One mistake that beginning writers often make is to forget about setups and payoffs. Sometimes they’ll have great setups but no payoffs. Other times they’ll invent a fantastic payoff, but fail utterly to set it up. I used to make those mistakes all the time. I’d kick off Act One of a screenplay with all kinds of provocative premises. Then I’d forget about ’em and fizzle my way to a no-bang climax. Or I’d have a dynamite finish that fell unannounced out of the sky. Think about a joke. It has two parts: a setup and a punch line. A…

We were talking last week about acquiring mojo, which I defined as that state when we are going gangbusters in our writing, art, or business. It’s “flow.” It’s “the Zone.” The only problem with having Big Mojo, in my experience, is you can’t keep it up for long. I know I can’t. My nervous system can’t take it. Three weeks maybe, four tops. What do I do then? I flake out. Deliberately. I knock off. I get outa Dodge. I take a break. Years ago, I had a small freelance business. I used to get into trouble because I couldn’t…

We’ve been talking for the past few weeks about thinking in blocks of time, saying no to distractions, and digging in for traction. What’s the point of all this? The point is to produce mojo. According to Wikipedia, mojo is “a magical charm bag used in hoodoo, which has transmuted into a slang word for self-confidence, self-esteem or sex appeal.” Here’s my definition: Mojo is a force field of positive attraction produced by sweat, intention, dedication and love. It’s a groove, a rhythm. It’s “flow.” It’s “the Zone.” Mojo builds up over time. It feeds upon itself. The more mojo…

The last two weeks we’ve been talking in these posts about buckling down and hitting a groove. By that I mean finding and achieving a steady, productive, working rhythm. Traction. Nothing gets stuff done like traction. When the rubber grips the road, we can deliver any payload. Long-range. Cross-country. Anywhere. The opposite of traction is slippage. Spinning our wheels. Starting and stopping. Sputtering. When we achieve traction, we’re actually accomplishing something. We’re shooting film, we’re filling blank pages, we’re structuring our new start-up. For the past two weeks we’ve talked about thinking in blocks of time and saying no. Thinking…

We were speaking last week about returning from a vacation and gearing up to get back in the groove. I said that my first “note to self” would be to start thinking, not in immediate go-go terms, but in longer, extended blocks of time. My second marching order to myself is to start saying no. The aim of these admonitions is to establish a realistic project timetable, to buckle down to a serious working rhythm, and to protect the air space around that timetable and that rhythm. So I’ll stop saying yes to things. First I’ll stop saying yes to…

I’m just home from two weeks’ vacation—and gearing up to get back to work. The first thing I’ll do is stop myself from thinking in terms of immediate gratification. I will make myself think, instead, in blocks of time. I will not put pressure on the first day, or even the first week. Resistance would love me to do that. Resistance knows that if I try to do too much too soon, I’ll fail. Resistance would love to see that happen. So I will remind myself that the enemy is not time. The enemy is Resistance. The wide receiver returning…

[The blog is on vacation this week. Here’s a favorite post from 2009. Back soon!] What happens to us as artists when our personal lives crash and burn? When we’ve lost our spouses or our homes or our minds; when we’ve been betrayed or, worse, betrayed someone else; when it’s three in the morning and sunrise feels like it’s never going to come? Here’s my experience: some of my best work has been done when my personal life was in chaos. This seems to make no sense. How can we do good work when it’s all we can do to…

We had a birth in the family recently—my nephew Justin and his wife Lissa had a healthy baby boy, whom they named Bryce. It got me to thinking about the concept of the Big Payoff. The Big Payoff is central to the American dream. In Westerns, it’s claiming that ten-thousand-acre spread where Ma and Pa can raise the young-uns. In gangster flicks, it’s the last big job that the criminal pulls, when he takes down the U.S. Mint. For the Vegas gambler, the big payoff is the jackpot. For you and me, it might be the dream job, the fantasy…

I heard this from Gen. James Mattis a couple of years ago when he was speaking at Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia. It has proved invaluable to me as a writer. Gen. Mattis was talking to a roomful of young officers. The subject was command and control in combat. If we’re the senior officer, how can we, in the heat and confusion of action, control the men and units beneath us? And if we’re the junior officer, how can we get help and advice from our seniors above? Mattis cited Admiral Horatio Nelson, England’s greatest naval hero. On the…

If you’re a writer or artist or entrepreneur and you sometimes think to yourself, “I have nothing unique to say,” you’re wrong and I’ll tell you why. First, that voice in your head is 100-proof Resistance. It’s bullshit. I get a lot of e-mails from the trenches and, trust me, Resistance is spamming you with the same boilerplate it uses on everyone, including me. So that’s Reason #1 not to listen to that voice. Reason #2 is a lot deeper and more subtle. When we think to ourselves, “I have nothing unique to say,” we are thinking with our surface…