not the swiftest hare in the race.
"Do you think Drew Carey refused to star unless they named it Geppetto?"
"I think Disney wanted to avoid suing itself."
One year ago: I did almost the exact same thing I did this year, except with more running. Two years ago: the start of a pattern... Three years ago: I do not, in fact, finish the screenplay and send it off to the Nicholl. Today's news question:
***
(Don't send me your answers. This is just a little way to expand your horizons. Honest.)
Darin and I have determined that if Sophia were asked right now what her name is (and she were able to answer), she would say her name is "M'Bunny." "Sophia" probably comes in eighth or ninth.
So. Third year running.
I decided last week that I would make a few changes to the script that made the semifinals last year--that, hell, made the top 25 scripts in the Nicholl, if certain birdies are to be believed. I want to rewrite the script anyhow, because my friend Edgar's interested in taking it a few places, but I haven't had the time for rewriting (at least, my version of rewriting, which involves opening up a new file and reconceiving the whole thing from page one).
No, for the Nicholl, I'd do it the easy way: I'd change a few things and send it off. Of course, to be able to do it I needed a little time in which to concentrate, so I asked Darin if he'd mind spending extra time with the Bunny this weekend.
"Nope."
Friday Sophia went into Need Mommy mode--"Mommy! You're more than three feet away from me! Hellllllllp!"--and I didn't do much except think about what I'd do if I ever got my hands on a keyboard.
Saturday I actually got a lot done on my script, particularly in Act I. I kept thinking, at this rate, I'll get to page 50 and then I can do the second half tomorrow.
Ha.
I did as much as I could on Saturday, realizing that I was writing an ungodly number of pages when all I'd meant to do was change a few things herre and there, but what could I do? Tweak dialogue when entire scenes needed to be rewritten?
(Repeat after me: it was a semifinalist script last year, Diane. Nevertheless: the script started at 118 and went out as 107; I know I wrote at least 10 and probably more like 20 pages. So a huge section of the script changed, which I hadn't meant to do at all.)
On Sunday I got cracking as early as I could. However, Sophia went back into Need Mommy mode, so I just kept her with me: it was easier to have her there than have Darin come back every half hour and say, "I think she's hungry again." Around one o'clock I gave it up, figuring I would just wait until she was calmer or asleep.
I called Toni and talked to her for over two hours. During the phone call and afterward Sophia absolutely, positively refused to go to sleep (so much for her famed afternoon nap), so I doodled on paper while holding her. I felt so guilty for thinking things like Can't I have just five minutes to do something else? Because it's not her fault she's still in the totally-dependent stage. And I know I'm going to be crushed when she isn't dependent and doesn't need me all the time.
Darin and I ordered dinner from Maria's and settled in to watch Sunday night TV: The Simpsons, Futurama, and the ABC sweeps month spectacular Arabian Nights. In the thumbs-up category: Rufus Sewell, Dougray Scott. (Can't have too much of either of them, particularly in small clothes.) In the thumbs-down category: you know you're going to have this special-effected-loaded miniseries done for whichever sweeps period you're aiming for, hire a goddamn screenwriter already. Is it so hard to find someone who can write slightly snappy dialogue? These scripts (I include The Tenth Kingdom, Merlin, and their ilk) give new meaning to the term churned out.
My big plan was to go write after Sophia went to sleep, so the big plan was get the baby to sleep. Darin and I went down to bed at 10 and I set about nursing her to sleep. After about an hour she seemed as though she'd dropped off for good, so I put on my robe. "Call me," I said. Darin sleepily agreed.
Half an hour later: "Diane!"
Sigh. I went back downstairs and lay down with Sophia in the dark, nursing her, stroking her back, singing endless off-key renditions of "Rock A Bye Baby," all the while hoping I didn't fall asleep. Finally she dropped off and I snuck out of bed again.
I worked until about two-thirty or three in the morning. I wasn't at my best--no insomnia when you need it--but I had a pretty clear list of what I wanted to work on, and it felt very satisfying to check scenes off the list. At the end I thought, Well, I only have these things to do tomorrow; surely I'll get enough time to do them. And I went to bed.
Ha.
In the morning I had a crazed baby: Mommy-mommy-mommy! Nothing I could do would calm her down or remind her I love her. I walked around with her in my arms, I nursed her (though for a hungry baby she wouldn't eat much), I rocked with her in the rocking chair...eventually she dropped off. By that time I was too frazzled to undertake the ambitious plan I'd thought I'd be able to handle last night: I picked the few things that absolutely needed to be done and did them.
At one I printed out the script. Problem: my brads and my hole punch were in one of those boxes currently creating an earthquake hazard in my office. So I needed to go get supplies and put together my entry all before Sophia wakes up and wants to nurse again. So my afternoon went something like this...
Hand a sleepy, milk-bloated Sophia to Darin, get in car, drive to a stationery store I'm sure carries Acco #5 brads--
(Slight digression: You would be amazed at how discussions of brads can clog up wannabe screenwriters's discussions, unless you are a wannabe screenwriter and have seen one of these discussions. Basically, the "controversy" as such is, "Should I use two brads or three when sending my script out?" The unspoken question--the subtext, if you will--is: "Will anyone think I'm a hopeless newbie if I use the wrong number of brads?" No, I'm totally serious: lots of worry time gets eaten up by this.
(The correct answer is, of course, "Nobody gives a good goddamn how many brads you use, they care what goes between the brads." Since a number of people--many? most? who cares?--use two brads, you should probably use just two brads, for two very simple reasons:
- if you use one less brad, your box of brads will last longer--for 50 scripts rather than 33--and you will save money, and
- if your script is any good--that's a big if, I know--people will want to copy your script, which means taking the brads off to get the script into the copier, and if there are only two brads their job is that much easier.
--and a hole punch. Get products, race home.
Find out hole punch is broken. Check clock: Sophia should be fine, but she has been going on two-hour nursing marathons recently and it doesn't pay to be too complacent about how she'll be. Check Sophia: asleep on Daddy's shoulder. Wonder how he manages to type with her in that position...but don't wonder too long: get moving.
Get back in car, drive back to store, buy new hole punch (different manufacturer, more expensive, less adjustable), race home.
Discover the hole punch can handle about 6 sheets at a time. Curse the 107 page script. Punch it. Punch the title page. Punch the card stock covers. Collate script, attach brads. Write check to Academy Foundation, fill out application form, stick check, form, and script in Kevlar envelope.
Get back in car, race to nearby post-office-in-drugstore that normally I'd walk to but not with the baby deadline looming. Find amazingly long line in post office. Avoid shoving to front of line with battle cry, "I have a nine-week-old and we don't use formula!" Pay money, get back in car.
Get phone call from frantic father: "She's hungry!" Drive just a wee bit faster. Pick screaming baby off of Darin's shoulder. Wonder what the hell was in those 107 pages anyhow. Remember that I didn't do anything like page through the script to make sure all the pages printed out. Rock baby to sleep and figure that there's always next year.
Right now, of course, that I have no pressing deadlines, Sophia has conked out and is sleeping peacefully in her crib. I think she's playing games with Mommy.
I called Toni for that most writerly of reasons: I wanted reassurance that I am, in fact, a writer.
I don't make calls like that because I'm looking for compliments; I make them because I'm having a terrible crisis of confidence. Compliments don't tend to do me much good at a moment like that, because a simple, "Oh, you're a good writer" washes right off of me when I'm in the depths of despair. Not that I mind hearing it, mind you; it just doesn't seem to make a dent in my self-image.
I used examples of writing from online journals in our discussion, so we had a common frame of reference. When reading some people's writing I think, Damn, I can't do that. I'm not clever enough. I'm not stylish enough. Does my writing ever inspire cries of, "Her style is amazing!" It does not.
I've always strived to be clear and simple in my writing and sometimes I wonder if I haven't succeeded all too well.
Maybe I should try to shake things up a bit. Or maybe I simply haven't got the same flair that the writers who really stand out do. I'm not hip enough, I'm not a poet, I'm not stylin'. (Complete with apostrophe.) Is it possible to just up and change my writing? And would doing so make me feel any more like a Writer?
Toni commiserated with me. She knows what I mean, she's been there. She's a wonderful writer and she feels that way. (That is not to say, of course, that if you feel that way, you're a wonderful writer. Just happens to be true in her case.) When you're not receiving constant validation of your talents, you feel untalented. When you do receive approval, you feel like a fraud. When you feel really good about your writing, you glow--and then you worry about lightning striking.
Most of the time I don't think about it one way or the other. But when the crisis hits--man, it's bad.
Forum: What do you need reassurance about?
We talked about many other things besides--yes, we talked about you, we said all sorts of slanderous things, now don't you feel better knowing that?. For instance, we want to write novels. Mystery novels, in fact.
I reminded her that Pooks and I have discussed writing mystery novels, and perhaps the three of us should work on them at the same time, to encourage one another along.
In one of those friggin' boxes I have The Weekend Novelist Writes A Mystery, and I really should dig it out: after all, weekends may be my best writing time around here. That is, when Sophia doesn't go into Need Mommy hyperdrive.
 |
 |
 |
 |
Copyright 2000 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@nobody-knows-anything.com