There’s an interesting paradox about working for yourself on the stuff you really love:

You never stop working.

I don’t have trouble finding things to work on. In fact, I have more trouble turning my work OFF and finding ways to relax away from it. But when you love something, do you really want to get away from it?

Here’s what no one tells you about working for yourself on the right stuff.

Tara and I are in the middle of rewriting our second movie script. A well-known director read it and had some great thoughts about how to make it better. So that’s what we’re trying to do.

The actual rewriting process is mostly Tara and I improvising the new scenes (after we’ve outlined what’s supposed to happen in them). The movie is a raunchy comedy, so we are either laughing our asses off, or bashing our heads against the wall because we’re NOT laughing our asses off.

I love writing movies. It’s probably my favorite thing to do in the entire world.

It’s play for us because what we write is an expression of who we are and how we see the world.

It’s fun sitting down and imagining a funny world with characters we want to hang out with.

It’s play. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

Have you ever played a sport? I play hockey and I love it. But it’s exhausting. It’s one of the best cardio workouts you can do, and it’s my highest intensity workout of the week. It’s play, but it’s hard as hell.

It’s the same for writing a movie. It is really, really hard. Probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

Remember what I said about sitting around and just coming up with funny stuff? All of that is done with an enormous amount of craft behind it.

You’ve got to know why your scene exists, where it fits into the structure of the story, what each character wants, where the conflict is coming from, where the comedy is coming from, what the turning point is, where your characters are at emotionally…

All while making sure you’re doing the one thing you always have to do as a writer: tell the truth.

It’s play, but it’s highly structured play. And it requires a ton of mental energy, focus, and perseverance to do.

And once you’re in it, it’s really hard to get away from. Your mind will constantly wander back into the scenes you’ve written and the scenes you’re going to write… asking questions, coming up with ideas, and consuming your conscious (and unconscious) mind.

And I love it. That’s why it’s so hard to get away from.

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The best way I’ve learned to relax is to intentionally swap creating for consuming. Then, “time off” becomes time spent reading about the craft I love instead of practicing it.

Does it look like work to other people? It sure does, when I’m deep into a 480-page book called “Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting,” highlighting passages and scribbling notes to apply to our movie.

But I love to read — whether it’s fiction (also great for getting ideas you can apply to your own stories) or nonfiction, reading almost never, ever feels like work.

And yet it’s all work, all the time.

That’s the trade off of loving what you do. Weekends stop existing. There’s no “vacation” from your craft. You are your craft. And that’s a gift, because it means you’re working for yourself on stuff that matters to you.

Once you get a taste of that, there’s no going back.

Start now. And thanks for reading.

-Thomas

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