How I write

Sorry,

It's been a while since I posted anything. I've been struggling, alternately, with a script I'm writing and a series of bad sinus headaches. (I mean a headache like, is that a sinus headache or did someone jab a railroad spike behind my left eye?)

But on the flip side, I think the script is coming along well. I'm working on a 2nd draft and the process has been pretty interesting. I sat down and wrote a first draft all the way through, except without a definite ending. I didn't write an ending because I knew that when I went back and started working on it again things were going to change dramatically. When I write a 1st draft I just try to power through - even if what I'm writing is stupid, I'll just crank it out because 90% of what I do happens when I rewrite and as long as I have something to work with the ideas flow.

So I printed it out and sat down with a pen and started the rewrite. I go through it and change things, rewrite dialogue, rewrite and move scenes around - work on the thing as a whole - cross out page after page after page - but all with a pen on the printed page.

Then I sit back down at the computer and start to enter things in. Of course, this is more than just typing - things change here too. In this particular case I had a radical change at this point that I knew was going to be an enormous amount of work because almost every scene would have to change - but it works - it's much for the script - and it makes sense, so I had to go with it.

I'm half-way through this draft. It's going a little slowly because of the change, but I think it's a lot better. The problem is that I think it's going to need at least one more pass of this whole process before I can show it to anyone.