Writing at Walden Pond

Remember me mentioning that Tommy and Brian and I are working on a new short? Well I finished the script for it thts past Saturday!!!

Ask me where!

WALDEN POND!!!

Some SL friends created Walden Pond -- immortalized by Henry David Thoreau in his 1854 novel WALDEN -- on their land, as a personal escape for them and an attraction for others in SecondLife. I looked up pics of the place, past and present, and they NAILED! It looks JUST as it did for the 2 years and 2 months Thoreau lived there!!!

The pictures below won't do their creation justice, though. 'Cause this entry's about ME :)

So I know I need to write. And I know there's not much going on for me in-world at the moment. But I'm not feeling the desire to write in my Writer's Pad (my Home in SL).

Despite the RIDICULOUSLY HIGH Pretntious Factor [I've read Thoreau and I, sir, am NO THOREAU], I decide I'm gonna go write in Thoreau's cabin, and see how much work I get done.


Okay, so a screenplay -- even a short one -- has 4 essential components which, for our purposes here, I will arbitrarily call The Open, The Meat, The Climax and The Resolution. If the script is 7 pages long, then The Open might be 1 page, The Meat might be 3 pages, the Climax might be 2 pages and the Resolution might be 1 page. (If the script runs longer, the only component that expands significantly is The Meat. The rest stay comparitively tiny; and I think the Crap Draft of our movie runs approcimately 17 pages, making The Meat closer to 10 pages long.)

I got The Open late, late, late Friday night just before I left work.

So I sat down at Thoreau's table and got started.

The land has its own soundeffects, so as the sun set the chirping of birds faded away and I got to hear the hooting of owls out the window as I typed :)

It was WAY COOL!!!


Now looking at the layout of the cabin, there's a table, a desk and a bed. The table was most likely intended strictly for eating. Maybe reading. But Thoreau was a writer... I'm guessing he did some writing there, too :) (He probably did some writing under a tree just outside, and probably by on a rock by the pond. I mean, 2 years and 2 month? He probably did some writing on just about every square inch of that land, right?)


So I wrote at the very same table that THOREAU probably wrote at!!!

...if he had a computer with a cable modem and an XP operating system....

And there probably wasn't an alien sleeping on the bed next to him as he wrote.

These pics are me revisiting the places i wrote at. At the time I wasn't in picture-taking mode. And Brian's computer takes MUCH better snapshots than mine, so I asked him to come with me and be the photographer for these.

Which means that sometimes I'd turn around and find him in wierd palces.

So anyway...

I wrote The Meat of the script here. And after that 10 pages or so, I felt like I was probably done for the day. So I got up to stretch my legs and IM some friends and see what they were up to, and just generally feel good about myself for having done some good work, and having done it IN THOREAU'S CABIN ON WALDEN POND!!!


I strolled over to the campsite there and sat infront of the fire.

...and discovered I WASN'T spent for the day! I wrote a paragraph that had popped into my head, a piece of dialogue that seemed to come naturally after that...

And before I knew it, I had completed The Climax of the script!!!


So I ran around with my SL friend April and checked out some of the ASTOUDING things she's created in-world, and then I get an IM from my friend Tam. She's dancing at a club (HUGE surprise) and can I come dance, too?

I've done A LOT of good work today (12 or so pages in a day for just about ANY screenwriter is GOOD WORK) so I go celebrate! There are topless women dancing around me, the music is blasting, everyone's chatting to each other, and to me...

And I decide I want to work out this ONE SCENE...


So I turn my music off and whip out the Notecard I've been writing the screenplay on...

And half an hour later I'VE FINISHED THE CRAP DRAFT OF THE SCRIPT!!!

This is PARTY TIME, INDEED!!! Before I was celebrating because I had come VERY CLOSE to finishing the script! NOW I'm celebrating IT COMPLETION!!!

In the pic above is Tempest Jewel, she manages Baby Dollz, the club I wrote the Resolution in. She was there Saturday night, and when Brian and I went back to the club to get a picture, she was there THEN, too!!! All alone, playing music and dancing to it.

And Tommy left about 20 minutes ago. He and Brian and I talked about the script, about what changes we want to see in this next draft.

So I've got more work to do this week/weekend.

AND SECONDLIFE SEEMS TO BE THE PERFECT PLACE TO DO IT!!!