Writing

I've written a screenplay.

It feels good to say that. What I've written is the first complete draft of a story that  I've been trying to write for literally years. Now, finally, its written, from beginning to end.

And its total crap.

I don't mean to say I wrote a terrible story. I like my story, but it isn't done, its still forming.

My whole life, I've loved movies. Human beings tell stories, fictions, to entertain, but also to teach, to share moral ideals and greater truths about life. When you tell us this is right or this is wrong, we nod our heads and say, "ok, sure," but it doesn't really sink in. When we experience those things, we truly know what is right and what it wrong.

Stories allow us to experience without actually doing. Our brains are wired in such a way that imagining something is as powerful as living through something. So, story allows us to share deeper truths in life in a visceral way that we truly can learn and grow from.

Movies and TV are only the latest way which people have developed to share stories. The greatest stories still are with us from eons past. Ancient myths, plays, ballads -- the best ones survive.

People complain that there's a lot of junk TV and terrible movies, that "its not like when I was young." Well it is. There are more channels now, and more theaters with more screens, and more ways to distribute a movie or TV show. The total volume of media produced has increased, and a lot of it is bad, and will be forgotten. But that has always been true. We just don't remember that from our childhood, because those stories didn't stick.

Shakespeare wasn't the only playwright of his time. He was just better, so his plays survived and are passed down. Homer wasn't the only story telling poet of his time, but he was one of the best, and his stories contain universal truths, so his are passed down. Long after we are dead and gone, most of the stories produced today will be forgotten too, including mine. Some will be remembered and retold, they were among the best.

About 5 years ago, I tried my hand at acting. I took classes, I auditioned, I worked as an extra for money and to see behind the scenes how movies were made. I even got cast in a few no-budget short films I'm too embarrassed to watch. Along the way I read scripts.

I'd tried writing at various times through out my life. I'd been told I was pretty good, that I had an interesting voice.  But I never succeeded in writing anything more than a few pages long. I didn't know how. I've had a certain story floating around my head since I was about 15 or 16 years old. Its still there (it isn't the one I wrote this time). But I couldn't seem to make writing a novel work for me, I didn't know how.

Scripts, they made sense to me. I knew movies inside and out, so I could read a script and see how it would play out on the screen. The format worked for me. So I began writing again, confident that this new format would allow me to express the stories in my head.

My first serious attempt got me about halfway finished before I doubled back and started rewriting. Eventually, it fizzled because I couldn't get to the end, I kept doubling back to the beginning. The idea stayed in my head. A few others have grown along side it, and a few months ago I began trying again, only to find myself doing the same thing. My script has been a quarter to half written a dozen times.

Finally, I learned an important new thing: Just write it.

My habit of doubling back, fixing and rewriting and editing before I was done was stopping me form finishing. I was judging the work before the story was complete. So I buckled down a week ago and started writing, for three hours a day. I didn't got back and read what I wrote, or think "does that work?" "What if this happened instead?" I just let it stay as is and kept moving forward with the story.

Some interesting things happened when I did that. I thought I knew my story so well, then I'd write a scene I never imagined and it fit and expressed an idea better than any other way I'd planned. Characters started saying thing I didn't expect them to, because they stopped being me, they became their own people with their own voices.

Last night I finished my first full draft of the story, from beginning to end.

It isn't ready for the light of day. Its rough, it needs to be rewritten, it has lots of problems, which is why I say its crap. But the entire idea, the whole plot is there now. More than I've ever managed before. So now I am confident that I will in fact finish it. It may not be great art, but it will be my art and it will be complete.

Then I will move on to the next one, and the one after that. There are at least four in my head now waiting to be be written. But right now, this morning I can truly say, I have written a screenplay. And that feels pretty damned good.