The Writing Week part 37

Some weeks can be really great weeks, even if the writing wasn't one hundred percent consistent. This was one of those weeks.

On the down side, there were a few days when I didn't write. On the plus side, though, I: began a new project (finally), polished and sent out query letters, and had a writers group meeting. Not a bad accomplishment for one week's time.

Everything the group and I did this past week goes back to something I've been mentioning a lot recently: the need to be driven. It's too easy for me to decide that "tomorrow, I'm going to start a morning exercise routine" or "next month, I'll begin teaching myself to play the harmonica" or "I'll slack off tonight, but tomorrow is the beginning of a new writing regimen." (All of those are things I've said to myself. A lot.) This week I decided to put it into action.

The query letters were a big thing. I wrote last time about working on them, and sent out a single, lonely message. I sent out a handful this week and, while I don't want to beat a dead horse, there is one more thing I'd like to say about them now. I can't recall the site where I read this, but some of the best, yet hardest to follow advice on queries was this (essentially):

Send them and forget about them. You're likely not to hear back, but if you do, send your script and forget about that, too. Otherwise, you'll drive yourself nuts.

Too true. I've resisted the urge to check my email when I'm usually not online, but when at my computer all day, it's so easy to just roll the cursor over the email window to see if there's anything new and exciting hiding in my inbox. There isn't at the moment.

Changing topics, I find I'm embarking upon another writing experiment. Zombie's mentioned that he's done some recently, Onyx did too, I believe. We all seem to be working on things that are new for us. For me, this will be my third this year. I tried 1) not using an outline, 2) writing a cross-country journey pic, and now 3) using VOICE OVER.

Voice over is one of those things that every student I know (and many books agree) is taught not to do. At NYU, most of the faculty treated voice over like the ugly cousin who'd try to molest you if you got too close. You were told from day one to just stay away. Avoid it like the plague. Yet, I happen to really like voice over in some instances. It just really draws me into a movie and the characters when done well, I guess perhaps because it makes the writer's job a bit easier - don't know how to tell it in the action? Voice over.

I know that my next project will use it. Right now, I'm still working on writing an elaborate back story for my protagonist (another first for me). I've written a paragraph here or there before, but never the nine solid pages I've done so far. What I'm hoping to accomplish from writing the back story, besides having a much more solid protagonist and first draft when I begin writing the actual pages, is that I'll figure out who the voice over comes from. Will it be my protagonist or is it going to be some omniscient third-person narrator?

Has anyone out there used voice over before? How'd it turn out?

The Writing Week part 23

It feels so damn good to be writing again. Amazingly good.

I finally decided to really, actually, honestly start re-writing my post-Apocalyptic script. Like I anticipated, bringing my computer on vacation with me (sadly, the vacation ends tomorrow night), has almost forced me to be productive. I've nearly finished my re-write this week (and should do so completely by Wednesday, at the latest). Now, I've said it before and I'll do so again: I detest rewrites.I fully acknowledge that everything I write needs them. But they are just very much not mu cup of tea.

This week, though, I've been making some good headway. I've been making decisions that I tried my darnedest to avoid in the past, because I've come to realize something; writing on a computer allows us the luxury of never really committing to anything put down on the page. Like Zombie was saying with his Frankenstein script folder, we can patch things together from previous files, create new documents, and store everything we write. No change is permanent.

And that's the philosophy I've embraced this go around. Admittedly, there are some things I've done with this re-write, which I'm not sure if they are improvements, so much as changes. On the other hand, there are other things I'm very happy with and glad that I finally had the balls to do. There still might not be enough distance between me and my first draft, but there's certainly enough for me to make some elementary, yet necessary improvements to the script.

Now to just distance myself enough from draft two to see the weak links in that one.

The Writing Week part 22

I know what you're thinking: "Where's Cake Man's writing week? I sure do hope he's ok." (In all seriousness, I know none of you are thinking that.) Other than a few impressive scotch induced hangovers, I''m still here. I actually spent the better part of the last Writing Week in Colorado visiting a friend of mine. The break - during which point I read two Leaguer's scripts but did no actual writing of my own - was exactly what I needed.

I came back feeling refreshed (if not a little leery of being back in a metropolis after spending days with mountains being the only things taller than the trees). I've since started tackling my post-Apocalyptic spec again, which is a great feeling, because I was off of it for so long. In fact, I'm going on vacation again tonight (gotta use those vacation days before I lose them to a new fiscal year), and am bringing my computer with me. I normally tell myself that a notebook will suffice for writing when I'm on vacation, but I'm not letting myself use that lie anymore. I don't write in notebooks. At least, I seldom do. I tend not to like doing it and get far less done. Bringing the computer, lugging it 240 miles back to Arlington, Virginia is proof positive that I plan to work on this script again. If the computer's there, I have to write, right?

I'm excited to get back into this (and any) project again. Being in Colorado was a jolting reminder that the great outdoors are where I'm most comfortable. City life has its perks, sure, but I prefer expansive sky and endless greenery. The only way I know to attain that is through success as a writer. Sure, it's probably a long way off, but it's even longer if I'm not, you know, writing.