No, it’s not over. 58 Pages, 5 dead, and counting

Published by neil on March 15th, 2006

I’ve spent most of my life playing it safe. Avoiding risk is always the long term easier route, so giving up on the challenge of the horror screenplay was the easy way out. Despite the figures not matching (read below) I decided to spend much of Sunday assessing just how many pages I could write in a day. Writing is fine, it’s coming up with a means of expressing what’s in my head and then writing them, that’s the problem.

With Sunday and Monday evening’s efforts out of the way, yesterday was another burst of self-doubt. Despite some work deadlines shifting (it was a sign, I tell you!), I was still tormented by the need to do my duty and work. I know that although I have achieved mostly a story and partly a script, if it is dropped at this time it will likely never be completed - you know how it is when there’s no deadline and a bunch of other things to get done.

I was about to drop the sheer exhilaration of the creative process and knuckle down to a sensible adult attitude of work, when it struck me. This is what I have always done. Opportunity - however small - would always be subordinate to the urge to toe the line. But that was the old me - sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and give opportunity a big wet smacker right on the lips (no tongues).

I sat and thought hard about what it would mean to meet the script deadline of being in the post this coming Friday: late nights, very late nights, and even more late nights. Structuring the ‘real’ work down to what was absolutely necessary (knowing I could catch up over the weekend) it was possible… I could sense it!

So, with the plan to work tonight until I cannot see. Tomorrow with the help of whatever caffeine-laden beverage I can get my hands on, I’ll go right through the night if necessary. The tough dialogue-laden character stuff is already done now, so it’s just the action story-telling (and bile-inducing deaths) which are still to write. I will be sending a minimum 90 page screenplay on Friday. Bits of it are already good, some of the rest of it, under the circumstances, may not be so good. But hey, I’ve read a darn sight worse which has made it big, than I’m spewing into my tatty, paint-peeling old powerbook.

If I have to pay the price with a heavy work week next week, then so be it. I will have achieved something and have the knowledge that when it comes down to the line, somehow I’ll make it happen. That’s truly confidence-enhancing self knowledge.

Now, how to kill off the protagonist’s remaining two companions…?

Technorati Tags: horror, screenplay, Golconda

Tags: Creative, Writing
Posted in Creative |