Don’t Break the Chain - Jerry Seinfeld's Method for Creative Success

By The Writers Store

Most people resolve to lose weight, dreaming of the day they can hold up their "fat jeans," as if in a weight-loss commercial. We want to hold up a few freshly printed scripts and know we've created something tangible.

Others might hope to finish their first triathlon this year. We hope to finish a screenplay, a one-hour pilot, and a half-hour comedy spec.

This year, I'm gonna write more. It's a popular resolution amongst our crowd. It's a great goal, but it's vague.

Then again, maybe some of us promised to write every day. That's even better.

But just like hitting a plateau at the gym, we sometimes lose the steam that once powered a new and exciting story idea. We take one day off, which turns into two days off; eventually, we find ourselves opening up a document only to realize it hasn't been touched in two weeks – or more.

Let's say you do write most of the time, but you take one or two days off each week for any number of reasons. That's still a lot of writing. But consider this: at the end of the year, that's roughly 10 weeks, or 2.5 months' worth of days that you didn't write anything.

That's where Jerry Seinfeld's productivity tip "Don't Break the Chain" comes in. MORE...