Time lapse goals...they fly right by...

At the end of last year, on one of the screenwriting blogs I follow: Go Into The Story  Scott Myers posted a great 10 part series about goals. Here's part 10 with links to the other 9 inside. It really got me thinking and planning. I needed a more solid goal than write X by X. I also needed to get better at working on more than one project at once and I needed to get better at *finishing* them. So I came up with a plan for the first month and year.

I've decided at the end of every month, I'll evaluate the goals I set at the beginning of the month, what worked, what didn't, what I need to change, etc etc.  This month, I had 2 main goals. Finish my second first draft to a point where I felt comfortable with it...and outline enough of the next script where I could start writing on it.

I succeeded with the first enough to be okay with it, which is a big step.  I think I'm going to put it away until at least after TF..although the third act isn't great...it needs a few more scenes, so perhaps I'll add those and *then* put it away. ....*don't pick at it!* ....yes mom.

The second is a not so much. I mean, I feel pretty comfortable where things are heading. I have all three acts broken down and I have the major plot points mapped out, so I could start in on the first act.  Actually, I take that back, I'm totally going to start writing on it.  My issue last time was that I outlined and outlined and reoutlined and didn't start writing until it was almost too late.  So, my second goal is accomplished as well. Go team.  Since I don't have the first act mapped out as much as I'd like to, I think I'll just start with the first few scenes and see where it goes. I know where I need to get to at the end of first act and I have the midpoint, plus I know who I need to introduce and why.  So enough storyboarding, let's go shoot something. My boss had that cartoon in her office for the longest time....

What I've learned this past month is I need a better way to schedule my hours.  I had a bit of a paradigm shift when I started thinking of writing as a job I'm not getting paid for yet.  If I want to prove I can get paid for it, I have to put in the hours, like any job.  I tried doing at least 2-3 hours each night having written a page and outlined some. That was great until about it got to be exhausting (and, ahem, I got sucked into a book or two)  I ended up feeling bad if I didn't put in the hours each night, then things would snowball and it'd be 3 days later and I'd have to give myself a firm talking to and no biscuit. It was just a bad system overall...no rewards with plenty of self-induced punishments..and not in the good way.

So the new plan...weekly page count and hour goals.  If I need a night off, if I'm tired, if I want to play videogames or play with friends or play videogames with friends, that's fine, but it means I gotta make up the time later on or preferably beforehand, but it has to be made up before the end of the weekend.  I'm also left with a question of what's the total number of hours? Should it be 15? That's only 2 hours a night, which I can do and still leaves time to make up.  But it's only 60 a month...which seems more like an intense hobby.  If I kicked it up to 80 a month, that breaks down to a little under 3 each day. I think I can swing that if I have a "hard" hourly minimum of 2 hours/day writing/oulining and the other as "research" reading scripts, books & screenwriter blogs...hey just because it's fun doesn't mean it doesn't count.

And of course the final kicker, I won't know at all if  i can keep that schedule until late March as TrueFalse is starting to kick into high gear. Only 30 days and there's a lot to do.  I'm cutting back on some duties this year, but picking up others. Scheduling and training videographers, doing the same director skypes that seem to come up every year and then doing a bunch of other technical things here and there. I'm so glad Greg Babush came on board a few years ago. Now he's taken over so much in the projection area I can focus on what I'd really rather being doing...and am actually qualified for. Back then I was mostly winging it based on knowledge I picked up at my day job. Which was it's own sort of fun. But now I get to enjoy TF during the fest, rather than after.

Oh wait...Feb's goals. 15 pages &....30 hours? on the screenplay. I'm assuming I probably won't get anything done on it past mid-february so if I can get that finished in the next two weeks I'll consider myself gold.

And somewhere in the next few months I need to make time to get back into shape as we're doing some Grand Canyon back country hiking in May....which should be awesome. Kat's been playing around with timelapses and I'm jumping on that bandwagon. Hopefully, by May we'll have a timelapse dolly that we can take down with us and if our shots are even 1/10 as good as what Tom Lowe gets, then we'll be in good shape.  Here's a trailer for his film, TimeScapes, coming out this May




Current music: Twister by Mark Mancina which always makes me think of double features in KC with Eric. And now that I link to amazon I find it's kinda expensive and out of print.  Glad to still have my copy....or, I suppose, the internet:

Everybody works on Monday!

Aaaaand it's 2012. First, to post one of the most delightful things I've seen in a while. A woman in LA shot a bit of video each and and at the end of the year, edited it all together into a year-long video diary of sorts. one second a day...or close to that.

 
2011 from hey_rabbit on Vimeo.

 Pretty cool. I haven't done the pic a day thing in a while...I'm not sure if that's something I want to keep up with. I don't seem to have the discipline or the desire, so it doesn't seem such a good thing to devote energy to. What I have been devoting energy to is writing...maybe not a lot, but consistently and that's a good thing.

Writing-wise, my goal last year was to complete the first draft of the feature script by 2012...and I made it with not 12 hours to spare. Woot! right? Wrong! I should've been overjoyed at the success, the completion, the pocketing of keyboard calloused fingers. But no, I was left with a feeling of unease. Is this what a first draft should feel like? Is this how I should feel after typing FADE OUT? And why had I misplaced my ease? Because it was an absolute disaster. I had made adjustments to the script halfway through so I had scenes leading nowhere and I had scenes that had no setup. I have characters in the 2nd act that I haven't introduced because they were born from some necessary realization. I have Chekov brandishing phasers all over the place that never get used. And this could all be perfectly natural train wreck....I just don't know having never written a feature first draft before. I even bought myself a celebratory present: Absolute Sandman Vol. 1 which is terribly awesome and still unawsomely contained in it's shipping box because I don't feel I deserve it.

And what's up with that?! Comma dammit. I have a perfectly fine edition of Sandman on my desk which by *my own rules* I should be able to open and enjoy it's delicious wonderousness. And yet *by my own brain* I can't because my first draft doesn't feel first drafty enough.  Le sigh.

Now, I did feel successful enough to go out and have a guilt free new years eve full of friends and fondue and rock band and fondue and punch and fondue because that's what you do on New Years when you have friends and fondue and Rock Band.  Well okay, it's what we do and this was the first NYE of many  that can take place at Barb and Seth's new digs in Columbia because we're so happy to have them back. So it was a most enjoyable way to welcome in the new year...aaaand I didn't take a single picture.  Oh well.

Anywhoo back to my tale of whoh! I now have new rules regarding my current Gaimen paperweight...my *second* first draft will be completed by the end of January. I've been writing at least a page a day (or at least catching up when I don't) and at that point I should have a first draft that feels a little more coherent. Plus I still have my list of the big structural changes that need to happen in the second draft.

I've also been outlining the next script so I'll be ready to start writing that Feb 1.  That one I'm a little more concerned with...I have the whole thing outlined in broad strokes and I'm slowly nailing down the first act but I'm not sure if I'll be ready to move on from that point. Plus TF is going to kick into high gear so that's going to eat up a lot of time.  I'll have to come up with a reasonable goal for the end of Feb.

Currently listening to James Horner's score to The New World, which I previously didn't know existed. Sounds like working on a Malick film is quite the experience.