how to achieve it, maybe split them further if they are too long, etc).

- At the beginning of each cycle, you select a number of tasks you think you can accomplish in those 2 weeks. If there's a cycle where you think you'll be extra busy (day job, family, etc), you select less tasks. This way, you'll be setting realistic expectations instead of overwhelming yourself with the obligation to do some unmeasurable progress so that you can meet your final deadline. If you're working on multiple projects, it's easier to juggle all of them, because you'd have small achievable tasks that you can complete, get off your mind, and context switch then. Or you may just state you'll write 30 pages in that cycle, whatever works for you. You will commit to your cycle goals in a meeting to everyone else.

- During those 2 weeks, we have several short check-in meetings (15 min max) to follow up on progress, where each of us states in a couple of sentences what they've done since last update, and what they expect to do until the next update. You may also talk about what's blocking you, and maybe ask for help if you want to bounce some ideas. Again, whatever works for you, and whatever you're willing to share with others. 

- At the end of the 2 weeks, we have a chilled "retrospective" where we discuss what we did well and what we could have done better, maybe speak about a problem we had on this cycle, and how other people usually solve them, so that we can learn from each other, and hopefully gradually improve our process. It also acts as a milestone, and believe it or not, gives you a sense of an ending, so that you can start the next cycle anew. It gives you periodic boosts of energy you don't for many weeks if your goal is to finish a screenplay.

- Rinse, repeat.

It creates a little bit of extra work early on to figure out how to break down your work in small tasks, but it's likely to make you more organized, motivated, and pay off in the long run.

We also want to extend this to having feedback sessions, table reads, and whatever we find useful along the way. The advantage of this approach is that you will find peers to share your work with, but you won't be asking a complete stranger to read your script, but someone you had already developed a kind of relationship with.

But the primary reasons for now are better productivity and time management.

If you're interested to give it a go, drop me a message, and I can add you.

Thank you for your time.

Bruno