Did your New Year’s resolutions include finishing that passion project? Any writing project is daunting. Going from the first blank page to 100 screenplay pages or 300 novel pages is a huge challenge. But the answer to “How do you eat an elephant?” is, one bite at a time. The way to accomplish any goal is incremental progress. Get started and keep going.

Robert Collier, one of the first self-help authors, said: “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.”

Be consistent. Be diligent
Get started. Keep going

When I was a student in the UCLA Master’s in Screenwriting program (oh so many years ago) we had 10 weeks to go from blank page to finished first draft. The way I could meet that deadline time after time was to write 5 pages a day. Just 5 pages. Everyday. I never had to pull all-nighters or hand in an unfinished draft. I was a full-time student then. Five pages may be too much for someone working full time.

1. Have a bite sized manageable writing schedule
   Set a modest daily goal — set aside one hour a day to write
2. Leave yourself a starting place
   When you hit your one hour goal, stop. Stop even if you’re in the middle of a bit of dialogue. Especially if you’re in the middle of character back and forth. That way, when you sit down the next day, you have a jumping off place to give you a push.
3. Press on with the real job
   Research isn’t writing. When you come to a factual or an information gap, don’t Google it and fall down the inevitable rabbit hole. When you have finished that first draft, type “QC” where the missing bit should go, as in “The Sonora Desert, all QC miles of it, stretched before him”. A quick search through your document for “QC” will tell you what fact-checking to do or missing information to fill in.
4. Head down and butt in chair
   Forget advice about finding the right atmosphere to inspire you … You can put up with noise/silence/kids/discomfort/hunger for one hour. (For those 60 minutes all you do is write and don’t allow ANY distractions in) Set a timer and point to it if someone wants to interrupt you.
5. Get help to realize your goal
   I believe so deeply in this approach I wrote an online course that helps writers finish a first draft writing just one hour a day. I started with the presumption that most people using the course had busy work lives, active families, and ongoing social obligations.