Hmmm...

Days feel like they are slipping away. Everything is moving. The day I move to Haiti is quickly approaching. I’m busy with preparations. I’m worried I won’t get things done in time. I’m worried that I worried.

So what do I do? Start writing another screenplay.

I had taken a bit of a break from writing last year. I wanted to read more. (Happily, I can report that I have done so.) But the main reason I took a break? Because early last year I realized I’m a bad writer.

Around May or June ’08 I picked up a screenplay I had just “finished.” My intention was to read it through, do a little polish and submit it to some production companies.

I read it in one sitting. I put it down and almost retched. I wanted to flee. I wanted to join the French Foreign Legion. I even picked out my alias: Jean-Baptiste Chevalier. But a vision of lying in a trench in Chad and sharing a toothbrush with a French Canadian arsonist called “Leon” on a day the temperature clawed at 120F brought me back to reality.

Well, maybe not reality. But anyway...

For the first time in my life I was able to tell what was good and what was bad in my own writing. Or at least I saw a glimmer of what was good and bad.

I grabbed the screenplay and started cutting. Ninety-three pages turned into forty-five pages. I cut. And I cut some more. I pushed the whole story into thirty-six pages.

I noticed something. Those thirty-six pages were pretty good. Not James Cameron good. Not Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio good. Heck, not professional writer good. But pretty good.

To my surprise the story then took on a life of its own. I was able take those thirty-six pages and produce a ninety-six page complete screenplay almost in no time. It turned out to be the best thing I have ever written.

I decided not to submit it anywhere. But why? Because it’s still not up to standards.

I read it again recently. There are mistakes. Oh man, are there mistakes. Things that mark me as an amateur. Things that could be so much better.

But, I learned an important lesson. I can now see those mistakes. If I can tell something’s bad I can fix it. If I can’t fix it and can at least make it better. I’ve learned to press the story and to mine the concept.

I realized I had been polishing first drafts. A little touch up here. A little tweak there. But I wasn’t writing. I wasn’t doing the work. In short, I was lazy.

So this time I’m trying not the skip any steps. For the first time I can point to a theme and talk about it. I’m doing research. I’ve tested the concept. I’ve pushed and expanded the concept. I’ve even added a second concept. Best of all, I’m having fun doing it.

But, I still have no idea why I started writing it now...