Saturday, May 30, 2009

The Merry Month of May



And I say "merry" with all the sarcasm I can muster. Oh, it didn't start off too badly. I did my temp stint and, as I expected, I was tossed to the wolves yet again, yet I survived. I hadn't even recovered from that ordeal when I got the mother of all kidney stone attacks. That was bad enough, and then on top of that, I got a weird sinus/allergy infection, one of the worst I've ever had. It wasn't helped due to the high pollen count in the area either. Which meant that in between fever, hacking, pain, sneezing, coughing, wheezing, I only managed to eke out a few pages on my latest spec.

I've been at this long enough, you'd think I'd know what I was doing, but I'm concerned over my lack of output. So far this year I've only completed one rewrite, and a script tweak that turned into a full blown page one rewrite for a director.

Now it's not that I lack ideas, far from it. I've begun (and this is a conservative estimate) at least 5 scripts (if not more) only to get distracted, put it aside, and start something new. By this time last year I had three new specs under my belt. I'm usually such a workaholic---I can remember years when I banged out spec after spec, spitting them out like tacks.

I'm not quite sure what it means. Look, for years I kept that pace up, I suppose it was bound to let up eventually, but I don't know if I like it. In the past, I've tried writing several scripts at once (working on one in the morning, the other in the afternoon), but it's a tough schedule to keep up. I usually found that I'd get so engrossed in one script, that it was hard to get in the groove of the second.

Well, hopefully June will be easier, both writing wise and health wise. One sickness at a time, please.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Now that you're not with The Script Department anymore, how much do you charge to review a script? While you were with The Script Department, you covered two of my scripts. one was "A Checkered Adventure" which you liked. Now that you don't have the "middleman" I assume the price can be much cheaper than what The Script Department charges?

Please e-mail me at shamenkmfdm@yahoo.ca

Note: it's "ca" not "com."

Thanks,
Steven Lee