The Writing Week (Vol. 5) part 234 - Juggling Multiple Projects

We're going on our third full week of the 30 Day Screenplay Challenge, and let's just say this - they don't call it a challenge for nothing. I'm 79 pages into my demon thriller and still going pretty strong, averaging slightly better than four pages a day. At that pace, I'm right about on target to plop out a 120 page draft by day 30. Of those 120, I'm sure there are at least 10 or 15 that can be cut, and another... 100?... that will need to be rewritten.


The Challenge doesn't allow a lot of time for rewrites, but that's also not the point of it. All it is there to do is get us writing again, which is something that I personally hadn't done in a while. By July 18, less than two weeks from now, I should have a full first draft of a script that I probably wasn't going to dive into for months yet to come. There's nothing wrong with that result. 


Many of the pages are turning into fluff. The dialogue isn't great by any stretch of the imagination, which is unfortunate most in the sense that the dialogue is one of the intended big selling points of the script. It's supposed to be snappy and witty and riddled with subtext, but the pressure of a deadline has rendered it fairly prosaic and on the nose, much to my disappointment. Granted, rewriting it after the challenge ends isn't going to be a dire process, so I'm not too concerned about that. I'm also discovering a lot about the plot and characters as I write (oh, so much yet to discover about my characters), so hopefully those realizations will inform draft two.


I've had to start waking up early in order to manage my time better and get more out of my day. In addition to the demon thriller, which I work on for an hour a day (not including necessary outlining at the office so that I can complete pages at home), I've also been re-outlining the sci-fi collaboration. Originally, I intended to get the new draft to my writing partner before he left town yesterday, but that just didn't happen. Though I hate missing deadlines and dropping off the radar on a project, it wasn't until early this week that I had some big ideas for that project. I've outlined a quarter of the script a day the past two days, and hope to wrap that and send it off to him tomorrow at the latest, which would shift something off my plate. And, I'm still working with my team on possibly turning the post-Apocalyptic spec into a comic book, and that venture has required calls and meetings that have dipped into my time and concentration now and again. 


So, basically, I'm busy. And it feels good. Interestingly, though, there was a very poignant article recently about claiming busyness. If you haven'r read it, check it out here. I don't tend to include links in these Writing Weeks, but I feel like this article is particularly appropriate and relevant to all of us writers. Maybe you'll get something out of it, too.