Leila Djansi opens up about the pain and discipline behind her writing

Filmmaker Leila Djansi has hared insight into her creative process, revealing how grief, discipline and years of painstaking revision have shaped her work behind the scenes.

She said the last three years of her film career have been dedicated almost entirely to script doctoring, a role she described as challenging but deeply rewarding.

“My work in the film industry for the past 3 years has been script doctoring. I get sent scripts to read, edit, rewrite, or do spec writing. Writing can be hard.

“And between grief and depression, it’s not been easy. But it has been the most rewarding journey of my career, because laaawwwwd. It is so easy to judge other people’s work, and forget you are human too,” she wrote in a Facebook post sighted by MyNewsGh.

Djansi explained that the experience has changed how she approaches her own projects, forcing her to detach emotionally in order to elevate the storytelling.

“Now, I go back to my own past projects and scripts and approach them as a complete outsider. A critic. Making sure absolutely none of Leila is there. Just the characters. I step aside so the story can breathe.”

For her, writing requires both emotional honesty and structural integrity. She described this season of her life as one that has “disciplined” her in the fundamentals of the craft.

“This is something I knew, but this season disciplined me in that writing is an act of pure honesty. And in honesty is logic; structure.

Question everything. WHY? WHAT? It’s hard work. You will read a 120-page script 120 times. For a month. A year. Two years. Three years. You will be reading that same script. And rewriting.”

Djansi added that clarity only arrives when ego and fear are pushed aside. “And when you remove your ego, apathy, and worry from the work, the characters begin to speak.

“When you allow yourself to grow through pain and discipline instead of collapsing under it, your craft becomes sharper and your voice becomes clearer.”

She ended her reflection with a quote that captures the essence of her journey,“Because, ‘it is in the quiet crucible of your private suffering that your noblest dreams are born and that God gives the greatest gifts in compensation for what you have endured,’” she wrote.