Day 31 (End of Month One)

11:00

Okay, I've got some serious shit to do today. Unfortunately, there are other things I have to do as well, but this is my last day of the month: and the stats don't look as good as I had hoped. I'm really going to have to concentrate and plough forwards to get to where I need to go with this script.

15:15

Right. Back from everything I needed to do. Worked out another nice snippet for my script. Need to get some lunch and then keep on working!

21:00

Having a really difficult time of it putting this fucking thing together. I mean, really difficult. The geography doesn't work, and I've got a lot of characters who come into the story very quickly: it's difficult to give them all individual arcs to make them interesting.

00:45

Finally made my word count. I am finding this story exceptionally difficult to write - I had so many advantages in my last script - it needed little research, it was set now, and in an imaginary town. The hoops I'm having to go through to get my characters to actual places in Syria and Turkey is turning into a fucking nightmare.

But, it's done now. And so, it's time for my first end-of-month round up.

word count: 2,110
hours writing: 4.5

End of Month Round Up

In this first month of trying to write a screenplay a month, I've succeeded in as much as I finished the first draft of one screenplay.

But since I finished this first draft - just over two weeks into the month - I've found it increasingly difficult to keep my momentum going, and have found myself more and more easily distracted, inclined to take breaks or time off.

I've also failed in keeping to my two primary tasks a day: to write 2,000 words, and write for four hours. These averages were completely scuppered when I had work for a week down in Leeds - and the setback to my overall numbers was such that I became significantly discouraged to not really attempt to catch back up.

In becoming obsessed with the numbers, and trying to catch up on my word count, I put the 'novelisation' of this first script above plotting the new one. Although the 'novelisation' was an extremely effective way of re-drafting the manuscript, it was too time-consuming in the framework of everything else I have to do. So I did not manage to complete a second draft - a proper 'polish' of this January script, that would make me happy to show around.

In short, the numbers have proved that I can work a lot harder and go a lot quicker than I thought, but only if I constantly keep myself in check, banish all distractions, and don't cheat my own rules by banging out 2,000 words a day on 'novelisations'.

The Numbers

scripts written: 1

words written: 57,412
hours writing: 109

average daily word count: 1,852
average hours per day: 3 hours 31 minutes.

What I've learnt so far

I've been amazed by how much more positively I view my writing since I've started on this project. I still really dislike sitting down a lot of the time and doing it, but I feel a lot better about myself and my projects: they don't seem as much like hopeless, go-nowhere dreams.

The momentum of working every day on something has affected other areas of my life, too - I'm trying to be more organized and work through other things quicker and more productively.

But I'm also getting grumpier when I can't write, when obstructions and delays that normally don't bother me at all come along. This isn't so positive: never before have I looked at the clock and actually resented time itself. And I find myself obsessing over things I'd like to do when I try to write: like going to the cinema or playing computer games, which is really pretty lame. In my defence, sitting in a dark room typing on a computer all day may increase my nerdishness.

When it comes to writing technique, I haven't changed much - but I've studied screenwriting and plotting methods for quite a long time. What I've learnt is more about my own psychological state. And the only insight I've had in the last month is this: I think that I, and a lot of people I know who want to be writers, are addicts. They are addicted to not writing. And that addiction can strike at any time, and lead you on month-on-month binges of not writing, which leave you feeling really bad about yourself.

I think this addiction takes many psychological forms: mainly, perfectionism, self-hatred, idleness and excuse-making. One example of this is that I've always put off projects when I come to difficult parts in the story, believing that I needed more time to think them through, or I'd end up writing something poor. This has led to months of not writing and often, me entirely ditching the project because I can't think of a way forwards. But what I've realised over the last month is that, if you sit down and don't allow yourself to do nothing else, the solutions to the problems you're facing can come remarkably quickly, and they're every bit as elegant as the ones you spend a year faffing about.

Being a little bit hard on yourself - treating yourself like a not-writing addict and not allowing yourself to give up on something - really does create better work than letting these voices run your life.

But, beyond all the blabbering above, the main feeling I've associated with this month is one of increased confidence and contentment with what I'm doing.

Which is an unusual, very new and welcome thing for me.

See you in February!

Day 30

15:00

Woke up at one thirty today, with a cracking headache. Man, I'm a loser.

I'm determined to start at this earlier today, to get what I need to do done, and not just fuck about for hours.

Why is it so much easier to be responsible when you're not at home, when you're not surrounded by the distractions you create for yourself? If I want to write so much, then why is it that I set myself so many traps around the easiest place to accomplish what I want to do? Why am I so naturally anti-productive?

Going to work now.

02:45

Feel happy that I've moved through a really difficult plot point at the beginning, but a shit-load still to do. I've written pitifully few words today, and didn't even make my four hours fully.

But I think I've worked out a way forwards: a couple more insights into the plot and I'll really be able to start powering through the middle section.

It's always the way with the beginning. It's much more of a delicate process than the rest of the story, and if you rush and take a wrong turn at the beginning, everything else that follows is deformed. It's like an early cell mutation that ensures the organism can never grow or live.

I'm getting some pretty extreme stuff into this script - there seems to have been no barbarity that the Franks did not experience or (more commonly) mete out to others. I really want to get this sense of brutality across in the story.

Anyway, onwards and upwards. I can only be more productive tomorrow.

word count: 556
hours writing: 3.5

Day 29

12:45

Woken up a little later today - about midday. Feel determined to do better today with my work. I've really got to start mapping out the next story, and quickly. As it is, it feels about half-formed now in my head - and I'm treading a fine line between forcing out something before the thinking is finished, and indulging myself by not working hard enough to actually finish this off.

We'll see.

02:30

Made my word count today. First time on an original project since the 18th, so that's real progress.

I'm also so tired my eyeballs ache. So I'm going to go to bed now, and try to be a more diligent writer - and blogger - tomorrow.

Also I saw Frost/Nixon today. I was really looking forwards to it but was a little bit disappointed. It's a good film, but there's little dramatic momentum at its heart. It is not a clash of the Titans; it's a Titan and a minnow. There is very little of the dramatic sparring I thought would occur, and in fact Nixon's admissions towards the end are suggested to be something he decides very consciously to do, rather than being trapped into an admission through days of Frost's brilliant debating. And Frost seems to set up a David-Goliath confrontation solely by ignoring his researchers to go drinking, partying and to attend movie premieres - in other words, his underdog status is only achieved through his own dilettante behaviour - which really doesn't encourage us to sympathise with him.

It's still a good film - well made and very well acted. It's the dramatic structure of the film that is lacking - a Rocky-style build up with no Rocky-style denouement. And in the end, it does the opposite, I believe, of what it intends: it makes Nixon's opponents seem to be flighty and shallow hypocrites, while the president himself becomes a grand, sympathetic, and tragic figure. My limited understanding of U.S. political history suggests he was a brilliant politician but a completely corrupt man, and that we should have more sympathy with the victims of his policies (especially the Vietnamese and Cambodians) than we do with him. In this aspect, the film fails. I left the cinema hoping he would have succeeded in rehabilitating his image, rather than being pleased that he failed.

Anyway, that's my two cents. Actually, that's probably about four dollars' worth of two cents.

Head and eyes hurt. Going to bed.

word count: 2,012
hours writing: 4.5

Day 28

18:15

Let me just start by saying how much I hate fucking computers.

I woke up positive today and rearing to go and now all I want to do is kill myself.

Along with the many other ways my Macbook Pro has, over the years, decided to fuck me, now it won't burn dvds.

And it's not even broken - it's just some bullshit software/firmware issue that apple have never got off their asses to fix.

And because I can't afford to buy a new one, I've spent literally four hours trying to install updates and then roll them back and hack firmware and all kinds of shit to no avail whatsoever.

All so I can burn out some dvds to give to people I'm not even on speaking terms with.

I would have made better use of my time repeatedly punching myself in the balls.

Man, fuck computers.

23:30

Watched a movie this evening called Sharkwater. Watching it reminds me why I consciously avoided An Inconvenient Truth. It's a depressing, depressing film. But you should really see it - it's very good, in a kind of, 'we're destroying the planet and we're totally fucked' kind of way,

Meanwhile, I've been working on plotting out the film, working out exactly when and where each event takes place, which is a difficult thing to do properly.

While I've spent at least three hours researching, I've only spent a further hour and a half actually writing, so I'm going to fall short on my word count again, most probably. But I know how fatal it is starting a screenplay without a detailed roadmap to the end, and even if I slip on the word count for the next couple of days, it's good to be getting away from the 'novelisation' - which I'm going to complete but that has really started to feel like hard work - and lay the groundwork to successfully completing a second screenplay next month.

So, here I go, back at it.

01:45

Done some successful thinking on this, worked out a little more of what is going on. I feel bad that my word count average is dropping massively, but good that I'm concentrating on what's important: the next script, the next outline, the next story.

As a result of sitting down and really looking at the maps, I've realised that, realistically, a lot more of this film will be in the Taurus Mountains than in the desert of Syria. And it won't be set in 1099, when the crusaders took Jerusalem: it'll probably be set two years later, with the kidnap of Bohemod of Taranto outside the Turkish stronghold of Malatya.

But I'm shattered now, so I'm going to go to bed.

word count: 633
hours writing: 3.5

Day 27

01:30

Spent the day not writing, part by choice and part by circumstance.

Got up at 9.00 to go to Ikea. We are lacking a few basic necessities in our flat (like lamps and enough shelf-space for all the shit we have). Got back about mid-day, grabbed something to eat, then had a meeting this afternoon about some possible teaching gigs.

Then I came back, read for about five minutes, then played a computer game for four hours. Then made some dinner, watched a little Colbert Report, and went to see another film with my girlfriend - Role Models - patchy at the start but then very funny. Then we came back - about an hour and a half ago - and realised we've got a landlord's 'electrics' inspection in the morning, so have spent the time since trying to make the place look presentable.

In short, I've been a lazy frickin' asshole today. But it's made me feel quite good - I'm going to work now, probably only for a little bit, and it's going to be on my crusaders script, and it's going to be because I really want to do it.

I've made this quest to make my daily word count become something that gets in the way of me trying to tell a story, and that's not good.

03:00

A very profitable hour spent working on a new beginning to my crusader script. I'm really glad I had a break today. It made a big difference to what I was able to think of - a completely fresh idea, and a feeling that this is actually fun, and not just slog.

Going to go to bed now because I'm apeshit tired.

word count: 802
hours writing: 1

Day 26

09:00

Ugh. Feel fucking horrible. Five and a half hours' sleep just isn't enough for a guy like me.

Got a bit of a schedule today. I'm fed up missing all the good films at the cinema: I'm really not going to let these movies go out of the cinema without me seeing them:

Frost/Nixon, Slumdog Millionaire, Milk, Valkyrie, and (being a huge Fincher fan) Benjamin Button. The Wrestler. Maybe The Reader.

But I think I'm going to see Role Models before any of them. I'm that kind of guy.

But I've got to be smarter about working these things into my day without having to stay up to three in the morning to make my word count. So I'm thinking about a matinee.

For the first time in a few days, I really enjoyed working on the novelisation last night, but I really want to get back to the new script. I started the year with a half-finished plot outline, which turned out to be a huge advantage. I'd really like to get that kind of head-start for the new script - especially since February is such a short month.

We'll see what happens.

23:00

Long day. Still feel horrible. Went to see Valkyrie today - I thought it was very good, despite the lukewarm reviews. Singer has an excellent sense of composition, and when focused, an excellent sense of visual synedoche: a heel crushing a cigarette, a set of steps outside the Fuhrer's aeroplane, a glass eye hidden in a box, telling us about the hiding and the strategems, the decisions and the little things on which world events pivot - I thought it was very effective.

Have made my word count, again through the novelisation, and have only written for two and a half hours. I feel extremely bad today. And I have shit I have to do tomorrow. Ugh. These days are not getting easier, they're certainly diminishing in productivity, too.

23:30

I'm going to read more tomorrow - get more inspiration for this damnable screenplay. I'm looking at Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy at the moment (Penguin Classics Edition), and it helps me feel a tiny bit closer to the mindset I have to familiarise myself with.

And on that note I think I'll read in bed.

word count: 2,466
hours writing: 2.5
hours researching: 1 (I know this doesn't count)

Day 25

13:45

Up at midday. Going round to see my parents soon - it might be difficult to get writing done in the meantime.

I've got the urge to track down the movie Glengarry Glen Ross and watch it again: I'm not sure why. I just want to see Alec Baldwin yell: 'ALWAYS BE CLOSING!' and, 'COFFEE IS FOR CLOSERS!'

Man, the character from that film would make the best dad ever.

00:30

Okay, so I fucked up. Got back a couple of hours ago, after a pretty tiring day. Needed a little break; now it's half past midnight and I haven't done a frickin' thing.

Will have to just put a couple of hours in now, then try to catch up over the next couple of days.

I am definitely finding this harder at the moment.

02:30

Two hours writing. Word count made, only through working entirely on the 'novelisation'.

I've got to do better than this - get my head back in the game. I've been getting lazy and have spent too long playing (and thinking about playing) computer games when I should have been writing and researching. There's a lot of irrelevant crap that, in the long run, does me no good. I've spent the most part of my life putting that in front of creative endeavours, so, Jesus Christ! I can put this at the front of things for a single year.

What do I need to get my ass in gear? A fucking Rocky montage?

Going to bed now. Will definitely kick more (or at least some) ass tomorrow.

word count: 2,112
hours writing: 2