Advice

Lessons from being a director – Part 2

Posted by

0

Yesterday I shared perhaps the most important lesson I have learned in my long, long, day-long career as a director.

There is another. Who’d have thought there could be two life lessons from directing?

The lesson is to delegate. I am used to doing everything myself and I’ve often argued that this is good. Whenever you can take on a task yourself, it is great because you know you’ll do it. Waiting for other people so very often means it doesn’t happen.

So I’m not a control freak in that I need things be done my way, I’m a productivity freak in that I need things to be done.

Yesterday’s play needed me to work with the cast but it was in a writing session and there were a lot of people there. Normally I’d fuss over everything, I’d think myself smart for finding a way to incorporate everyone. But there was no time.

I have an assistant when I’m leading these writing groups and yesterday it was poet and writer and journalist Justina Hart. I told her she had an hour and I needed this, this and this. Never gave her another thought, I got right on with the next crisis.

And at the end of the hour I had this, this and this from her and the group. I’ve no idea how she got there but the result wasn’t just what I would’ve done, what I had wanted, it was better. Far and away better.

Let go, William. Tell good people what you want and then get out of their way.

Six Subtle Things Highly Productive People Do Every Day

Posted by

0

I should do me some of these.

Eric Barker, writing in Business Insider, heads the list with this unexpected advice:

If you start the day calm it’s easy to get the right things done and focus.

He's got much more to say about why that works and also what specific steps you can take to make it happen, to make it happen every day. Plus another five detailed things that I know I've done some times. And must do more.

Read the whole piece on Business Insider – though sorry for the irritating ad page you have to tap through first.

Lessons from being a director

Posted by

0

Seriously, listen to me here, I have such a long history of directing. I directed my first play this morning.

It was a ten-minute short written by myself and the Burton Young Writers' Group which we've worked on in a few of the monthly sessions I've led with them this year. Writing West Midlands, which runs the groups, funded the hiring of a real cast to perform the kids' work and it went tremendously.

But the other day, someone asked me if I were directing it and I just said yes.

I had to, there was nobody else who was going to do it, it was just obvious that it would be me as the group's leader. But as soon as I'd said 'yes' aloud, the voice in my head continued with the word 'oh'.

I'd been thinking of the project as a writing one and I suppose a little bit as a producing one. I've been becoming very irritating about producing lately: there's a way to argue that I produced six events over the last six weeks and yeah, yeah, enough already, shut up William. My wife Angela Gallagher has been an event producer and it thrilled me to be doing the same thing, to be able to really learn from her. It's one thing asking her every detail of what she's doing when she's doing it, it's another to be needing to put that into practice for myself.

But I didn't think about directing.

Until this week when I was one of the people casting.

So I recommend becoming a director by default and preferably at speed and even more preferably while also writing and producing. Keeps your mind off it.

And then I now also further recommend directing with as little time to spare as you can.

I had an hour today. But I knew exactly what I wanted. And this is the productivity lesson I taught myself:

If you know what you want, people will do it

If they're good, they'll also question it and improve it and grow it with you, but they are bringing their talent to what you want so just bleedin' get on with deciding it and telling them.

We changed a lot, not least because one actor had a ferociously bad day trying to get to us in time and didn't manage it. We changed oodles.

But I have never been so clear about what I wanted a production to be, not even when I've been writing scripts. And to see it work, to see talented actors do what you want and take it further, I tell you, I'm hooked.

Maybe you have to be a writer and possibly an English writer to really get this but I am used to adapting to what everyone, anyone else wants and to do it this way around felt like just getting on with it. I like getting on with things.

And I loved directing this play. Ten minutes? Young Writers' Group? Sold: it was a career highlight. Especially seeing the faces of the kids as their work was performed. I feel priviliged and happy and that I've learnt a lesson or three.

Go direct something, would you?

That was May 2014

Posted by

0

Previously… I used to report to someone what I’d done in the month, more to make me feel accountable than to actually be accountable, now I carry on with you. The list is sanitised because so much is confidential until things are finished, but.

Also, for the first month in over a year, I failed to make notes as I went along. That rather surprises me, given how much I have felt the benefit of doing this. But it also means that this time I’ve had to rely on checking my calendar and To Do list. Doubtlessly I’ve left things out, which can’t mean much to you but makes me crinkle up my mouth at me.

But now read on for May 2014.

Writing: approximately 61,400 words
The Blank Screen news blog: 157 entries totalling approximately 46,000 words
Self Distract blog: 5 entries totalling approximate 5,400 words
Completed script “Murder at Burton Library”
Approximately 4,000 words of novel
Approximately 6,000 words of non-fiction book

Events:
Produced five events:
Two young writers’ days
One productivity workshop for the Federation of Entertainment Unions
One Steven Knight interview evening for the Screenwriters’ Forum
One theatre event at the Birmingham Rep

Pitches/calls:
Only made 21 calls but was called about two projects and the pitches for both were successful

Meetings:
Attended Royal Television Society committee meeting
Attended Writers’ Guild committee meeting as secretary
Production meeting in a train station bar
An organisation I admire offered to support a new series of books I’m writing/producing
Plus I spent two rather idyllic days away working on a new drama project – and one of my colleagues wrote a poem about it and me. I am blinking as I say that to you. Just… just… wild.

Press:
Doctor Who: Scavenger reviewed in many fan sites including Artron Reviews

One more thing. This is the 500th post on The Blank Screen news site. I’m proud of that: 500 since the end of November last year. Just wanted to tell you and to take a moment to notice it myself.

You’re delusional – but stay that way

Posted by

0

We have no clue. I’m always surprised when someone remembers me, I’m regularly misjudging how meetings went, I haven’t the faintest idea about myself or what in the world I do. But apparently neither does anyone else – or at least, not apart from a very specific few – and apparently it’s also a good thing. It is good and even essential to be completely deluded:

At one end is a black swamp of unrealistic negative opinions about life and your place in it. At the other end is an overexposed candy-cane forest of unrealistic positive opinions about how other people see you and your own competence. Right below the midpoint of this spectrum is a place where people see themselves in a harsh yellow light of objectivity. Positive illusions evaporate there, and the family of perceptions mutating off the self-serving bias cannot take root. About 20 percent of all people live in that spot, and psychologists call the state of mind generated by those people depressive realism*. If your explanatory style rests in that area of the spectrum, you tend to experience a moderate level of depression more often than not because you are cursed to see the world as a place worthy neither of great dread nor of bounding delight, but just a place. You have a strange superpower — the ability to see the world closer to what it really is. Your more accurate representations of social reality make you feel bad and weird mainly because most people have a reality-distortion module implanted in their heads; sadly, yours is either missing or malfunctioning.

You are Now Less Dumb – David McRaney (UK edition, US edition)

The quote is from McRaney’s book but I read it in a Brainpickings.org article about this topic which also pulls in advice from Helen Keller and comments from Hunter S Thompson/

Neither of whom are remotely as good a writer as what I am, like. Hmm. Not sure this is working.

Take a day off

Posted by

0

I’ve been trying to do this all week and especially after Tuesday night. I went to a book event by Pigeon Park Press and had a good time, enjoyed them, bought a book, met friends, it was great. Until I saw a photo of the event posted on Facebook and I looked like a ghost. I am secretly certain I fell asleep on the shoulder of the woman next to me.

So I took Wednesday off.

Completely.

Only worked from 6:30am to 4pm, off to a thing, then back working at about 7pm.

Today I am taking today off. It is Thursday. I am on holiday.

I know this is nice for me and if you’re reading this in your one break during a ferociously busy day, I’m no longer your friend.

But that’s the thing with all this productivity: sometimes you have no choice but to keep going, as when you’re in that ferocious day. Other times you feel you have to keep going because you need the money: a freelance life has its benefits and I’m having the creative time of my life but financially stable, it ain’t. Then – this may be just me, I realise that – you feel you have to keep going because you write books about productivity and you run workshops and you talk about it all the time.

Look at that photograph. I’m the guy with his hand on his face. I swear to god I was probably holding my head up vertical. Which, if nothing else, is extraordinarily rude to the Pigeon Park people.

pigeonI can see now that the woman to my left (your right in the photo) is author Katharine D’Souza. If you see her, please apologise for me.

I’m off for a day out and I hope that you’ll be able to join me some day soon in spirit if not right now today in actuality.

 

Never mind the quality, concentrate on quantity

Posted by

0

Seriously. This is really just a longer way of saying the maxim “don’t get it right, get it done” or how one shouldn’t be paralysed by the search for perfection. But it’s an interesting longer way:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot”albeit a perfect one”to get an “A”.

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work”and learning from their mistakes”the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

What 50 Pounds of Clay Can Teach You About Design – Chanpory Rith, Medium

I think the professor was a bit of a git, knowing that half the class would fail – and which half – yet cheerily lab-ratting them. But I am now very much of the opinion that getting a thing done is important: I find it immensely satisfying to think of something and then make it real.

I’d say, then, that I fully support this idea of saying nuts to perfection, let’s get on with it, except that I’m not. I read a book of flash fiction by an interesting guy who had spoken at an event about getting on with writing, about getting flash fiction done. His big point was that it’s easy and I’m afraid that the writer’s ease is not my concern. The final material is and though one can presume that he’s getting better each time he writes a flash fiction book, as a reader I just saw text that wasn’t very engaging. Great ideas, just not quite there somehow.

So there you are: please sort this out, quality vs quantity. Off you go, let me know how you get on.

David Bowie on creating things and moving on

Posted by

0

I’m not sure why it feels like there’s been a spate of talks becoming animated cartoons, but here’s another one. The animation is fine, I think I’d just like to concentrate on the audio as it’s David Bowie being rather interesting about separating audience reaction from one’s own perception of a piece of your work.

Via Nackblog

Why productive people work on Sundays

Posted by

0

I’m sorry, I don’t understand the headline. What’s Sunday?

Over on LinkedIn, Ilya Pozin – who gets a special badge marked ‘Influencer’, I think it’s like being a prefect – argues reasonably persuasively that Sundays are useful for work:

Sundays aren’t just for rest and recuperation. When used wisely, they’re actually the perfect way to start your week with a bang.

Mondays often feel like a catch-up day from the weekend. There’s usually a full inbox and things that need your immediate attention as soon as you walk into the office. To avoid this productivity-killing situation, I schedule some time for work every Sunday to get my week started with a clean slate.

Why Productive People Work on Sundays – Ilya Pozin, LinkedIn (27 August 2013)

I say he’s reasonably persuasive because if he were very persuasive I’d be working now. As it is, you can choose to read this as persuasive, you can choose to read it as inspirational and then on top of that you can have the extra choice of whether you’re going to get up this morning or just stay right where you are.

Give away your time to get more

Posted by

0

Oh, now I just sound like I write for Hallmark Cards. But, seriously, do things for other people, give your time away and you will have more. Or, okay, it will feel like you've got more time and you will do more: it's the same thing. The site 99U says we suffer from 'time scarcity' and that actually the word 'suffer' is spot-on.

A scarcity mindset turns you into a time miser. You start doing silly things like counting the minutes you spend waiting in line for your coffee or silently cursing every single commuter who slows you down on your way to work. At this point, giving away time seems like the very last thing that you should do.

Yet, saying and acting upon this statement—“I have enough time to be generous with it”—is a surprisingly effective antidote to the time-scarcity mindset. Simply giving your time away to others, even as little as ten minutes, creates a sense of “time affluence.”

In one experiment conducted by professors from Yale, Wharton, and Harvard, people who spent 15 minutes helping to edit research essays by local at-risk students reported that they felt like they had more spare time, committed to spending more time on a follow-up task, and then worked longer on that task. In some magical way, this group of givers was both more productive and felt like they had more time.

We can’t control what happens during our days, but we can control how we react. Usually, “busy” is a state of mind—a trap we can, and should, strive to avoid. Reframe your outlook, and your productivity (and mental health) will thank you.

Escaping the Time-Scarcity Trap – Janet Choi, 99U

Choi has a lot more to say about time management: give her a read.