The Writing Week part 1

Until I come up with a catchier title for it, the weekly update I'd mentioned I was going to begin putting on the blog is called The Writing Week (I know, they gave me a degree for that?). We're seven days into 2008, and to be completely honest, I haven't written yet this year. So, this is where I start. This is my first Writing (or lack-thereof in this case) Week.

Tomorrow, come Hell or High Water (let's hope not) and with amazing will power, I plan to overcome my laziness (correct word?) and put fingers to the keyboard. At the moment, I don't think I will be starting a completely new project. No, I already have three pages written!

In all seriousness, though, the outlining stage is the hardest for me. Oddly, I didn't do it the last time I wrote a play, and I was quite content with the draft I produced of it. Much more pleased than I typically am with first drafts of screenplay that I have outlined. Maybe that's because of the difference in mediums. In a play, characters seem to have much more room to ramble on and find the point of what they're trying to say. In a screenplay, they have to get right to the point, often as subtly or subtext heavy as possible, and then get out of the scene (or have it leave them). Personally, I feel a screenplay requires much more outlining, so the notion of doing that first step is always daunting.

Yet, even with these first three (solid, I feel) pages, I wonder if I really want to pursue the project in mind. Maybe I want to do a play. I don't really have another screenplay in mind at the moment. I think I'm just allowing myself to be intimidated by the inevitable outlining. But, once that process--typically, if I really focus and eat, sleep, and breathe it, it lasts a week--is over, I feel good enough to move rather rapidly through the actual pages.

The idea I'm working with now, though, is just so large, so dependent upon setting up a remarkably different world that I am also facing something... different. Sure, I've created unique worlds before, but always with an element of fantasy or realistic abandon that I can get away with whatever I want. This world, however, is based on scientific occurrences, so I feel a need to get as accurate as possible, if not for readers and viewers than for myself.

Maybe, come to think of it, I just have to treat it like any other world. Pretend it's something completely different. Mold it as I need it. And go from there.

Tomorrow, regardless of where I am in preparation, I begin. Because, why wait?

Until next Week.