Beware! Here be metaphors . . .

I managed to finish the first draft of the screenplay I've been writing.


Actually, I finished it a few days ago. I've given myself a mini-vacation from it for a few days before beginning the rewrite. It's something I have to do at this point--I've been submerged in this world for a while now so I need to stick my head above water and catch my breath for a time before diving back in.


The first draft, for me, is the most difficult part. Once I get the words down it's much easier to work with them, to make it into something. If I can get through the first draft I'm pretty much golden.


To use another metaphor--it's like I'm creating a sculpture. At this point it's a hunk of marble that, when I'm done, will look like a lion. I've  meticulously selected that hunk of marble. Now, I'm going to start carving away all the stuff that doesn't look like a lion, and shaping what remains into as attractive and as interesting a lion as possible.


And I think what wound up on the page is pretty good. Hopefully, my collaborator will agree, and hopefully this is the movie she wanted to make. Or, at least a start on it.


So, that's my plan for the weekend--making a couple of passes through this thing, knocking it into shape. Hopefully in a week or so I'll have it in good enough shape to send off to my producer/co-writer, and see if she either a:) loves it, or b:) hops on a plane, flies down here, and kills me with her bare hands. I'm hoping for a:), needless to say.


Then the real work will begin, when she gives me her notes on it and I have to rewrite it again.


If it sounds like I'm complaining, I'm not. This is the fun part, for me. The first draft is the part that I have the most trouble with, and that is now behind me. The fun part is making that first draft into a movie that you will plop down your money to see in the theater.


To use yet another metaphor--the first draft is the pregnancy. Now the baby is home.


Remember--great stories aren't written, they're rewritten.