The Writing Week part 9

Draft done!

The feeling of finishing a draft, an elaborate recipe of triumph, accomplishment, empowerment, wonder, and even loss never gets old. Since the inception of the League, I have: re-written one script, written the first drafts of two screenplays, written one (and a half) drafts of a stage play, and written the first (unsuccessful) act of another play. Yet, with each project’s “completion” comes reason to celebrate. Every project is both an adventure and a test. The reward of typing that final “Fade Out,” be it for the first or the umpteenth time, is always gratifying.

Since this is a first draft, I’m not sure of its strength. Our next meeting is sometime within the next week, so I wanted to give the group as much time to read my 113 pages as possible. Therefore, which I do not recommend people do, other, perhaps, on rare occasions with a writers group, I haven’t re-read the pages yet. I will do that this week as the rest of the League will.

In nine weeks, though, I did what it took me years to learn; I wrote a feature-length (draft) script. No matter what notes I receive when we next meet, that is something I can be proud of. I had trouble with this script, and I bet that will show. But at Backer and Onyx said, the group is there to iron out the problems. Hopefully, in another nine weeks, I’ll have something much more solid, something that proves less difficult, yet just as fun to write (if not more so).

Now, though, comes another kind of decision. Rather than trying to decide what happens next in the script, or finding out what happens next as my characters’ actions determine it, I have to decide what’s next for me. Do I wait for notes—granted, I have a few days of re-writing and editing before we even meet—or do I move on to something else? My New Year’s resolution was to keep as actively writing as possible. Just because I finished a draft does not mean I will allow myself to forego the hour of writing each night. I either need to choose a new project to turn my attention to, or dive back into this script and embark immediately upon the re-writes.

I feel as though I’ve been working in the same genre a lot recently, which I have enjoyed. However, at the same time, I feel compelled to change that, to go a new direction. That’s not so much because I don’t have more action/adventure ideas; I do, a lot of them. But I don’t want to ideas to blend on the page before me. I feel that if I began another similar project, I would feel compelled to incorporate similar aspects from the previous two projects into it. It will be more of a challenge to me, and a refresher period for my action inclinations, to work on something different next.

What that is, though, I don’t know.

The Writing Week part 8

I hit act three! The home stretch. The end, finally, is in sight.

Act two was very difficult this time. I thought the page 60 wall I hit was going to be impossible to get around, but I managed. Actually, once I rolled past 70, I had a lot of fun. I’m sill not sure about everything that happens. I’ll have to read the script in its entirety to better judge that. And, frankly, one of my biggest concerns is something that I wrote two nights ago.

Act two ends with a bang, as it often should, an adrenaline pumping action scene that drives the characters into their final quest. And what did I do after that? I let the characters take a nap. Garh, it felt so boneheaded as I was doing it, and it’s probably boneheaded that I kept it in there. I mean, who follows up a huge fight scene with twenty winks? To be fair, the nap scene does materialize into something else, and, logically, it is something that I would probably have to address—the need for sleep, that is. However much it fails to work, though, I’m going to keep it in for now. Now, I want to finish the draft. Then I’ll worry about mistakes like that.

It’s a great feeling to look down and see page 89 or 95 or 100 looking back up at you after only two months ago staring at that completely blank page 1. It’s a sense of accomplishment, regardless of whether you FADE OUT on 89, 95, 100, or whatever. Making something last that long, going that far and having more story yet to tell is quite a feeling. I remember my first semesters of college where the prospect of writing a 30 page (can you believ it? Thirty whole pages!) final project was daunting. I remember struggling sometimes with the five page assignments I had. Nowadays, some of my colleagues in the League have problems keeping their drafts under the standard 120 pages.

I guess I’m just amazed by how much things can change in a matter of four or five years. I certainly feel my writing has improved drastically (for my parents’ sake, I hope it has; otherwise, that was a big waste of cash). When I think my initial thoughts on new projects, I tend to try to map out at least the tent pole scenes and act breaks if they don’t instantly become clear to me.

The first time I finished a feature length draft, there was a sense of, “Wow, I actually did it.” I like that I still feel that now.

Seeking 30-something Agent, Well Connected

Hi, my name is Onyx and I'm looking for an agent with Scarlett Johanson lips, Catherine Zeta Jones eyes, and Scott Ruden brains.

Before I go any further, let me say a little about myself. I'm an out of town kind of guy, born several millenia ago in the dark void that exists between your improbable dreams and your inevitable fates. Where I'm from, after wraith school you either become a tormenter or a harvester. Long story short, tormenters have all the fun. They get to visit the physical realm and use their powers for either collateral damage or evil. I come from a family of harvesters unfortunately.

You see, misdirected human hope gives off a glowing dew that sustains my kind. The dew gathers over a period of about eight miserable failures. After that it settles into a slurpy film, something with the consistency of phlegm. This substance can be harvested using a number of tools, but my family is of the old style so we use our mouths to suck off the dew. So you see, no surprise why I decided to become a screenwriter and move to New York City.

I still don't have a place of my own, but the great thing about the big city is that I never go hungry, ever. What I really need is someone who can hear my words and get past security so that others in high places may hear them.

I'm a versatile writer who loves what he does. So far I've done historical dramas (love history), humorous historical romance, animated feature, contemporary drama, and some androgynous mutation of comedy and drama...my Quasimodo. What else can I do? I think the sky is the limit. I just need an agent in my life. So don't be shy, give a wraith a try.

You should also know that I'm pretty tight with these guys and a gal. We all like to get creative, so somebody who was into the group thing (representation that is...) would be most appreciated. You'll like our stuff and I know we'll like yours.

Search for Inspiration

Last Thursday I caught myself adding Instruments of Torture to my library request list, and realized it was time to take another dose of romantic comedies to get back on track.

Friday I watched The Big Lebowski. No romance, but I was stuck at a (hot) math student’s apartment, and it was either that or Lord of the Rings. I left around 3am uninspired. Funny stuff, but it had nothing to do with my script.

Saturday was Chasing Amy, Definitely, Maybe, and somehow Dance for Camera 2 and clips from 21 Grams were thrown in the mix. I was surprisingly disappointed by Chasing Amy. I had expected it to be mind-blowingly good....and it was good 2/3 of the way through. But the during last third I was outraged and flabbergasted instead. Definitely, Maybe on the other hand, turned out to be unexpectedly good. However, even with a happy ending, it was an extremely depressing movie about life. I was briefly cheered up by the perfectly cooked fish for dinner. After all, there was still tomorrow.

Sunday after church, I pulled out the last romantic comedy I had prepped: Someone Like You. It seemed like a winner: a) it was suggested to me by a normal, happy, non-writer girl, b) like my script, one of the love interest was a player, c) Hugh Jackman was in it. How could this possibly not spark some idea or motivation me to write? Well it didn’t.

At that point, I gave up. All that love and happiness were annoying the hell out of me. Screw my script. If I was going to waste a whole weekend, I'm going to enjoy wasting it. I rolled onto the carpet with a bag of white cheddar corn puffs and began binging on House M.D.

After four episodes back to back, somehow there were fifteen new pages attached to my script.

Moral of this story: Hugh Laurie is MAGIC.

The Writing Week part 7

Well, as I mentioned last week, this week really did not see many pages due to my cabin trip. I managed to hit 70 before I left, and worked my way onto 75 last night when I came back. I was hoping to be at page 80ish by now in terms of scene placement, but I’m not. And frankly, I feel more and more of an amateur every time I talk about writing purely in terms of page numbers. My second act might be shorter than I had originally planned, but only by five or ten pages, and so what? If that’s all I need to tell the story for now, then so be it.

Though I didn’t get many pages out, I was productive, I feel, in other ways. For one, when I stepped off the bus at a rest stop on my way back to NYC, I couldn’t help thinking that all I wanted to do was write; that if someone told me right then and there that all that would be expected of me for the rest of my life would be to spend time each day making up stories, I would be infinitely happy.

I talked of spending my first paycheck on a house in the middle of nowhere, removed from the rest of the world. I found myself in a place like that this weekend, and though sharing a cabin with 21 other often inebriated people is not really a healthy writing environment, at one point, I found my Zen. I walked down to the creek with a friend, and we were standing in a tiny clearing at a bend in the water. With the sound of the water gurgling and an expansive view of a farm in front of a mountain backdrop, I pictured myself sitting right there, an old wooden desk in front of me, writing movies. I felt as if I would and easily could spend every single day of my life there, listening to the water while writing.

I felt that way when I woke up this morning, and I feel that way now. There is no question in my mind about what I want to do. And when. I want to do it now. This very second. For the right opportunity, I would pack up and leave at the drop of a hat. I hope that comes soon enough, because like LoKor with his, there is only so much patient waiting I can do. I continue to write, as he continued filling out applications and sending in materials. As he did all he could, so do I feel like I am doing pretty much everything that is expected of me. When the time comes, I will send out my query letters. I feel like my work is ready, and though I don’t expect any opportunities to simply fall into my lap, the time until I’m a part of the industry weighs on me as if I am Atlas with his burden.

On Nerves

In my post from Tuesday, I mentioned how I've been eyeballing creative writing MFA forums, obsessively trying to determine when I may or may not be receiving notifications of acceptance from schools to which I've applied. I started doing this weeks ago, and at the time there was nothing to it. I enjoyed reading the comments and finding out how people dealt with the wait, where they applied, and where exactly their hearts landed on their sleeves. It was interesting since I'm new to this process, and as I've discovered, there are people that go through this for years before they finally end up somewhere; even then, they return to support their peers. It's not a stretch to assume they empathetically go through the same anxiety all over again; I would describe most writers as sadomasochistic.

If we're to take the forums as an accurate point of reference, I might find out about one of my schools any day now. My ability to distance myself from the community and the situation as a whole has completely vanished. I watch the lists and read the comments avidly. Did someone receive a phone call today? Has one of my other schools bumped up their schedule by two weeks? I must waste almost an hour of work each day, I check my cell phone all the time, I wait in corners of rooms while my i-Pod connects to the internet so I can download any new email. It's not that I necessarily want to get into this school so badly; it's that I want to know what my future has in store. So much of my life hinges not just on whether or not I get into graduate school, but where I get in. There would be factors to weigh, any number of things to consider, and if nothing pans out on that front, there are other avenues of my life that will be open to evaluation and, ultimately, change.

And at the bottom of it all, like the eighteen year old version of myself that so desperately wanted to get into NYU, I desperately want to get my MFA. I mean that in every respect - from getting the diploma right down to the gritty, tiresome, challenging work that it involves. There was a recurring theme in my statements of purpose - that this was something I have to do. I still feel that way. I struggle to think of something that I want more than to write and teach, and in waiting for these acceptance letters, I'm looking for someone to validate that, to tell me that I'm worthy of that challenge. I want to hear that I'm good enough.

Perhaps I'm making a show of this just so I can create some forum for exuberance (or melancholy) later; I know myself well enough that it doesn't seem like such a stretch. But it may be telling that despite everything I could write about - with the Oscars coming up, or with what's going on in my own writing - when it comes to expressing something, this knot in the pit of my stomach is all I can think of.


Write on...

Norphen's Top Ten

It seems like my buddy Rob becomes an honorary League member this time of year. His top ten for 2007 is up at his blog, and we'll let you know when he posts his annual Oscar predictions post some time next week.

Some of you may see his list and raise an eyebrow or two (I hope no one was a huge fan of There Will Be Blood), but once you get to know his tastes a little more, things start to fall into place.

Back issues, if you will.

2006

2005

Write on...