Against All Odds – The Climb #951

Thursday 30th September 2021

I was almost certain that I was going to have a crap word count today. Yesterday I managed over 5000 words as part of a big writing push this week. And whenever I have a good day, it’s always followed by a terribly unproductive day.

Well, almost always.

I managed well over 7000 words today, and I could have managed more were it not for a schoolboy error.

One of the things I’m working on this week is a script. Script work is really an activity to learn the craft right now. I read something that said a screenwriter learnt their craft by writing a feature every single month. Doing a film or TV script every month is a bit too much of a commitment for something that isn’t core work so I committed to doing one every quarter… which, because I’m me, I never got round to this quarter.

Except I found a competition / open submission period, had an idea for a script, and thought that I could write an hour of television in under a week…. alongside everything else.

And for most of this week, I’ve avoided talking about it, simply because I was getting a couple of pages done a day… and if you do your maths, that won’t get you an hour of television in under a week.

I had a really good day yesterday, and got about 10 pages done, but I knew that unless I had a miracle today, I’d not get the remaining 30-40 pages done.

Well guess what? I had a miracle and am pretty much at the target page count. Time I put in some of the missing descriptions, it should be bang on… which is good as I need to send it tomorrow.

How did I do it? By listening to my own advice for a change.

Last night, whilst sat on the support bubble sofa I made a list of all the scenes I saw in the rest of the TV episode. And then when I got home… despite being half asleep and ready for bed, I made a point of sitting down and writing all the scene headings out in Final Draft.

And so I had a guide, which meant that while I did put a lot of time into it… I’ve got the first draft of it done.

Now, this all sounds good, but you’ll remember me saying I’d made a schoolboy error. Yes, I did, and that was with The Accursed.

I said the other day that I’ve come back to this fresh, and despite a rocky start, I’ve also got my scenes all lined up.

Or so I thought.

You see, I could give you a half sentence summary of the next 4 or 5 scenes, and probably tell you one thing that happens in it… but I have no idea how those scenes start or end.

I tried to write one today. My output rate was so bad, I gave up after 700 words. All I really had for the scene was an ending… no plot, no character direction. And so, it sucked. It was without direction, and it didn’t shine like some of the previous chapters.

My plan is to rewrite it. I’m not even going to wait for the edits. It needs to go and be rewritten.

Which of course, means I need to work out what actually happens in this chapter, as well as in the next few. But with all the work I need to do polishing the TV Script to make the deadline, I’m not sure how much time I’ll get.

You know, just once I’d really love to see a scriptwriting opportunity and not have an impossibly short timescale in which to get it done.

Tomorrow could be tough, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I burn out for the weekend as a result. But who knows? I thought today was going to be a terrible day and the word count was more than decent. Who knows? Maybe I’ll have a 10k word day?