The Writing Week (Vol. 3) part 127 - Give Yourself A Deadline

Right now, I'm in (what we're all hoping is) the home stretch of my script. On Friday, I got six pages of notes from the executive we're working with. Fortunately, most of them were things I had already addressed. I was hoping for a rainy weekend - as predicted - so that I could lock myself away distraction-free and write all weekend. As all you New Yorkers know, the rain never really came. Still, I cracked down for three hours a day and made some major progress. Of the six pages, I only have a few more notes to address.

Being in this stage of the re-writing process is kind of odd. It took me a while to push aside my insecurities about the caliber of work I was doing - prior to this draft, all of the notes had been more major, involving much greater changes. Due to the smaller-scale of the edits (finally, we could call most of them "tweaks"), I was worried that I wasn't achieving what I needed to. I felt like my wheels were spinning in mud and I wasn't going anywhere. When I cracked that delusion in half, I got down to business. 

A few weeks ago, my manager voiced a desire to get the script out this week. So, to try to make that goal, I gave myself a (somewhat informal) deadline of yesterday to have the script done. Six hours of work didn't accomplish everything that it had to, and by the end of the night Sunday, I was starting to stall again. That's ok, though. I emailed my producer to let her know to expect pages on Wednesday. The addition of two nights to complete the work that has to do will make me crack down hard and finish everything.


The work doesn't end once I submit the script, though. It's time to decide what my follow-up projects will be (yes, if this sounds familiar, it's because the past few weeks have been devoted to finishing the script and choosing a next project). My manager and I are narrowing it down to two ideas. Once the script is in the hands of the production company executive again, I'll have to develop the two ideas further, and then maybe focus in on one.

First thing's first, though - finish this script!