Was sick (flu) and bedridden for days. Sun went up and under several times before I was able to recover. Had lots of time to think about my screenplay. Went into 'wrong' directions several times. Now I am ready for ZD30. Being offline for a while does great things to the writing mind. Good luck with preparations everybody.

Ok, I think I know the answer to this...but, I REALLY want and need to do this challenge and yet I'd already assigned myself a deadline of November 30th to write my pilot. Is it possible to do ZD30 with a pilot script or does that feel like a cop out? (My skin is already itching to beg out of this promise and do one of the other three screenplay ideas that are also floating...)

Sure, alexandra. Feature length movie screenplay. Original TV pilot. Rewrite a current project. Break a story in prep. Generate a month’s worth of story concepts. Whatever you feel will ratchet your creative ambitions into overdrive, do THAT! Use November to move forward with a writing project of any scripted kind!

I have the same challenge as Alexandra, a lot of screenplay ideas suddenly wake up in my mind and beg for attention. Scott, do you have a perspective on this or some thoughts about how to tackle this?

I've been needing a creative push to get something finished. As shakespeare might have said "We few, we happy few, we band of writers"

ricardo, on the one hand, it's great you generate multiple story concepts. As Nobel Prize winning scientist Linus Pauling said, "The best way to get a good idea is to come up with a lot of ideas." However writing a feature length movie screenplay or a TV pilot requires a writer to immerse him/herself fully in their story universe. So if new ideas popping into one's consciousness becomes a distraction, that's a problem. I wrote about that here: The Curse of the Shiny Object Syndrome. That said, if you can learn to stack projects, that's extremely helpful for anyone with aspirations to be a Hollywood writer. I also wrote about that: The Art of Stacking Projects.

Hey Scott, it's Devin Dingler (of Dallas Buyers Club script breakdown fame). To prove I'm serious about ZD30 I finally pulled the trigger and bought the full-blown Final Draft for my MacBook so I'd be ready for Sunday. Get at me blank page.

People are telling me to only focus on the script I'm redrafting now, to give my full attention to it and it alone, but I feel drawn to this #ZD30SCRIPT challenge... And I have the perfect project idea for this kind of fast(er) paced writing sprint. I just need these next few days to organize thoughts and prepare a rough outline. IOW... I'm still in!

Devin, thanks again for the DBC script breakdown. Re Final Draft purchase: Sometimes it's those type of commitments which cause us to follow through. That's why I'm happy to say a couple of GITS readers have put together ZDT calendars which folks can print out, then mark their progress every day during November. A small thing, but just the type of thing to help spur us to finish what we start. Onward!

Karl, good to hear. Brought to mind that famous story how the Coen brothers were stuck writing Miller's Crossing, so one night they went to see a rather harmless comedy Baby Boom. Somehow the combination of stimuli precipitated the idea for Barton Fink, and the brothers went off and wrote that. Only THEN did they return to Miller's Crossing. So perhaps in your case, the ZDT challenge project will act as a kind of mental sorbet to cleanse your palette, giving you a fresh set of eyes for the rewrite on your other project.

Thank you for the insights Scott. Committing to one single screenplay idea is a challenge for me, a challenge I will gladly take on. Thanks to the ZD30 commitment I will rise above myself and turn out a first draft of my single location supernatural thriller.