You have this amazing idea for INSERT CREATIVE WRITING PROJECT HERE. It excites you and you just know it’s going to be great. So, you get to work. You pour ideas out in a flutter of ecstatic creative flow. You’re swimming in the endorphins of creativity and you’re in love. This is the honeymoon period.

Then, it stops. Things go silent. You start to see the flaws in your idea. You wonder, was this really a good idea to begin with, because honestly, it’s not working. Maybe it’s too hard because it’s not good at all. What were you thinking to take this on? But then again, maybe you just need to work on it to solve the problems you’re facing because you have faith in it. You believe in this project.

So you work. No one can accuse you of being lazy. You research tips and creativity tricks, you read up on the academics of story, you ask Google how to get this done, you watch Youtube tutorials and talks. But something is missing. You are stalling and the process is frustrating. Maybe you’re just not good enough; that has to be it, otherwise, all of these lists, tips and motivational quotes would have worked, right?

Wrong.

When it comes to writing stories (or building any project from scratch), learning your own creative process is just as important as the content itself.

Let me put it another way: figuring out how you get sh*t done, will allow you to produce more work, which will in turn make your work better.

I wrote an article about the 3 levels of my methodology: CREATIVITY, TECHNIQUE and DEADLINE. Creativity is the ability to express yourself and there are tools you can actively practice that will conjure up your ideas (even when you don’t feel like it). Creativity tools are essential, but to write a good story, they do not function alone; technique must be imposed to make sense of the mess. The creative process is the toggle back and forth between CREATIVITY and TECHNIQUE in order to finish work on a regular basis. When to use which tools and how, that is personal to your own creative process and its essential for any writer to learn this. What I found at FADE IN: (the creative writing hub I founded in Beirut), is that writers can get stuck in a loop of never finishing. The final step is: DEADLINE. No matter how busy you are or what your day job is like, it is very possible to meet the deadlines you set for yourself and make writing part of your lifestyle.

At FADE IN:, we continually test the balance between CREATIVITY, TECHNIQUE and DEADLINE. Here are some of our success stories in 2018 alone:

Maha Zawil, completed a full rewrite of her first novel
Nora Lebbos, completed her first novel
Tala Kardas, 60+ pages of her first novel in under two months
Raya Hajj, 40+ pages of her first novel in under two months
Diala Saab, 30+ pages of her first novel in one month
Willem Van De Reit, completed 3 short stories and counting in the span of 2 months
Maysoun Hussein, 50+ pages of her first feature script in under 2 months
Ninette Abi Atallah, 60+ pages of her first feature script
Yasmine Abu Haidar, completed her first short story in 2 weeks time

This is why we have dubbed 2018 the Year of the Deadline. It’s possible and it’s worth it.