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What is a #writesprint?

March 19, 2020 General, How-To, Psych 101

A #writesprint is a timed writing session. For a set period — often 60 minutes but sometimes shorter — you sit down and focus all your attention on writing.

No checking Twitter. No Googling lyrics. No running to the kitchen for a snack.

Just write.

It doesn’t have to be screenwriting; you can #writesprint a term paper, a novel or a blog post. The important thing is that you’re writing something you want or need to write.

A #writesprint is about showing up. It’s designed to get your butt in the seat, fingers on the keyboard.

When the timer ends, stand up and walk away. You can come back to do more writing later, even another sprint, but definitely reward yourself for having done the work.

You can do a #writesprint by yourself, but it often helps to have the social pressure and accountability of others. I’ll occasionally announce on Twitter that I’m about to start a #writesprint:

Back to things I can control: I’m starting a #writesprint at the top of the hour. One task, 60 minutes, no stopping. Who’s in?

— John August (@johnaugust) March 18, 2020

If you want to write along with me, reply or favorite or just start. You never need permission. If you want to brag about how much you got done during your sprint, go for it!

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need any special equipment or software? Not really. You can set a timer on your phone. If you’re using Highland 2, the built-in Sprint function will keep track of your words, which is handy.

Do I need to start at the top of the hour? No. It’s convenient but not necessary. When I was writing the Arlo Finch books, I found it useful to schedule two sprints a day, generally at 10am and 2pm.

Can I use a #writesprint to do non-writing work?
Of course! If it’s something you’re kind of dreading doing, but a timer and some social pressure helps, go for it.

Where did this idea come from?
I might have created the #writesprint hashtag,1 but I definitely got the idea from Jane Espenson, who’s been doing these for years. (She calls them writing sprints, which sounds better but doesn’t hashtag as neatly.) And of course it shares a tradition with the Pomodoro Technique and other productivity hacks.

Will this really boost my productivity?
If you’re spending a fixed amount of time at the keyboard concentrating on one thing to write, you’re going to get more accomplished than if you’re jumping between email and YouTube and various news sites. It’s like putting blinders on a horse. It keeps you focused.

How short can a #writesprint be?
You can get a lot done in just 10 minutes of focused writing. Don’t be afraid to set short sprints.

Can I go longer than 60 minutes?
If you’re in the flow and decide you want to keep working past the bell, that’s your choice. But don’t set out to write for more than 60 minutes. The idea of a sprint is that it’s intense and focused. It’s a different energy than a marathon.

  1. I’ve deleted my old tweets, but the earliest appearance of #writesprint is in 2011, which is when I started doing them. ↩

Professionalism in the Age of the Influencer

November 20, 2019 Film Industry, Follow Up, General, International, Random Advice

On October 24, 2019, I presented the Hawley Foundation Lecture at Drake University. It was an update and reexamination of a 2006 speech on professionalism I originally gave at Trinity University, and later that year at Drake.

What follows is a pretty close approximation of my speech, but hardly a transcript. It’s long, around 14,000 words. My presentation originally had slides. I’ve included many of them, and swapped out others for links or embedded posts.

If you’re familiar with the earlier speech and want to jump to the new stuff, you can click here.


Back in 2006, I gave a speech here at Drake entitled “Professional Writing and the Rise of the Amateur.” In it, I presented my observations and arguments about how the emergence of the internet had made the old distinctions between amateurs and professionals largely irrelevant. Tonight I want to revisit that speech and look at what still makes sense in 2019, and more importantly, what I got wrong.

To do that, we need to start with a bit of time travel so we can all remember what 2006 looked like.

Here’s Facebook:

facebook 2006

Here’s Twitter:

twitter 2006

Here’s Netflix:

netflix home screen 2006

Here’s Reddit:

reddit 2006

Here’s Instagram:

instagram debuted in 2010

Oh, 2006 was a simpler time. The internet existed, but it wasn’t as all-consuming as it is now. We had blogs. We had MySpace. But we didn’t have the internet on our iPhones. Because iPhones wouldn’t come out for another year.

However, even in this innocent age, issues would arise that would feel very familiar today. We had fake news and trolls and pile-ons.

For example, back in 2006, I started my speech with this anecdote:

> On March 21, 2004, at about nine in the morning, I got an email from my friend James, saying, “Hey, congrats on the great review of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Ain’t It Cool News!”

Let’s start by answering, What is Ain’t It Cool News? It was a movie website started by a guy named Harry Knowles. It looked like this:

aicn 2006

Ain’t It Cool News billed itself as a fan site. I’d argue that it was an incredibly significant step towards today’s fan-centered nerd culture, for better and for worse. Online fandom has brought forth the Avengers and fixed Sonic the Hedgehog’s teeth, but it’s also unleashed digital mobs upon actors and journalists, women in particular.

Back in 2006, the nexus of movie fandom was Ain’t It Cool News. It wasn’t just a barometer of what a certain class of movie fan would like; it could set expectations and buzz. Studio publicity departments checked it constantly.

So, back to my email from James. He’d written:

> “Hey, congrats on the great review of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Ain’t It Cool News!”

This was troubling for a couple of reasons.

First off, the movie hadn’t been shot yet. We weren’t in production. So the review was actually a review of the script. Studios and filmmakers really, really don’t like it when scripts leak out and get reviewed on the internet, because it starts this cycle of conjecture and fuss about things that may or may not ever be shot. So I knew that no matter what, I was going to get panicked phone calls from Warner Bros.

I click through to Ain’t It Cool and read this “review.” And it’s immediately clear that it’s a complete work of fiction.

aicn article 2006

The author of the article, “Michael Marker,” claims to have read the script, but he definitely hasn’t. He’s just making it up. It is literally fake news.

Fortunately, back in 2004, I knew exactly one person at Ain’t It Cool News. His name was Jeremy, but he went by the handle “Mr. Beaks.” So I emailed him, and say, hey, that review of the Charlie script is bullshit.

Actually, I don’t say that. I say, “That guy is bullshitting you.” It’s not that I’m wronged, no. It’s that that guy, Michael Marker, is besmirching the good name of Ain’t It Cool News by trying to pass off his deluded ramblings as truth. How dare he!

And it works. Mr. Beaks talks to Harry Knowles, and Harry posts a new article saying that the review was bogus.

aicn article screenshot

They don’t pull the original article, but oh well. It’s basically resolved.

I can’t help but think — this article was wrong, but it was really, really positive. What if it had been negative? Would Mr. Beaks or Harry Knowles have believed me? Probably not. They would have said, “Oh, sour grapes.” My complaining would have made the readers believe the bogus review even more.

It might have led to the Streisand effect, where complaining about something just brings more attention to it.

Back in 2006, if you tried to really go after any of these film-related sites, criticizing them for say, running a review of a test screening or just outright making shit up, you’d get one standard response:

> Hey, we’re not professional journalists. We’re just a bunch of guys who really love movies.

Their defense is that they’re amateurs, so they can’t be held to the same standards of the New York Times or NBC.

That became the topic of my speech in 2006: the eroding distinction between professionals and amateurs.

The classic, easy distinction is that the professional gets paid for it, while the amateur doesn’t. For a lot of things, that works. You have a professional boxer versus an amateur. You have a professional astronomer versus an amateur — some guy with a telescope in his back yard.

[Read more…] about Professionalism in the Age of the Influencer

Craig is running a few minutes behind

September 4, 2015 General, Los Angeles

Recording the podcast today, Craig apologized for being a few minutes late, “like always,” he said. “No worries,” I said. After all, it’s just Skype.

But Craig’s comment got me looking through my Messages history. What follows is a very slightly redacted version of our entire conversation thread since the start of Scriptnotes.

message thread

Craig is still the best co-host in the universe.

Happy Labor Day weekend!

The forgotten fine print

September 22, 2012 General

Whitney Pastorek writes in praise of the Credit CARD Act of 2009, which reins in some egregious business practices:

The history of the credit card is fascinating, and I didn’t know much about it until I started researching. A few special moments stand out: Like how when the first general purpose credit cards started to appear in the late ‘50s, banks would simply mail them to people. None of this namby-pamby “you’re pre-qualified!” letter nonsense that keeps the U.S. Postal Service in business these days. They would just send the damn thing out, and you could go spend money you didn’t have, right then and there.

Credit cards are a for-profit business, but too often they’ve been used to trap even savvy consumers into never-ending loops of debt.

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