I just COULD NOT be more excited about April, and I'll tell you why:
I feel like this screenplay marks the actual beginning of my career as a writer! All the study and practice I've been doing for the last decade and a half has culminated into THIS script! This beginning!
It took me a while, but I finally GET the old axiom "Writers WRITE." Before now, I might have added to that quote "Yeah, unless they don't know what to write." But events have fallen into such a place that I now know -- KNOW -- that once I begin writing April 1st, I won't quit until I retire or die!
When this screenplay is finished, I'm immediately going to begin another. When that is done, I'll return to this one and rewrite it (probably as a novel, but that would still give be a good Second Draft because I'll be changing things as I go), then if enough time has passed I'll go back and rewrite the second script, then I'll come back to this story and adapt my novel back into screenplay form, then I'll start on a 3rd screenplay, and so on and so on until I am a published novelist, a working screenwriter, or BOTH! :D
If I have to write 20 screenplays and 20 novels before I start making money as a writer, so be it. That's simply the way it goes. That just means that it took 20 screenplays/novels to actually get great at it. I'm cool with that. :)
My plan is 3 screenplays finish and ready to send to Hollywood before 2008 is gone.
But that's all in the future.
If my Gnomey and I are finally united and I have to take a 2nd job to keep a roof over our head or something, obviously the model will shift. But I suspect I WILL be writing during that, too! (Just a slower output than my current plan.)
So I don't want to jinx myself, but... :D (There's a great quote from DUMA KEY "God always punishes us for what we can't imagine," lol.)
As far as the Script Frenzy goes, my strategy is simple: 25 pages a week. I can't count on sticking to a daily page-count, but I've discovered over the last 4 months that a weekly page-count is AMAZINGLY do-able! :D And even though 25 pages in, essentially, 3 days is A LOT of work, I've already taken care of the hardest part...
I've completely broken my movie! :D I have every single scene outlined and structured, so all I have to do is look at the outline, see what scene is next, AND WRITE THAT MUTHA!!! :D
Then every Tuesday I take count: Have I finished 25 pages? If I fall behind, then I know I'll have to find some extra writing time during the work week. If I get ahead, groovy. And if I only just make my schedule, I'm finished a full day before deadline!!! :D
And here's the beauty part...
Even if I don't make it this year (last year I made the deadline, but the script I wrote was crap and I could feel it long before I finished it) I STILL WIN!!! Not the Frenzy, but... you know... LIFE in general, lol. Because my real goal is to finish the first draft of this script and get started on my next story.
Because I've finally figured out which game I'm playing!
LIFE!
What I mean is that I believe our lives are a lot like SecondLife... You can do anything you want with certain limitations. So you familiarize yourself with the limitations, familiarize yourself with what's fun, then you basically create your own game!
Every time you enter SecondLife, you do so with an agenda. "I want to hang out with So-and-So." "I want to build this." "I want to experience that." Or maybe just "I want to go sailing." If you don't have an agenda, you usually just don't log in.
Same, I believe, with Life.
I don't wake up every day because my alarm goes off. Maybe I wake up because I have to go to work, yeah, but I go to work to pay my bills and (occasionally) buy neat stuff. On my days off, I get to figure out for myself why I'm waking up. "Want to see if my baby is online." "Got some writing to do." "Wanna get to the next level in Tomb Raider." "Want to watch such-and-such dvd."
But we create our own agenda. (Or we allow someone to create it for us, but that's another blog entirely, lol.)
And I believe we do so with Life, as well. I see Life as a physical-reality videogame and us as the spirit-beings playing it, and the way we win the game is to simply PLAY THE HELL OUT OF IT!!! :D We get EVERY OUNCE of enjoyment and wisdom and understanding that we can find until the game is over!
And after searching (blindly, it now seems in hindsight) for almost 20 years, I finally figure out my game...
Tell some stories that make some people happy so I can get some money so I can get the hotty. Then I tell more stories that make more people happy so I can get more money while hanging with the hotty. Then I tell some more stories that make more people happy so I can get more money while I'm raising a family with the hotty. Then I tell some more stories that make some more people happy and make me some more money while the hotty and our family laugh a lot and love each other and have lots and lots of fun together. And then one day it'll all be over for me and I'll die with a huge-ass smile on my face!
That's not a bad game plan, yeah? ;P
And although, at 37, I feel it has taken me FOREVER to figure this all out, I suspect that at 87 it will seem like no time at all! ;)
But first... the Frenzy!
This is the starter's gun. This is when the game begins, and doesn't end for years and years and years! :) One month of frenzied writing, followed by a lifetime of frenzied writing... broken up by laughs and love and Life.
Is there ANY way I could make Script Frenzy 2008 more grandiose? lol
Oh yeah, and for this Frenzy I'm starting a Frenzy beard, lol. Just an idea that occurred to me. I remember being impressed by Conan O'Brien's strike beard, so I thought I might try a Frenzy beard.
I don't know how much it'll grow in a month (not much, I'm sure) but it might be fun watching it grow! (Maybe, lol.)
As of 8:36 am Saturday, March 29, 2008 I have maybe 2 days' growth and this is what it looks like...
Okay, I'd like to start off with the observation that this lighting doesn't do me any favors. :( It seems to give me a yellow-ish tint, which I don't have. I'm much more "pasty white" than "jaundiced yellow". And my teeth are not NEARLY as caffeine-/nicotine-stained, lol. ;P
But this is about 2 days' growth on me.
If you're having trouble spotting the new growth, here's a closer view...
There ya go. Now you can almost see it, lol.
The goatee and soul patch, naturally, have been growing for years now. But that thin smattering of darkness on top of my pasty jaw is the Frenzy beard doing its thing.
See all that white (or yellow, as the case may be) between those pencil-thin streaks of hair? No hair is going to grow there. Over the coming weeks, the hair that is there will simply grow longer. So what I believe you will witness over the next month is the phenomenon of how thin, baby-fine hair can actually refuse to create a beard.
It should be riveting. ;P
But be back here next Tuesday to see if I've made my page-count for the first week of Script frenzy 2008, and to see if maybe it might be possible I can grow a full, manly beard.
In the meantime, ENJOY YOUR LIFE!!! For all we know, we only get THIS ONE! :D
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