A short transcript excerpt from Chris Collins' YouTube video "How to BEAT Writer's Block" featuring a conversation about practical routines to overcome creative blocks. Speakers discuss Aaron Sorkin's shower/change-clothes ritual, the mental benefit of showers and walks, using voice dictation (Siri) to capture ideas, and morning coffee and dog-walks as productivity rituals.
Have you ever heard about Aaron Sorkin's routine that he does?
I don't think so.
When he gets stuck, he goes and takes a shower and changes his clothes.
Okay.
And so, well, the shower is a very magical place.
There is something. Some weird alchemy in there because you.
Sometimes you do you hit that automatic hypnosis kind of something happens. Kind of like when you're driving should.
Be this instead of that, which, like, sometimes I get on a walk, but, like, it even because the walk is a longer experience, maybe it feels more impactful because the shower is like, just like a couple minutes in, you're all of a sudden you're, like, unlocking a thing that you had never even thought of. So I'm also now really into the sort of dictation of it all, because I don't want to. I'm trying not to do this as I walk and run into something. So I'm like. If I have an idea, I'm trying to put it on the notes, and I'm just like, this happened, this happened, this happened. And having the Siri trans.
Dictate it.
Dictate it? Yeah.
When you read back the dictation, is it workable?
It's workable for me. If you read it, you'd be like, who? What? Where? Yeah, but it makes sense, like, for me, because also, Siri's not great yet at, like, fully, like, getting all the things.
Yeah, See, I've struggled with that. I've tried that. But at least it, like, gets the.
Thing that I feel like if I don't put this down, it will escape. But then also, if you don't put it down and if it's a good idea, it will come back at some point, I feel.
Do you have any other rituals that you do before you write? Like, do you eat a certain breakfast or anything like that?
No. Coffee.
Oh, yeah. Maybe coffee. Coffee. I can't do anything about coffee. The coffee is the key that unlocks the day. And if I can't have that coffee, I can't work. And I think also, like, I have a mocha pot, and it's a process. I make coffee in the house. So it's. That is maybe my most spiritual moment of the day where I, like, I have my coffee time.
And so if you start to get stuck, you just get up and go for a walk. Yes. That's what breaks it.
Either stuck or, like, a little bit of fatigue. As far as, like, you grinding for a while, I always go for a walk. And then having a dog too. It's. She needs to go out anyway, so she gets to. She gets the benefit of going on long walks where I'm, like, figuring out something.
What do they say? Killing two birds with one stone?
Yeah, basically. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
