Well......

It could get longer, but I think the plot and character development works fine at the length it is. So... I decided it's done and I FINALLY sent it in.

Holy frickin... Wow.

I got to a part where not much needed to be changed and my progress just skyrocketed. I could have it done "tonight." And yes, the quotes are because my definition of tonight doesn't end until 3 AM, sometimes later. That would be nice, to have it done with a few hours tomorrow for clean-up with my mom, who used to do desktop publishing. I'm kind of exacting about proofreading, because Abrams is awesome and my mom used to pay us to help her proofread when she had a home business.

feed the writing machine

Unfortunately, going on Pepsi and Doritos and Lunchables for 48 hours may mean you feel like passing out in the 49th hour.

Big giant confession about procrastination...

So... we all know that I suddenly started to pretty much ignore the deadlines from halfway through the term  and on... I have concluded that part of this is because my rewrite thus far is about 90% completely new material. I'm not really doing a revision here, in my opinion, I am writing a completely new script that just happens to have lots of similarities to the old one. That said, now that I'm eating junk food, guzzling Pepsi like it's water, and my primary emotion is being upset with my mother instead of all mopey and trying not to cry, progress is going MUCH better than it has been. In the past two or three days I have doubled the material I've written for this draft. Unfortunately, it's not long enough to pretend it's finished yet. I am rapidly fixing that, but I ran out of Doritos tonight, and the my ideas ran dry, and even placebo is enough to connect the two, so I'm buying more chips tomorrow and writing the entire time I'm not driving to/from or taking my Philosophy exam. I'm really glad the exam is open note and book, otherwise I'd have lost writing time reviewing the major names and stuff like that. Anyway, goodnight.

Junk Food

I don't know if it's just that I work better under intense pressure, or that I bought a bag of Doritos tonight. I have been trying to avoid junk food most of this term, at least, at night in my apartment. I mean, I can't always find time for decent food when I'm catching a quick lunch between classes. Anyway, I brought Doritos and Pepsi back to my life, although Pepsi never really left... Under the influence of my favorite salty junk food indulgence and my sugary, caffeinated best friend beverage of choice, I've set a new "most progress in one sitting" for this quarter. However, it's going to take some serious junk food binging and crazy sleep hours to make up for the damage I've done to my timeline. I'm sorry. And I vow never to try to eat better at the same time as trying to write something well ever again. (Probably a lie, but I like the dramatic sound of it.)

This is not working for me.

I seem to be spending most of my time alone crying or trying not to cry (and who can write with people all around?). And I don't think that it's necessarily a closeness to my script that puts my mood in the way of working on it. It's just not easy to think and write funny when one is close to crying most of the time. The script is plenty different from the self kernel I made it out of, and it doesn't feel like it's my arm or leg or anything like that. It's just not self-propelling enough to only be possible as one genre, the rom com I want. I'm very good at making people think I'm happy or content in-person. Perhaps what I need is someone in the room with me while I write whom I feel compelled to act happy for. Maybe if I could put on my happy act while I write, I could keep it aimed at the genre I want.

*Ahem*

Obviously, progress is not what it should be. I have concluded that I think my stories chronologically, which is why I get into trouble trying to skip around to the easy writing parts and fill in the stuff that requires effort later. This would probably be okay if I was writing prose and could use freeform structure. But I'm not, so it's probably a big setback. And through the course of all my screenwriting classes, I have noticed that I suck at features and my really great ideas work best as shorts. So basically, though taking this class is necessary and really important for me...it's kind of like getting my wisdom teeth out. And I mean that in a specific way, because mine were not going to be impacted, but they had weak mottled enamel and would be a problem later on, and my mouth hurt for two weeks, even with Percocet and 800 mg Motrin at the same time. So, this class is important, and screenwriting in general is a huge deal to me, because if I hadn't picked something usually fun, my dad would have made me study some kind of engineering thing, but the class is also something that has become not fun.

And have I mentioned I wasn't even good at revising term papers in high school?