Part of the inertia stems from the fact that my writing partner and I are awaiting a second round of notes from our producer on the sci-fi spec we've been working on. I haven't touched it in over a month, because I was out of town. Our producer had other commitments, but she read, and we're all talking tonight. I go out of town again for two weeks this Thursday, so it's anyone's guess when I'll get back to work on it - unless, of course, she loves the new draft and has only minor suggestions that I can implement on Wednesday.
A large part of my lack of momentum, though, is just that - a lack of momentum. Theoretically, I should have treated the month since we sent the script out as a time to break my back getting new (or old) projects ready to outline and write. But I needed a break. The day job got slow for me, and while that maybe should have been a great reason to fully invest in my writing, it had the inverse effect of dulling my motivation outside the office, as well. I'm not self-flagellating here, though. I think every writer needs a break now and then. I just have to make sure that mine ends with the conclusion of my vacation.
In the meantime, the League met last week. We didn't have any scripts to read, so one of the group members suggested a different homework assignment: read a Nicholl winning script. Not just a Nicholl winner, the one we chose had actually been developed through a mentorship project with the WGA. We wanted to see how we all responded to it and, because let's be honest, how we stacked up against it.
To be honest - and hopefully neither smug nor arrogant - I felt like each member of the League could hold his or her own against the script we read. Perhaps we're not as strong in the particular genre (historical noir/thriller), but I didn't see the Nicholl winner as obviously better in any major way than any of our best projects. In fact, there were some sloppy elements throughout that made me wonder what it takes (luck?, the right reader?, the promise of greater talent yet to come?) to place in the competition. Granted, I can't truly compare, because none of us submitted a competing script that year, nor have any of us read any of the other submissions, winning or not. But my faith in us was unscathed by the read through. Was it a good script? Sure, but with work, I believe any of my writers group members could achieve a similarly strong product.
We likely won't have pages next meeting, either, so we'll probably read another winning script from that year, to further the experiment. I hope that read, too, will support my hypothesis that, after four years of training in college and six years of writing since, we're just as competitive.
