Michaela Coel is the best of us. A genius. And I can’t speak to her process. Perhaps this is what she needs and wants to do. But as a writer, I cringe at conflating what often amounts to overwork due to unclear and relentless interventions from producers, with ‘practice.’

There’s a difference between our own tweaks, rewrites, perfectionism, and the relentless ‘let’s try something new in case that fixes what we can’t identify’ persuits of companies and networks. Not that we can’t be guilty of that too. But...overworking writers isn’t ‘practice’.

I only bring this up because the conflation of 191 drafts and ‘practicing 3 hours a day’ is unhelpful and unhealthy. If that’s the truth of Michaela’s experience - that for her it is self-determined (choice is important) practice - that’s awesome.

But for most writers, the truth of 191 drafts will be mistreatment and mismanagement. Not practice. And I just don’t want new writers to see comments like that and think ‘I’ll just keep doing this stupid notes dance, because my work will improve after draft 9.’ You’ll burn out.

You don’t know what is going on in the lives of your idols and heroes when they discuss their process. It’s theirs. You’ll find your own. Your employers will also likely try to bully you into theirs, or they will invoke a story like this to bully you into doing more for less.

And when they do, tell them ‘that’s her/your process, that’s not mine.‘ Tell them what you need to succeed. And if that goes unheard: https://writersguild.org.uk/report-it/ 

In my experience, the writing equivalent of ‘Serena training 3 hours a day’ has been working different, diverse projects. If you can’t get hired, write a new script for you. It’s why I claw my eyes out telling new writers to stop rewriting that same script. It isn’t ‘practice’.

Practice for me has been in experience. All I’ve learned from experiences that included endless, relentless rewrites was that ‘this is bad practice, and no one here has a fucking clue what they want from this, not even me.’ And they burn me out. They make me ill.

That isn’t to say that for some people this can’t be their ideal process. I know it is.

If it isn’t you, that’s ok, and valid, and don’t let anyone tell you it isn’t. Twitter is one thing, but that shit infects your employers.

Practice self-care over ‘practice.’

**For those who’d mention it: I know 191 equals out to about 10 drafts per episode (that’s a lot). The point I’m hopefully making is it’s never clear to outsiders what people mean when they discuss their process, and we shouldn’t use their words to convince others to emulate.

I’m also agonisingly aware that a Black writer is going to be subjected to vastly different pressures and expectations.

Please understand I am not commenting on *this process, rather the use of *any process to influence yours or others’.