I hate it when Wednesdays run past me so quickly I hardly get the chance to acknowledge them before they're nearly gone. And I think Wednesdays have only gotten worse since they became Writer Wednesdays. They're so much more demanding now.
I woke up this morning at 7 and haven't stopped since. I think I lost five pounds simply on account of the fact that I haven't put butt to chair all day long. Until now. 15 hours later.
Progress report: About 10 days into Script Frenzy I started wondering if I was getting anything out of participating. I wasn't having any trouble keeping up with the pace, unlike NaNoWriMo, which was a nice feeling, but I realized that I could skip through all of the possible problem areas in the fantasy book I'm adapting my script from and still easily make it to 100 pages. And tackling those areas from another angle was kinda the point of doing the thing in the first place.
Then at around day 15 I recognized that I wasn't skipping those areas simply because I'd already labeled them potential problem areas, but because I instinctively knew that there wasn't enough action (read: plot) to translate to interesting scenes in a script. Or if there was enough action, it was subplot action that slowed down the main plot.
The script version of my story shines a blinding spotlight on the notion that these truly are problem areas and not just yet another bout of self-defeating perfectionism.
I know that adapting a manuscript into a script in order to find weak spots won't always work. I can think of a lot of great books that would be very boring movies. But I think it works in the case of my fantasy book because I tend to focus much more on character than plot and there's a lot of plot in a fantasy book. Or at least there should be.
With script writing I'm forced to get out of the characters' heads and pay more attention to the external than I would naturally. I need that because I find internal characterization seductive.
Final writerly thought for the day: I think I might actually finish my 100 pages a week early.
Don't tell my NaNo novel. She sort of got the shaft.
3 comments:
Don't tell my NaNo novel. She sort of got the shaft.
LOL. I'm glad you started to "see the light." and that in the end, you will get some real purpose out of all of this.
Honestly? I've gotten so much out of random thoughts in a live journal. I think I've figured out that hand-writing anything is my downfall. My hand can't keep up with my thoughts, so I give up and close the journal, half finished.
I always used to learn by pain-stakingly writing everything down and memorizing it.
It does work but I've realized that I can think in front of a keyboard even as I write. Go back, delete, change a word and re-read it and have an aha! moment.
Okay, I'm way off topic now LOL I guess I just mean to say, whatever works!
Hats off to you for your blogging. I still really struggle with it. I don't know how you find things to write about. It's funny that I daydream so often and yet I find blogging even once a week taxing. If I could just loosen up I'd probably end up with some amusingly random blog posts. At the rate I'm going you'd think I don't have opinions about anything. Oh well, I'm not giving up. I'm bound to chill out eventually.
Two words...Belly dancing:-)
Seriously, I hardly get out of the house some weeks but if I sit there long enough I'll think of something to say.
You'll get better at it--I bet you come back from your getaway with some cool observations, or talk about Easter at your church, whatever!
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