New Beginnings

It’s been forever since I posted anything here. I’m going to make a concerted effort to pick back up and embrace a brand new year with vigor that I feel like I lost last year.

I’ve decided that this is my Big Year. They year that I’m going to make the most of in every aspect of my life. One of those is my writing. The goal I’ve made for my big year is to write 3 new screenplays and finish the 2 that I have incomplete. One stopped at the beginning of the 3rd act, and the other got completed, but needs another 15 pages put into the 2nd act.

I don’t think the goal is overly ambitious, but reasonable to complete. I should be able to do a rough draft in two months on each and then a month of spit shine on it.

So here we go. The Big Year.

fail

Well, at this point I most assuredly will be losing script frenzy. Having finished my writing for today and about to start work soon, and tomorrow having a chore to do that will stop me from writing. I’m done. 69 pages is what I’ve been able to do.

If I’m honest, out of the 30 days this month I worked on this script only 20 of them. I could have done it, but ultimately didn’t. There is always next year though. I am proud of what I have accomplished though.

Up until this point I had not really done any writing for about 10 months. I had myself convinced that with my job I didn’t have enough time and was too tired all the time from work to do it. This challenge has proved me wrong. This whole 10 months of doing nothing I could have been churning out a new screenplay every 2 months. All I had to do was go to bed earlier in the day and wake up an hour and a half earlier.

I think I’m definitely going to continue this process and keep up the writing schedule.

catchup

Aw snap, I’m catching up. Only 16 pages behind pace on script frenzy now. 6 pages a day will put me right on track. On page 53 now, should be wrapping up my act 2b in the next 5 pages or so and I’ll be down the road to the finish line.

I’ve decided I don’t want to try to get 100 pages out of this screenplay. It’s meant to be a 90 minute feature. I will however do my last 10 pages as a short that I’ve been wanting to write. So I’ll still have written 100 pages.
SCRENZY! http://www.scriptfrenzy.org

a little progress

Still behind in script frenzy. At day 20 we should be at 66 pages. I’m at 47. It’s still do-able. 10 days to write 53 pages. That’s 5.3 a day.
I’m starting to struggle with some plot points and I fear my act 2a is too short, I started moving into actb about 4-5 pages too early. If I move through 2b too fast and start act 3 too early I’m fucked. I don’t really think my third act is going to be able to streatch to cover a 4th of my screenplay. I’m having serious doubts that this screenplay gets to 100 pages. I’m seeing it more realisticaly being a 90 min film and that’s what it’s on pace to be at the moment.

I guess the real goal of screnzy is that you write 100 pages in the month, not necessarily that they are all the same story. I suppose I could use the opportunity to get back to finishing Senior Weekend script. Which is what I was going to do anyhow after screnzy.

After that I think I’m going to write a short film, and then move on to what I think is going to be my best story yet Stockholm Syndrome.

screnzy update

I swear I really am the worst. On my 3 off days I did nothing again. Is it maybe something about writing overnight that I can’t do? I just can’t seem to make myself go sit in front of the computer. During the days I’ve been waking up early on workdays and writing for 1.5-2 hours, but my days off nada.
So here we are at the midway point of the contest, writers should be at 50 pages. I’m at 31. Which means for the next 15 days I need to bust out approximately 5 a day to get to the 100.
The big challenge is that I really didn’t think of anything for my second act other than “they should have some adventures”.
I seriously need to get thinking and formulating an outline. As is I have about a 60 page story. Very poor planning. I have an A story, a tiny B story and no C story. I’m kind of F’d right now.
My first screnzy is going poorly. Writing 100 pages in 30 days isn’t as bad as I had thought it would be, but I failed to plan properly, so my train has a good chance of going off the rails here quick.

i’m the worst

My winning script frenzy is not looking good (you win if you do the 100 pages in the 30 days).
I’m at 18 pages when I should be closer to 40.
Last week I just couldn’t make myself write. Monday I took off because I knew I had 3 days of writing time to work with the next few days. Tues/Wed/Thurs when I have long 8 hour blocks I could have been writing I did 0 pages. Then Friday right as I was about to start I got a phone call and had to leave to run an errand with my stepmom. So I lost 5 days of writing. Today I just caught up 5 pages of it to get me to 18.

I’m really going to have to bust ass from this point forward. Ideally I’d like to be back on track by the 15th, the midway point of 50 pages.

The story overall I think is coming along pretty good. I like the start and think I have some pretty good scenes. I think one of my best one liners falls in a scene where my main character a 12 year old boy named Brandon is being interrogated by his parents before being allowed to spend the night at a friends. It’s implied that they grill him a lot and he asks how long they are going to keep doing this before just trusting him. The dad says, “Just until you’re married and then it will be your wife’s job.” I think that is a cute moment from the first 10 pages.

I’ll try to share another scene in the next blog.

word depressed

Had trouble writing today. Couldn’t figure out where to go. Guess I really need to do one of those outline things no matter how much I hate them. I managed 2 pages.
Blah. Tomorrow is another day I guess. I’ll outline a little tonight.

Script Frenzied on Day2

Finished my second day of doing script frenzy. I’m feeling good at the moment. These last 2 days I’ve gone to bed earlier and I’m waking up earlier by an hour and a half. I’ve been utilizing what would have been an hour and a half of tv watching and turned it into and hour of waking up and doing a few things and then 2 hours of writing. (leaves me an hour to relax before work).

I’m at 11 pages. However I know this is the easy point. Setting up a story is one of the easier parts of story writing. All the way up to the inciting incident at page 20ish it flows pretty easy. I even do good with ACT 2A the first half of the fun and games. The point I always struggle with is ACT 2B. If I can muster past that I can finish the story, because endings are the other fun part to write. So I expect script frenzy to be fairly easy to keep pace with up until about April 20th or so. I’m dreading it all ready. The ACT 2B monster.

Script Frenzy

If anything can pull me out of my funk and get me writing again this has to be it. I really need a challenge to force me to do it. scriptfrenzy.org is a challenge to write 100 pages in 30 days over the month of April.

In the time I’ve been not writing I’ve still been saving lines I come up with and plot ideas. My count now is I have 23 unwritten movie ideas. I have years of writing ahead of me and I really honestly do want to write all of these stories. I just need something, I don’t know what, to inspire me. So hopefully I can use script frenzy as a springboard. I need something.

Film School

I’ve kind of given myself some deadlines to get where I want in life.
I’m trying to make something happen with a movie/writing career. I had decided that if after 08/2012 I hadn’t sold anything, or it seemed like it just wasn’t happening I’d go to my backup dream, which is to move overseas.

I’m saving money and by that time I should I have over $10K saved. I’ve had this idea in the back of my head that with that stack of cash, I should forgoe moving overseas and go to film school. The toughest thing about moving overseas is getting permission to stay more than 3 months. Getting a VISA seems really daunting and next to impossible. It’s one of those things I find crazy about society. Governments in countries all over the world make decisions about who is allowed to be on their land. Like because you were born somewhere you have any more entitlement to it that anyone else. I realize societies are built and taxes collected, so people have rights to how their money is being spent. It’s just bizarre to me, when the birds fly south for the winter they don’t get deported. If a deer crosses the border into Germany for 7 months, they don’t make it go back to the country it was born in. But a human, no it must leave.
Sorry… sidetracked. Anyhoo…

So I was just thinking, what if I moved abroad to go to film school. I’m continuing my dream of working in film, but also fulfilling the dream to live a broad. I’m starting to research schools. I wonder if I can make it work.