Projects, ho!

I've been obsessing over this screenplay I've been hired to co-write over the past couple of weeks. It's coming along nicely, I think--we'll see what my collaborator thinks when I send it to her. She's the producer, too, so making her happy is priority number 1 right now. My guess is she'll really like parts of it, and other parts she'll want to kill me after she reads them.

That's what rewrites are for. It's part of the process.

I also had an idea for another movie--or maybe a novel or something like that. I'm putting it on the back burner--the movie thing has to take priority now, and this is new thing is going to take an awful lot of research. It's sort of a legal thriller, and since I'm not a lawyer and don't have easy access to one anymore I'll have to find one to use as a source for help with the technical details.

It's a long weekend for me--MLK Day is a holiday for our company--and my plan is to work on this movie thing pretty much exclusively. I'll toy around with this new thing a little bit, when I need a break, but for the most part I'm going to get as much done on the first draft of this screenplay as I can. I've got a couple days off in February and my goal is to finish the first draft by then and begin the rewrite.

It's good to have goals. It's even better to make a serious effort to meet them. The pressure you put on yourself sort of acts as a goad for the creative parts of the personality, forces you to stay on schedule so you get things done. Of course, you shouldn't put too much pressure on yourself or you'll either produce crappy work or not be able to produce anything at all. But you do have to put some emphasis on meeting self-imposed deadlines or there would be no benefit and no point.

I hope that previous paragraph doesn't read as if I'm just talking to hear myself talk.

So, the plan for the weekend--writing, writing, writing, laundry, making a little art maybe, and writing.