Is This the End for Our Script?

I'm at 50 pages now. Halfway there. I have 9 days left. And I think I'm calling it quits.

I'm just not enjoying this particular screenplay, and I have too little time to work on it. I end up feeling resentful of work and my family, because I don't have time for creative pursuits. Like last night. Edythe's working on a molar and an incisor. She was up until 10 in pain and screaming. Christopher and I had to have a Big Talk about whether he's going to school full-time next year or working full-time next year, involving spreadsheets and budget analysis. I went to bed at midnight with an again-screaming baby, with no writing done.

Tonight, instead of finishing painting the bathroom, or cleaning up from dinner, or folding laundry, or actually spending time with my husband, I'm in front of the computer again trying to accrue pages on this project I really dislike. And why? I already know I can write something long, in a limited amount of time. If I'm going to dedicate the time now, I need to enjoy myself doing it (or at least feel like I'm working out some compelling artistic problem). This feels like torture, and pointless.

I hate giving up on things, but sometimes it's worse not to.

I guess I'll sleep on it, see how I feel tomorrow. If I quit, I'll take a break for a few weeks, and then start on a smaller, less ambitious project without the deadline.

Inch by Inch

I made a little progress today, while Edythe was napping. I'm at 42 pages now. I should be at 63, but since I started at 28 today, and made so much progress, I have hope that I might actually finish this thing by the end of April. Maybe.

I Hate Celtx and/or My Laptop

I had a long day of training. A really long day. I didn't sit down to write until 10:15. I wrote furiously for 30 minutes. I wrote 5 pages! I saved them twice.

When I shut down Celtx, it asked if I wanted to save my pages.

Yes! I said, although I'd already saved them twice.

And then my pages were gone.

I am mad. And I am much too tired to type them all again. I am so far behind already, this makes me furious. I don't have the time or the heart to retype them now, and by tomorrow they'll be lost from my brain for good.

Away

I'm out of town at training, with long days and no computer. So I'm trying to cram a lot of writing into a very short time late at night.

The good news is, I think I'm to the point of not caring how bad this project is. I just want to get to 100 pages and finish it.

Total so far: 28/100

Need to Go to Bed Now

Got some good ideas while out walking today.

Watched The Office and 30 Rock. Great shows. Hilarious writing. How did they think up Dwight?

Wrote some pages. Now need to make lunches. Feed cats. Wash dishes. Stop talking like cave woman.

Page Count: 10/100.
Should be at 33.4 today.

Progress

Okay. I have an outline. I have a bunch of index cards with scenes, settings, objectives, and arcs written on them. And now I'm starting to work on writing the screenplay. Again.

I think I have a much better idea of what I'm doing now, though.

Page Count: 4 out of 100.
Should be at page: 30.
But it's okay, I can catch up. I think.

Oh Thank Goodness

For the past few days, I haven't been posting about writing, because I haven't been writing.

I've decided that the screenplay I started wasn't worth continuing with.

I got through NaNoWriMo and wrote a novel, knowing it wasn't very good but wanting to see it through to the end, to prove to myself that I could complete it. This time, though, I want to devote my energy to something that might, possibly, produce a finished product I'd be willing to show someone. At least to my husband.

Over the past few days, I read a lot of scripts. I read Blake Snyder's Save the Cat. And I pitched a lot of ideas to my husband, in between entertaining his mother, who's in town for the week, switching day care providers for Edythe (a trauma unto itself), continuing with bathroom repairs, and having more of our ever-popular "what are we doing with our lives?" conversations. It's been a fun week!

But tonight I had a breakthrough, I outlined a plot I really like, I have an idea I'm passionate about, and I think things will progress better for the rest of the month. I hope so, anyway.

Slogging On

I've been reading screenplays during lunch every day, on daily script. It's a fascinating exercise, because screenplays and stage plays are paced so very differently, with much shorter scenes and all the point-of-view and shot information included in the screenplay. I'm finding I really have to have a picture in my head of what the finished product would look like, not just what the dialog would sound like. It's a good challenge.

But reading really excellent screenplays every day can give a beginner a bit of a complex, a bit of a feeling that what I'm writing is real crap.

But I'm slogging on, there's no other way to improve.

Today's count: 4 pages out of 3.33 needed
Total of: 11 out of 100 written

No Foolin'

I wrote 7 pages today. Pretty good! Of course I'm suspicious as to why it's all going so smoothly (am I writing crap? I am! I know I am!), and I'm worried that I'm spending too much time on exposition, but that's what a second draft is for, right? Fixing things? For now, I'm just trying to get it all on paper.

Script Frenzy is a little different than NaNoWriMo in that the goal is a daily page count, not word count. With NaNo, I needed 1667 words per day to make my goal of 50,000 in the month. For Script Frenzy, I need 3.34 pages per day to reach my goal of 100 for the month.

So far, so good! This actually seems more natural to me than novel writing, for some reason. Maybe it was all those years of script reading. Or of movie watching. At any rate, I'm having fun.

Total Pages for today: 7 out of 3.33
Total Pages written: 7 out of 100

I have to say, it did help that Edythe is feeling better and did not spend 4 hours screaming like she did last night. A healthy, sleeping baby definitely helps with the productivity. Supportive husbands who do many chores while I write are extremely helpful as well.

All Ready?

Script Frenzy launches in a little less than 8 hours. Let's see how I'm situated to begin the process, shall we?

Basic plot synopsis. Check.
Outline. Not done.
All characters named. Uh, maybe I'll do that tonight?
Locations finalized. Sort of.
Sick daughter well again. I hope so. I called Christopher this afternoon, and he said Edythe's doing better than yesterday, and she doesn't seem to have the fever that's been plaguing her for the past week. So that's good.
Home remodeling projects from the great flood of December finished. Almost. There are still some pieces of wall missing in the bathroom. I need to paint the other half of the shower room tonight. Aaaaaand there's that whole plastering thing going on in the WC, with the dust and the yeah, it's going great.
Caught up on other home projects so I can focus on this. No.
Etsy shop up and running. No. Will have to wait until Script Frenzy is over, I fear. Plus, that will give me more time to obsess over my items being Not Good Enough.
Read other screenplays for sense of style and structure. I read one during lunch today, that counts, right?
Script-formatting software downloaded onto computer. No. And Christopher's in class tonight, so I guess that will have to wait until tomorrow night.
A sense of confidence that this project will be less crappy than the last one. Definitely not.
A sense that I'm going to charge ahead anyway. YES!

Work It Out

Having a sick baby is no fun. I feel like she's been sick every other week this year. But it is spring now, and surely the warm breezes will abolish those germs, right?

Tonight she had a fever of 101, for the second day in a row. I'd had her cooped up in the house all day, so I took her for a walk tonight to show her the trees blooming in the neighborhood. And while we walked, I worked out my plot for Script Frenzy. This is a pretty good tool, actually. I kept talking to her, trying to tell her the story in a way that made sense and was compelling, and that act of relating it through the spoken rather than written word seemed to make a big difference to me. Fortunately, she doesn't have the vocabulary for criticism or embarrassment yet.

After she went to bed I jotted it all down, so I don't forget what brilliant thoughts/incoherent ramblings I just had. There are still some plot points I'm trying to work out, and I may change my mind about all this tomorrow, but tonight I'm pretty excited about it.

Kvetching

Writing blog entries is like screaming into the darkness. Does anyone hear me? No one? Someone creepy? Some snarky troll? I don’t tend to get a lot of feedback on here, obviously, although a few people comment via e-mail. (Thanks, Aunt!) But for the most part, I put ideas out, and get nothing back. Which perhaps would be a good analogy for the process of trying to get published, although in that case one usually gets a rejection letter, at least.

It’s also kind of odd, writing about the writing process, because so much of it is private. It’s one thing to talk about a daily wordcount, as a way of holding myself accountable. It’s another to talk about my process in-depth.

But Script Frenzy begins in a week, so I’m guessing that soon I’ll be posting up a storm. I’m developing an idea that I’m excited about, and creating an ever-increasing and detailed plot summary. I think I’ll write a screenplay this time. And if, somewhere far down the road, someone crafts a pair of million-dollar shoes for my big feet, you can bet I’ll wear them.

Hello Again

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted. I really haven't felt like sitting in front of a computer lately. I do enough of that at work. I've been seeing my family, repairing my house, and designing items for my soon-to-open etsy shop. So I've been creative, just not in the writerly way that I report here.

But spring is in the air, and a young lady's thoughts turn to dark theatres and Script Frenzy. I went to sign up today, but lo and behold, I had already registered and forgotten about it. Oops.

So now I'm signed up, with a password I remember and everything. I'm trying to settle on an idea now, so I can do my research before I start. I think this process will be a little easier for me than diving into writing a novel for the first time. It just feels more familiar, from all those years in theatre, working on various aspects of script development. But we'll see what I think a month or two from now, right?

Happy Holly Daze!

We are all in a tither at Chez Blue finishing approximately 1,000 Christmas projects, so this blog will likely go dark until the new year. But fear not, more writing projects are on the horizon, along with more kvetching! I have recently resurrected a play I've been working on, an adaptation of a 19th-century novel that I love. And my goal is to finish it before ScriptFrenzy in April, when I want to work on something original. More on that later.

But for now, happy holidays to you! I hope you're enjoying lots of excellent cookies!

But How Did You Find the Time?

This is the other question I get a lot.

To be honest, finding time to write was much easier than I had anticipated. No Plot, No Problem and the NaNo forums are full of helpful/panicky ideas, like cooking and freezing a month's worth of dinners and chopping up a whole bunch of veggies ahead of time, because you won't have time to cut your own vegetables in November!!!!!! And you'd better hire a maid because you won't be able to put your own laundry in the washing machine!!!!!

Pish posh.

Here's what I did:
Wrote during lunch breaks at work.
Wrote after Edythe went to bed (generally between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m.) or during her naps on weekends.
Did some extra cleaning/organizing at the end of October so I could slack a bit in November.
Cut way back on internet time.*
Rarely watched TV. **
Tried not to start too many craft projects.
When I got stuck on one part of the story, jumped to another part. Or if I was bored, ended the scene and started a new one. If I was sick of a character, I stopped including her. It's my book, I can do what I want.
Rarely worked out.***

On the grand scale of busy times in my life, this past month doesn't rate anywhere near as high as, say, graduate school, or tech for virtually any show I've done. Or wedding planning. Or having a newborn.

If you're considering participating next year, I say go for it! You can find the time! If you want to.

It's the wanting to that's key.

I'm still writing 1k/day for fun, and can't wait for Script Frenzy in June!

*I think this is critical. I can't help but roll my eyes at the people stuck at 25,000 words today, but with a hundred posts by their NaNoWriMo profiles. That's increasing the wrong wordcount!
**This wasn't a change I made, but I think it did have an effect on my writing time, so I'm listing it.
***Okay, this one was bad. But it also had to do with the time/weather change (it's now dark and cold out so I can't take E for walks when I get home).