Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog

  Here is something I hear from my students all the time: If I only had such and such, or so and so, then everything would be fine. Listen. No one is coming to rescue you. No one out there will save you.  There is no magical event that can change your circumstance or make you more successful. YOU are the only person who is responsible for your current state of being and YOU are the only person who can change that state and improve on it. In fact you can worsen your current state simply by believing that someone or something out there can, might, or will rescue you. That's faulty logic that you may have arrived at by using what psychologists call magical thinking.   You have to accept responsibility for your circumstance and acknowledge that if you don't like where you are and you hate what's happening to you, you MUST do something about it - take action, and do it NOW! The fact is that having faith in a magical solution will only take you further into madness. The first r...

Last couple of days I’ve been trying to fix the end of a novel I’ve been working on. I’m tired and frustrated because I keep thinking everything will repair itself by magic. Trouble is, I know in my heart that’s not going to happen and I’m getting depressed knowing that I will have to approach the ending with a lot more focus and concentration. The whole thing is silly because I know that’s all I have to do: FOCUS, but I can’t bring myself to work properly and I guess it’s out of fear. Partly fear of knowing I’m almost at the end, therefore the wonder of creation will soon stop. But also fear of the amount of work I’ll have to put in to make the ending work well. Sometimes this just happens. Pleasure becomes work and you just have to grit your teeth and get on with the graft. (It’s what a lot of us have to do every day from 9 to 5.) It’s annoying because I’ve enjoyed writing all of the chapters up to this point. About 70,000 words have been fun. But now I realize that the ending won’t ...

  If writers are not owed a living, how the heck do we survive? Following on from last week’s newsletter when I mentioned the WGA writers’ strike, Bill Maher summed up the issues by proclaiming that screen and TV writers shouldn’t expect a guaranteed income. He said that the nature of the industry was so hit and miss that nobody who makes entertainment shows should feel secure. Trouble is - and I can vouch for this personally - TV and movie producers use this attitude to screw writers, all the time. They make them write on spec, for nothing, for as long as possible, letting you know you have no power or influence over a project until the very last second, until they realize the project can go no further without your enthusiastic involvement. That’s the free market, Bill says. That’s how it works. The actors and tech people are on the same deal. When you want to work in the arts, you have to accept that living a life of uncertainty and potential poverty is the trade-off for success,...

  Life is about experimenting, finding out what works for you, what doesn’t, and eventually discovering what makes you happy.  That’s my theory anyway. Many people get trapped in a rut where they think life is about achieving material success. This is often counter-productive, because you will only become happy if you choose the path that is right for you. From the moment we start writing, we’re on a quest to discover what works for us, how to best express ourselves, how words work for us and how we want them to work for our readers. We aspire to gain proficiency, an objective viewpoint, and we sharpen our ability to control our talent, art, and craft. In short, we constantly strive to make ourselves better artists. Given the world we live in, this is not always a smooth journey. During my younger days I did a lot of meditating. Ostensibly to calm myself during times of stress. And believe me, did I experience a lot of stress when I was younger! From horrible jobs, terrible bo...