Monday, December 12, 2005

Wanna know a WHOLE LOT about Judd Apatow?

Of course you do.

In particular I like his theory of the "Vomit Pass"

"I read a book by Ann Lamott called “Bird by Bird,” and in the book she talks about the “Down-Up Theory” — “Get it down, then fix it up” — and how you shouldn’t judge yourself when you’re writing your first draft. That should be a moment for pure creativity, and being too hard on yourself prevents you from finishing.

So I’ve taken that advice. I call it a “vomit draft,” which means I try to write a first draft really fast and not judge myself — and then I look at it and see what the hell happened, then deal with it in a more critical way.

Other people I worked with when I was a show-runner on TV shows could literally sit in a room and obsess for hours and hours over whether or not to put a comma somewhere. And you could see how much pain they were in as they were writing, because they were judging the work as they were writing it — and that’s impossible. I guess it’s possible — some people do it — but those are the people that take a long time to write, or suffer through it."

No comments: