The 7 Minute Writer

Since I was a little kid,

I always loved writing.

I think maybe because of the

Encouragement from my mum,

It was the first job

I ever wanted to have.

And now as an adult I find,

Even more so than acting,

It gives me an outlet.

Its therapeutic.

Whether it be a script, an article,

A journal entry decoding my thoughts,

Even just a to do list…

It’s one of the few areas of my life

That I feel I have complete control.

And so I’ve  tried

Many different ways

To be a writer over the years.

Screen writing is an area that

I’ve become very passionate about.

The visual form of story telling,

Along with the study of

Character and psychology

I find it so bloody fascinating.

But the other day,

I read a script.

Not just any script.

A brilliant script.

The story…

Was rich.

The characters,

Tortured, yet hilarious.

Their plight, honest.

Their wants and needs,

Their victories and defeats,

Left me with a sense of desperate melancholy.

Because I didn’t want the story to end.

I didn’t want to leave these characters behind.

To me it seemed,

Perfect.

I was so swept up.

I told my partner,

I told my friends,

I even told my agent about it.

That script was so good,

It nearly made me want to quit writing.

How can I call myself a writer

When I can’t write like that?

Well…

Before I quit,

Time to put it all into perspective.

I’ve been writing for only a few years.

I’m a baby in the game.

So, of course,

I’m not going to have it all figured out.

Also…

This particular writer had been working

on that same script for many years.

Literally, for as long as I’ve been learning to write,

Had they been developing this one story.

And in considering all this,

It served as an incredible reminder:

A masterpiece doesn’t occur over night.

It got me thinking…

Of a solo trip I made to Europe in my 20s.

I visited Florence,  Italy.

Quite by chance.

Somebody told me it was a nice place to visit,

So off I went.

I wasn’t aware that it was

Where Michelangelo’s

Statue of David

Is  housed in a gallery.

I remember walking into that room.

A long hall.

It was quite dark.

But right at the end,

Bathed in white light,

Stands the famous statue.

It took my breath away.

I cried looking at it.

It is that incredible.

And I understood immediately

Why it’s considered one of the

World’s greatest pieces of art.

Then I noticed something else.

Lining the walls that lead

All the way to the David,

Are more sculptures.

But these ones…

Are rough,

Chipped,

Unfinished.

These statues,

I would learn,

Are known as

“The Slaves”.

This is because they all look like

People, trapped in stone,

Who will be desperately trying to escape

For all eternity.

And in these unfinished statues,

You can see the

individual chisel marks,

Where Michelangelo chipped away,

over and over and over.

There are literally hundreds of thousands

Of chisel marks in each stone,

On statues he never completed.

No one talks about them!

All I knew about was

The final product.

The masterpiece.

But it became obvious to me,

That is where Michelangelo’s genius lay.

In The Slaves

You can see Michelangelo's painstaking

Process.

And that, my friends, is the key.

How can I learn to write like that?

How can I ever hope to become that good?

The answer is making a repeatable habit

Out of your practice.

In pursuit of anything,

Acting,

Writing,

Music,

Pottery,

Gardening,

Cooking…

What is your process?

Fall in love with your process

And let the rest take care of itself.

When it came to finding a

Process for writing

That I enjoyed,

I worked out that if wrote for 7 minutes per day,

At the very least,

I would call myself a writer.

Why 7 minutes?

Why not ten? Or five? Or twenty?

Forty, an hour?

For me,

It’s simple:

7 feels doable.

I have a two kids

A three year old,

And a four month old.

That in itself is a lot.

I act,

I teach,

I coach,

I do voice overs,

I exercise,

I try to be a decent partner.

Hell, some weeks I've worked

As a runner on film sets

To  help look after my family.

What I’m saying is,

There isn’t heaps of time in

Every day for writing.

But 7 minutes…?

That doesn’t feel intimidating.

It feels easy.

Repeatable.

And thats the key

To creating a new habit

And more importantly,

Sticking with it.

Making a new habit

Something you can achieve achieve daily.

7 minutes

Feels like one tiny chisel mark.

One tiny chisel mark today.

A few tomorrow.

A few more the next day.

And I can build towards my own “masterpiece”.

To me, this sounds way more energising than

Writing for 8 hours one day,

Then not writing for three weeks.

And if I’m having a shitty day,

Suffering from crushing self-judgment…

7 minutes isn’t that much time

To spend, sitting at my computer.

Take it from Taika Waititi:

“Sometimes writing is opening up your laptop,

Staring at a blank page on Final Draft for about 8 hours

And then feeling sad, then closing it.

That’s still classified as writing”.

Well, I can do that

For 7 minutes…

But more often than not,

Once I start the 7 minutes,

Because I’ve made a little time,

And it gives me energy,

I just want to keep writing and writing.

Chiselling away.

The process becomes the reward itself.

So when thinking of how you might

Start a new habit,

Or building on your existing ones,

Set the bar low enough

That you feel the reward of

Personal accomplishment

Many times

Before raising the bar.

Ask yourself this question

What would this look like if it were easy?

And make it so.

Making your habits easy and repeatable,

Is the fastest way to maintaining them.

So,

Show up…

Do your 7 minutes

And get on with your day.

It’s not a lot of time.

Enough time for a writing exercise.

Maybe two.

Or even just word vomit a few shitty lines of dialogue.

On a good day I’ve sometimes

Punched out a whole crappy scene…

It doesn’t matter.

I’m just chucking sand in the sandpit.

I’ll build the sand castles later.

This habit is simply about showing up

For that 7 minutes

And giving something

To your craft.

This is equally applicable for acting.

Showing up for 7 minutes of accent work,

Monologue prep,

Reading over a new acting tool,

Preparing your scene for class…

Honestly, 7 minutes per day,

While not a lot,

Is heaps more than nothing.

And can yield enormous results.

Let me give you an example of

This principle in action.

Throughout Covid,

I started writing.

I’d never written anything in my life

Outside of some heavily plagiarised

Stories from my high school days.

A friend of mine, on the other hand,

Had written quite a lot.

He’d published some short stories

And written numerous films.

So we decided to work together to pass

Covid together.

He had a single piece of advice

That I will carry with me until I die.

“Don’t look back, just finish”.

And during a single year

My friend and I would Zoom

Once a week for ninety minutes sessions

And before the year was up

I had co-written my first screenplay.

Something I was and still am

Incredibly proud of.

I was so excited because I felt like

I knew by simply showing up each week

And doing the work,

I could move towards creating something

That really mattered to me.

Now.

With everything that’s going on,

I’m definitely not going to promise myself

To sit down for ninety minutes every day to write.

That’s crazy.

During Covid,

I didn’t have any kids,

And I was stuck inside all day…

I was happy to dedicate as much time to

Writing as possible.

These days however,

I simply don’t have the time and discipline

To do that.

Particularly all by myself!

In the years after Covid ended,

I started working on all the ideas that

That had been rattling around in my brain for years.

But finally with a sense of a simple

And easy process to follow.

So I would promise myself 7 minutes a day

And work as often as I could for longer stretches.

And using this technique,

I completed my first solo screenplay

Which is being developed by Screen Australia

And Screen NSW

All whilst having children.

7 minutes a day

Is nothing to sneeze at.

***

Thinking back to that script that I read,

The one I loved so much;

I was invited to be a part of an event

For production companies and

Other funding bodies

To read the script aloud

To encourage them to

Come on board with

Production funding

For the project.

As we read it,

I realised something.

It’s not perfect.

It was long…

It could do with another edit.

The characters need refining

Despite it being brilliant,

It wasn’t until I heard it out loud,

And spoke to people afterwards

That I realised,

That the work of the writer

Was still going to continue.

And while I still think it’s fantastic.

And and am certain it will get made…

It’s not quite a masterpiece.

Not yet.

There’s always room for improvement.

There is always room for a few more chisel marks.

By focussing on creating an easy

And repeatable habit of your process

You can move towards creating your own

Masterpiece.

7 minutes a day is all it takes.

Dx