Writing?

This is the hardest part for me in terms of writing a screenplay. I tend to be manic and prolific with my ideas but the follow-through ratio is pathetic. So at this point, after spending almost half a year on a single story, my mind is itching to move on. But I still have work to do.


...but I really really really seriously want to write a horror script... ah well, there is plenty of time for creative indulgence when I graduate to a dismal job market and secretarial work.

New lease on life

Everything makes me angry.

Meeting about 1st draft

My meeting about the first draft went well. I'm always expecting so much worse feedback, but I guess that's a good way to prepare myself.

I'm at the honors lounge typing this, and I'm disappointed that the candy they set out for Halloween is already decimated. All that's left are imitation bottle-caps....life is hard.

future occupation

If writing doesn't work out, here are my back-up plans, in order from most desired to least:

1. Professional cross-word puzzle competitor
2. Big game hunter in the Ural mountains.
3. Wood whiddler (I want to carve unsettling faces into trees at national parks and disturb the nature-lovers. It's like old-old school graffiti.)
4. "Don't Forget the Lyrics" contestant
5. Disneyworld security officer.

Second draft and reading

I am reading up a storm right now! I have just finished two Dan Simmons books, one horror and one sci-fi, and I'm currently reading these two memoirs by Frank Bruni and Aaron Cohen, as well as "In Cold Blood" (which I had to request from another library, because shamefully Hagerty did not have it). Now you may be thinking that reading more than one book at a time is stupid, but I read primarily while exercising at the gym. I've developed a technique using a clip to hold the book open on the elliptical or bike so that I can be hands-free.
In order to ensure that I do not get stuck with a slow, irritating story, I take several books and read 20-30 pages of each at a time. This expedites my otherwise interminable work-out. Occasionally I do get quizzical looks for lugging around several hardcovers on my way to the machines, but it is a small price to pay for an escape from the drudgery of physical exertion.

The second draft is not as exhilarating at that first run-through, but it's more satisfying in that it fills in the giant plot wholes and creates a more cohesive unit. At least, that's my intention. It may just be the screenwriting equivalent of "screwing the pooch."

Manic

Trying desperately not to be distracted by my play direction class...

Still without a personal computer

Fall term really stinks. The library is overloaded with people and the computer servers are slow. Plus I'm crippled by guilt when I see the engineers toiling over these complicated math problems and I'm just watching netflix and brainstorming.

Chemicals?

GODDAMN stupid Bigfishgames.com for having so many inane, whimsical games that are just engaging enough to distract me from getting anything productive done. I have found my vice, and it is Virtual Villagers 4: the tree of life.

I already know the story of my life- unfortunate choices that cannot be pitied or related to because they are so laughable.


Also, I've destroyed another laptop. This will be the fourth one since freshman year (granted, only one has been new, the rest were hand-me-downs). Anyway, I have everything backed up, so now I just have to get a new one and put all my shit on it.

Discipline?

I'm on vacation right now, and of course I'm finding it difficult to stay on a writing schedule. There is so much temptation to just waste away the days doing crossword puzzles and downloading game trials on Big Fish games.

The family and I were supposed to go to Ocean City, NJ this weekend, but Early derailed our plans, so that should open up some writing time for me.

Ha ha!

I'm writing this post just to prove Professor Kaufhold wrong on point one of his recent discussion about the end of the first term. I've been quite proud of the fact that I've been posting semi-regularly this term, because for my workshop I hardly posted at all.

As Murphy's Law would have it my laptop contracted a virus exactly when I needed it most to finish the first half of my script. Fortunately I'm at home visiting my family so I was able to download a five-day trial of MMSW on this desktop while my computer is debugged.

I'm within a few pages of my mid-point right now (I'm planning on it running about 90 minutes, so I'm aiming for 45 pages as a number-marker). It's been a very different process writing this as opposed to my last full-length: I'm not wracking my brain trying to come up with clever action sequences, I can just focus on the people and their eccentricities. But I don't want to make up wackadoo situations just for the sake of being weird (ie anything Wes Anderson does), I want my characters to be odd, but believable. Because as a rule, real people are so much weirder than movie characters. I want the amusement and interest on the audience's part to come from a kinship and familiarity as opposed to laughing at the absurdity of a man who breeds dalmatian mice.

Royal Tenenbaums is one of my favorite movies, coincidentally... but that doesn't mean I think it is well-written.

Helen Keller

I do think these blogs are very useful for our professor to keep track of our progress, but I feel weird writing about writing. I find its better for me to just dig into it and then talk about my results rather than rant about my many excuses for not finishing the work when I wanted to.

I also get anxious and want to write immediately after I make one of these posts. But it's Thursday, so I'm at the film office, and I'm answering phones, which makes me break into a cold sweat. Ask me to march into a room full of people and do a 15 minute presentation and I'm there, but Helen Keller could handle a telephone call better than me.


Ah, Helen Keller jokes...

Morton Smiley

The first time I am hit on in public and it's by an octogenarian. His name was Morton Smiley (I know it sounds fake, but he gave me a business card with his name on it and everything). He runs an embroidery company that is about to launch a website, and he has a granddaughter that apparently teaches at Drexel, but he doesn't remember her name.

Nonetheless I got an unopened bag of dove chocolate (Peanut Butter Toffee Flavor) out of it, and the best name ever to use for future writing.


P.S. Even though I know nobody reads this I want to say it anyway; the next time you're in a comic book store check the back of Amazing Spider-Man issue #639, I'm listed in the credits as one of the interns. An awesome moment for me, to say the least, I'm very grateful.


EDIT: Aaand as far as my screenplay goes, it's time to start fucking with my characters' senses of well-being.

He's alive!

I saw the old man yesterday, he is not dead as I had previously suspected. I had pegged him as Northern European but upon closer inspection his skin has a swarthiness that may indicate some Italian or even Middle-eastern ethnicity. The years have just drained all the color out of him.



Banged out my first act, which feels slightly like a group of scenes slung together rather than a unified whole, but hey, it's a work in progress. I also think I'm going to scrap Burt's suicidal tendencies. It was a plot point that served as a catalyst for a while, but now it does not fit. Plus one of my best friend's brothers tried to kill himself today, so attempts to end one's life just don't seem that funny anymore. Phoo, things just got serious.

I possess nature-killing faculties

I don't know if faculties is the correct word for it but I like the way it sounds. The point is a tree killed itself today so that I could finish my first act.


A tree fell on the tracks and suspended the Septa line to Trenton, making it virtually impossible for me to get to New York for my co-op. As much as I bitterly resent the fact that I can't gallivant around today as a pseudo-professional like I usually do, it is fantastic that I suddenly have a full day to get most of my writing done for this week. I've been fiddling around and managed to progress a few pages but I knew I'd have to do a lot of my work in the evenings, which is when I am the most creatively limber but also exhausted.

Started watching "Pillars of the Earth" today. I'm halfway through the book but I'm disappointed with the show so far. It makes me feel better though, that even an epic, highly-anticipated adaptation of a medieval story can fail. That means that I'm not a complete asshat for falling short on my own previous attempts at writing around the same time. I think medieval is the second hardest time period to write in, after the Stone Age. Only the Flintstones did that right.

Winners can lick their own genitalia.

Okay, one last amendment, and this one fits my original plotline the best. Arnie has made a deal to breed Minestrone, a pedigreed but under-appreciated bitch, with Puck. THATS why Burt visits the Barnes. He's still going to have his suicidal inclinations, because Puck made more money in one show than he made in a month as a train-ticketer. But this feels like a more natural route to take.

Your previous comment about turned on the lightbulb, Professor. I think I am going to use that gag, I'd be a fool not to.



On another note, I haven't seen the old man on the train for a while. He may be dead.

New angle

I was searching for a viable reason for Burt to visit the Barnes. I think I have it: Burt lent Arnie some money a while back so that he could get his dog surgically enhanced eyelashes and a hair transplant from his flank to his gristle (beard). Now Burt's calling in the favor after he comes up short in a show that he thought he was going to win. Arnie doesn't have the money when Burt gets there, but he promises it shortly. Olivia is irritated and repulsed by Burt's demands, but Burt becomes infatuated with her. Inevitably he becomes envious of the Barnes' marriage, so in a bid to belittle Arnie in front of his wife Burt decides to enter into the local competition that Arnie has been prepping for, as the money prize is small-town but respectable. Arnie is heartbroken, and Olivia is infuriated. The day of the show she feeds Puck something that will make him sick (ideally something that Burt made for her, but I'd have to make sure that was set up to seem plausible, as he's not really a chef), but she overdoes it and the dog ends up dead. Its still keeping with the basic line of the story and I think it's still true to the characters, though Burt's a little less pitiful and a little more sinister in this one. Huzzah..maybe

Writing on the train

When I said I would be able to do a lot of my writing work on the train that was just a ploy to keep myself from getting nervous about doing Senior Project in tandem (correct usage?) with such a busy work week. But I've actually been very productive, I completed a large chunk of my opening sequence yesterday on the train. Who knew?
( I suspect this little old man with crazy white-hair and an old briefcase is my muse. Before I continue I need to perfectly describe him. He looks like a college professor but he doesn't seem to have that intense weariness and general air of deceleration that elderly teachers get when they near their retirement. The top of his head is mostly bald, the majority of his mane grows around the sides and sticks out a few inches, like it is constantly caught in the wind, or perhaps struck by lightning. He wears a short-sleeve white button-up, with pens in the pockets, and little oval spectacles, not big bottle-cap lenses, nothing flashy. He's a few inches shorter than me, so 5'6"-5'8" range, but he stoops, so his little head reaches forward a bit. I heard him talking on his phone once, he has a wispy voice to match his hair. Not raspy like a long-time smoker, more high and quiet, like muted white noise. Maybe on my last day in New York I'll get him a cupcake, or a book of one-liners as a token of friendship. We could be buddies and hang out on the weekends. He could tell me what it's like being old, I could teach him how to use twitter. )

Oh, how I get carried away...
Back to the task at hand-

Burt is the only character featured in the first few pages, as we go through a portion of his daily routine with Puck, and get a taste of his character. I really want to make Puck unlikable, but how do you make a dog unlikable? It's impossible, they're too awesome... but it is a problem that will be solved. I like a challenge.

One-uppers

I'm not old enough to be able to convincingly dispense wizened platitudes, but I can say for certain that "one-uppers" are a plague on society.

Everyone has met them; people who listen to a harrowing anecdote or hilarious experience only long enough to respond with an even more outrageous or terrible story of their own. Instead of digesting your words and replying with a comment tailored specifically to you, they spit up an often exaggerated tale that makes your own seem bland and juvenile.

Examples include:

"... when my grandmother died I was shaken up for a while. It was my first funeral."
"One-upper: Oh that sucks, my grandma died in my arms two days after my grandpa lost a year-long battle with cancer. We had to cancel my graduation party."

or

"My boyfriend got me flowers for the anniversary of our first day. I can't believe he remembered."
"One-upper: My boyfriend took me to New York to see 'Wicked' for our anniversary because the day we met I mentioned I had always wanted to see it. Oh, and we met Idina Menzel afterward..."

Burt's a one-upper, which is partially why he got involved in dog-breeding to begin with; it was one of the only arenas he could find that he could succeed without having to exert any physical effort or improve his own character in any way.

Interesting find.

Physicians have the highest incidence of suicide of any profession.

Treatment

I wrote my treatment during my lunch break yesterday. I was in a fervor, it must be the heat. Usually I write on the train but I kept falling asleep, then waking up to the middle-aged actor in front of me cracking jokes about napping to his young lady friend with the phlegmy black lung voice. I suspect they were making fun of me because I was drooling on myself, but I could just be paranoid and extremely self-involved.

New Project

Ah, it's time to start my senior project.
Maybe writing about contemporary people will be easier than trying to conjure up historical swordplay. I think my life has been too cushy to properly inhabit the brain of plague-ridden peasants. I'd rather write about people who breed show-dogs.

More to come.