I struggled for a few days, but today I had needed success with Act 2. Relief and excitement. I had the day off, so I did several writing sprints. I walked the dogs, wrote a scene, cleaned the house, wrote another scene, raked leaves, another scene. 12 pages today and I still have all evening to write. I love it, all of it, learning something new, reading scripts/watching movies for homework, putting what I know and feel and hope into words. It's been a fantastic day.

The textual vomiting has stopped after 13 pages done today and a final count of 105 pages completing my zero draft. The fever has abated... Now to analyze and treat the resultant script with a high dose of cut n trim, followed by a generous application of editing for the rest of the month... ONWARD!

Good for you, Pepper! I know you had the day off so that's unusual, however perhaps you can glean something from the do a scene, take a break, do a scene, take a break. What if work is your break? Write a scene in the AM. Go to work. Lunch: Write a scene. Work. Come home, have dinner, family time. Before bed, write a scene. That's 3-6 pages right there and you've gotten those breaks in between. Just a thought. We're all learning a lot about ourselves as writers, myself included. One of the joys of Zero Draft is we have the FREEDOM to try out different approaches to writing.

Andy, give you a second helping of congrats to go along with the one on Facebook. Now go celebrate. THEN move into editing.

And here is today's special brew of creative energy. Booyah!

Thank you, Scott. That's very helpful. I'll try it tomorrow. I'm doing the writing sprint tonight (fell asleep last night).

It turned out I didn't have to work late, which was a gift on its own, plus I also had my usual time to write. 4 more pages. It's still all very rough but I'm feeling more attuned to my characters, which is satisfying. Congrats to Pepper and Andy on your milestone days!

Crossed the 50 page mark! 6 pages today, some during downtime on set, and the rest when I got home. I would never be able to punch out pages on set before, I'd need to have the "perfect circumstance." Right temperature, right noise level, right mood, alone at my desk. Movies are never made under ideal circumstances. There's never enough time, never enough money. But through the hard work and grit of the cast and crew, the thing gets made, and sometimes the thing becomes great. Screenwriting is no different. There's never a perfect situation. You just make your imperfection better.

I'm writing this non-linearly and have written most of the fun easy scenes already. Now I'm approaching the more difficult emotional stuff that I've been putting off. Today I wrote 2 scenes that are more serious than any of the scenes so far. So my pace may slow down this week while I write these. But tomorrow I should get a lot of writing done since I'm not planning on leaving my apartment since it's Friday the 13th. I'm not taking any chances.

Good on you, Steve F. Keep on writing!

thedchen, there's a comment by Woody Allen. Paraphrased. When I have the idea for the movie, it's 100% of what I imagine. When I write the script, it's 75%. When I shoot the movie, it's 50%. When I edit and finish it, it's 25% There is no such thing as perfection when it comes to movies (except the movie The Apartment). Once we accept that fact, it should free us up to write from our hearts instead of our fears.

Dave, you and I are in the same boat. Well, I'm not IN a boat. And since you are in your apartment, neither are you. So I guess we actually AREN'T in the same boat. That said, of the nearly 50 pages I've written, it's all stuff I wanted to write and pretty much knew what the scenes were about. Now comes the tough stuff. I'll send you positive vibes if you send me some, too. Quid pro quo!

May I be honest? I feel something is missing. OK, I finished my script and that's freaking awesome, but the past 13 days, when I woke up thinking about writing, were... uh... different. I'd like to read my script again, but I know it'd be useless. It needs time, like a good wine. It's weird, but for me the worst moment is when I complete a script (and I close it in a drawer), but I haven't decided what to write next.

On point Scott, I will implement this when I go back to work next week.

What is it with today's Zero Draft Update? A lot of wise remarks :). Stanley Kubrick said: Although [making a movie] can be like trying to write ‘War and Peace’ in a bumper car in an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling. We just need to show up and things will work out eventually.

Celebrate! Take a moment to be proud of your accomplishment, you have done something bold and brave. Something that a lot of people say that they are going to do, but they don't do it.

"We just need to show up and things will work out eventually." That cuts to the heart of the mantra: "Trust the process." I blogged about that here. Let's see if we can break the record for wisdom in a comments thread!

Yes, Lorenzo, celebrate. And perhaps the best way to handle these transitions is to stack projects. I blogged about that here. Basically the idea is while writing a draft, you spend another part of each day using a DIFFERENT set of muscles. Research. Plotting. Character development. In theory, when you finish one project, you are primed to segue directly to the another one. Three things: 1. You do want to give yourself some time after you finish a draft, even a zero draft before diving in for a rewrite. For first drafts and beyond, I recommend 2 weeks minimum. For a zero draft, 1 week can suffice. You need that time to develop a 'fresh' set of eyes, some distance from what you've written. 2. Stacking projects is a skill set you want to develop as a pro writer. Screenwriters can line up several jobs and sometimes we have two or more we're handling at once. And TV writers, particularly showrunners, are usually balancing several scripts in various stages of development. The ability to partition parts of the brain to separate and handle multiple stories is a good skill to have. 3. This all assumes you are generating story ideas on a regular basis, always looking for the BEST ONES to write. You don't want to transition from one project to the next one, and the next one is a marginal idea, but you choose to write it simply because it's there. Generating story concepts on a regular, even daily basis is a plus. That said, some writers simply cannot multitask like that, which is fine. Recognize the type of writer you are and run with that. But by all means celebrate getting through this draft. You deserve it!

Been absent for a few days, put it down to workload and little time to write. Which is okay because I'm ahead of the game with pages in the bank. But although I've done little in the way of pages written I've been scribbling notes, a bit of continual world building, cementing my character traits, especially my Protagonist to Nemesis relationship. On Scott's subject of Edit or Not... I'm with the Not camp. But I do make notes, usually in Bold or Capitals (anywhere in my script) so I don't forget - but my main focus is on writing. I like Scott's quote from Barbara Stepansky, that's is this script's style with me putting it down on the page regardless. Once it's there it just needs to be edited, but is it's not there, then calamity. Have a productive weekend everybody! Happy writing.

Sending you positive vibes Scott! I'm even burning candles, incense, and doing some chanting to help them get to you.

I'm working on three other projects while I vomit out this one. It really helps when you have writer's block to be able to play with a different story.

Thanks Ricardo. I appreciate your kind words. :)

I agree with you, Scott. In fact, I have a feature idea that I would like to write, but it needs some information. This is my chance to research everything I need. :) When I was reading your reply about generating story ideas, I thought about something that a teacher told me once. "If an idea-- any idea-- pop up into your mind, no matter how stupid you think it is, write it down. You can't possibly know if that idea will be the one that saves your story five years from now."

... [Trackback] [...] Read More here: gointothestory.blcklst.com/2015/11/zero-draft-thirty-day-12.html [...]