PROGRESS!!!

Tommy invited Brian and me to spend the night at his new casa to drink and catch up and talk about projects and stuff, but I had to decline.

First, I missed a whole day with my baby because she was busy Saturday, so I was REALLY looking forward to our video chat before she went to sleep and after she woke up!!! Like, jonesing for it!

Secondly, I was frustrated by my progress on the screenplay. I had 32 (out of 40) 3x5 cards done and still no really clear picture of the structure!!! I mean, I resorted to writing a Slasher Flick because I KNEW I could write it, and yet I here I was, like with my other projects, STUCK.

So I elected to stay home and, after Wendy went to sleep, beat that story into some sort of shape.

AND I DID!!!

My Gnomey Goddess hasn't woken up yet, and I have roughed-out every 15 minutes of my movie! Now I have a decent idea where ALL the cards I've written go, and I have several more cards I can create, and can now alter some of the more vague cards I've already created, and I'm not groping around in the dark anymore!!!

AND... It took me roughly 9 days to get here! NOT FRIGGIN' BAD!!!

Granted, I'm nowhere near a sellable script yet. (Or, in this specific case -- assuming Tommy reads it and wants to direct it -- a script that will get us financing to shoot the movie.) BUT, I can SEE that day now. At 9:00 pm I could not see that day. I had NO IDEA how far away that day is.

Now I see it.

Or, rather than an actualy day, I see the work that needs to be done to make that theoretical day happen.

Because creating isn't a "First You Do This and Then You Do This and..." kind of activity. It's more like "Before I can do this I know I'm gonna need to have this, this and this done... But before I can do do those I need to have done this other..." And that ellisive and eternally inaffable thing Inspiration plays a HUGE part in EVERY step of the process. Every inspired idea is like winning the lottery, and so you're waiting to win the lottery a bazzillion times in order to write a single screenplay.

HOWEVER, there's stuff you can do that allows you to make progress AND sort of attract Inspiration's attention! And learning how to create in any specific way is, I believe, about figuring out what that stuff is.

See, because some of the stuff you can do while waiting for Inspiration just flat-out ISN'T productive. In fact, you can ruin your creation doing it. Like, for instance, writing script pages. I have killed SO MANY screenplays over the last 14 years by writing the pages FIRST. Because i always got to a point where I'm "Okay, and THEN what happens?!!" And then I wait, and after a while NOTHING comes. Okay, so then I'll just make a choice at random and write from there, but after a while of doing that I SO dislike what I'm writing that I can't even remember what attracted me to the idea in the first place.

Anyway, it looks like I may be onto a process that allows me to make fairly regular progress in a reasonably reasonable amount of time. (And I don't know because I've never had this particular experience before, but I think I may be slightly ahead of schedule! Yay! If I can be at this place after 9 days on ALL my screenplays I just may have a shot at being a professional writer!)

OH! And one of the COOLEST things was how tonight's work started for me:

I'm video-chatting with my sleepy, sleepy baby who just does NOT wanna go to sleep (I can't blame her, I was the same way this morning before I went to bed... I had to FORCE myself to say Goodbye to her) but I was in my giggling stage and she, poor her, was just barely keeping her eyes open.

So I proposed that we just stay online together while I read a script I wanted to read before I did my night's writing work. If she said anything I would respond, but otherwise I would just read in front of her until she passed out. And she liked this idea.

I got about 3 pages into the pilot teleplay for VERONICA MARS before my baby fell asleep (I suspect, because before that she would chime in with a comment every now and then) and then after the Open and Act One (page 20) I had this epiphany and thought about breaking my movie into 15-page chunks, and just figuring out where each chunk begins and ends, and then a few hours later I had tamed the beast!!!

So okay... Enough about the writing stuff...

Gnomey, sweety, I know you're probably interested in this, but I fear I'm boring everyone else, so I'm moving on. I love you!!! :D

So now I need to compose an email to Tommy and let him know that my instincts were correct and I didn't miss out on seeing his new house for naught!

..and also wait for my baby to wake up. :D