Day 4

11:20

Up a little later, feeling a little groggier this morning. In celebration of having finished my step outline, I played my first computer game this year: Rockstar's Bully. At about two o'clock this morning, I got that familiar revelation I always get playing computer games into the early morning. You're a fucking loser.

Going to have to do things a little differently today. Up till now I've been able to be selfish, do nothing other than write. Today, I have to do a little work; next week, there's a whole lot more of it to go around. So we'll see how that impacts on this whole project.

But for now, a cup of tea.

16:00

Alright! Finished with work! I can finally do this.

Today, I'm going to go through my plan, worm out all the problems in it, and then start writing the script, first draft. I fed the whole story into an excel spreadsheet last night, listing characters, objects, and what they're doing in between the times we see them. This might sound lame, but it was only by doing this I realised that a suitcase full of cash just disappears out of the story after having driven the whole first act.

So, try to find the other plot holes, see if I trust it as a story, and then start on the beginning.

Only time will tell whether it's going to work.

16:30

I fire up final draft. Do the normal things; A4 page size, go to the 'document' window and take off the 'mores' and 'continues'.

I could spend more time staring at my character sheet and pondering as to whether or not it's a good enough story. Fuck it. I'll just write it.

02:15

That was a tough period of time to squeeze four and a half hours writing out of.

Wow - to write 2,000 words of screenplay requires you to write around twelve pages of screenplay. Twelve pages. It started hard, got a little easier towards the end, but: twelve pages. I'm really going to have to plan out every story I write - there's simply no way I'll be able to write middles and endings at that pace blind.

All in all, a frustrating day, and a late finish. For the first time this year, I really didn't think I was going to make my word count today, and it made me grumpy as hell. I did, and I feel better now, but it's nearly 2:30 in the morning, which is not a sustainable way to work.

Hopefully I'll be less of a douchebag, and more productive, tomorrow.

As always, time will tell.

word count: 2,230
hours writing: 4.5