One a Day

I was going to write about my first day as a professional landscaper. Or, rather, as an amateur underling of a professional landscaper. But it turned out to be so exhausting (especially on less than 4 hours of sleep) that I collapsed in bed and wasted several hours trying to convince myself to get back out. So I'll save that for tomorrow.

But a quick update on the writing front:

I've felt pretty blocked/ineffectual all summer. As much as I've tried, I've hated pretty much everything that I've written. The little that I finished, at least. But recently, I stumbled across the Raiders of the Lost Ark story conference papers, which is a transcript of the 5-day conversation that George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Larry Kasdan has while conceiving Indiana Jones. It's 100 pages of pure creativity.

And it's incredibly empowering and inspiring.

And that alone has kick started a very, very creative period. That was two weeks ago, and it unlocked a story that I've been struggling with for nearly a year. Which I then outlined and turned into a treatment within a few days, and now I'm 30 pages (1/4) into the script. I'm feeling good. It's got it's rough patches, and I'm going to need to trim it, but for a rough draft, I think it's pretty solid.

So I've also been catching up on a lot of screenwriting readings. And I found one suggestion that says you should write a page a day, because in 4 months you'll have a full length script. So if you give one month for development and one month for revising, you could write to full screenplays a year just by writing a page a day.

I'm intrigued.

And I definitely have the gusto to go above and beyond.

So I'm trying to write as much as possible a day. I think I'll go for a minimum of three pages a day, at which rate I'd complete a script in 40 days. But I'll secretly aim for six. A three-week script! All riiiight. Think of all the work I'll get done at that rate in the three months I'm in Philadelphia!

So today was Day One of the official Proclamation.
I wrote five pages.

Yesterday two. The day before that, six.
And this is with my accidental nap!

Anyway, I have another day of aches and pains ready and waiting for me tomorrow. I have to get up at 5:45am for it. So if you'll excuse me, I'm off to bed.

-A.