So I was on the train on the 30th December, reading Stephen King's book on writing. And I had the strangest and most exhilarating idea.
I've been writing screenplays, teleplays and short stories since I was fourteen, and had started giving up on getting anywhere at all. I'd stopped sending out TV pilots. Given up on my feature script. I wasn't interested in schmoozing or even contacting wannabe producers any more.
I was in a rut, and it felt like it had lasted my whole life. I knew that I had to try something different. Something more radical. A plan to stop me from feeling like the creative failure I've become.
2008 was a super shitty year for everyone in more ways than I can count, but it had its fair share of inspiring moments. I'd watched Michael Phelps win eight gold medals in eight Olympic events, and Usain Bolt break three world records. I'd watched my favourite U.S. politician, Barack Obama, win the Presidential Election against seemingly insurmountable odds. If these people could achieve what many thought was impossible, how come I couldn't write one fucking story from beginning to end?
I had the idea.
Anyone can write a single screenplay. That's hardly a challenge. In fact, its so much of a not challenge that you get slowed down by your own self-consciousness, you get caught up in the mechanics of making the plot perfect, the characters perfect, trying to make it the most perfect screenplay ever written. But what you've written is still so imperfect: it haunts you, makes you hate yourself, you worry about every page, every word: soon enough, that easy enough challenge has been consigned to a Tesco bag full of notes and a couple of word documents you won't be able to find in a year's time.
Fuck that. Anybody can make it their new year's resolution to write one screenplay in twelve months.
Why don't I try writing twelve screenplays in twelve months?
I've spent a decade doodling up ideas for features, working them into unfinished synopses, rough scenes, half-finished character plans, semi-completed step treatments. The copies of Syd Field and Robert McKee in my bookshelf were so well-used in these half-hearted pursuits that pages had started falling out of them: in fact, there were more scribbled notes and ideas in these how-to books than there were in my notebooks, my rough drafts, anywhere else.
At least six feature ideas I'd been working on in my head for years. I could tell you the beginnings of and the characters in all of them; I could tell you the endings of most of them; I could tell you what happened in the middle of none of them. I'd been too lazy, or self-loathing, or unsure, to complete even the stories.
That was going to change. I was going to write each of these films out, come hell or high water, in the next year. I set myself some ground rules:
1) All works were to be original ideas. No adaptations or any bullshit like that. A little harmless plagiarism, though, would be politely overlooked.
2) I was not trying to create works of art. This was about finishing reasonable drafts that were good enough to post on this blog. 60-80 pages for a screenplay would be fine, just so long as the whole story, A to Z was in there. I could refine it later: this simply should be good enough to show people, to have a complete and comprehensive idea. Each should feel like an achievement, no matter how modest.
3) 2,000 words a day was the aim. This would create a screenplay at the end of the month that would run to approximately 60,000 words. I estimated this would take roughly 4 hours a day. This time would be spent every day, no matter what, on writing. On days when I was working, I would spend as long as it took in the early mornings or the late evenings catching up. Tiredness would not be an excuse for fucking away another year of my life.
4) I could do as much 'research' as I wanted. But this couldn't eat into my 4 hours: this time was not to be spent dicking around in the library reading Elmore Leonard. If I wanted to spend an extra 4 hours working out stuff about the world of my characters, fine. But I wasn't going to confuse this with actual writing.
5) A TV pilot or an internet series of 8 episodes or more could be counted as a month's 'screenplay', as long as I didn't abuse the rule. I put this in partly because I might have to write at least 16 5-minute episodes of internet drama in the next year, and I felt this should count towards my writing this month, or I would undoubtedly fail.
6) I could re-use or recycle as many ideas I'd had from the past as I wanted, but at least three screenplays would have to start from ideas I had this year.
7) I could add more rules in the future, just so long as they weren't something like, "disregard all other rules, eat pie and fall asleep".
Looking at the task ahead, I couldn't be sure I'd last a single day.
But there was a reason behind this ridiculous ambition (apart from pride, vanity, and arrogance). I work well with a challenge. I have written very quickly - when I've needed to. I wanted to spend more time writing - having read an articale about how "geniuses", or those having "perfected" an art form, had all spent at least 10,000 hours working in their subject. Out of interest, I noted down the hours I wrote in December on a spreadsheet.
In December, I'd written a pilot for a tv series, a short script, and sketched over a couple of feature ideas. You know how many hours I spent writing, according to the spreadsheet? 12 fucking hours. I might never get close to genuis, but Jesus Christ, I can get closer to 10,000 hours than that.
I was going to have to be harsh with myself. No more computer games - except for weekends, holidays, and perhaps weekdays. Only one episode of Battlestar Galactica a day. No more pointless exercise. If I was going to make my mark as a marathon runner, maybe this would be different, but I was going to need all the time I had for writing.
In nine months, I was going to be thirty years old. According to my plan, I should have nearly nine screenplays under my belt by that date. So this would be my final day before this quick and crazy plan kicked in. My final day of freedom. My final day of underachievement.
Only time would tell what would happen next.
