The Poetry Fix News
| VOL. II, ISSUE 9 |
Keeping my wits about me!
That was the name of the game yesterday as I pushed through to make the Project Greenlight air tight deadline. Of course since very few things are easy - this is how the day went.
First of all I was coming off of "writer's block" from hell! I could not and I mean COULD NOT come up with an ending for the story. Yes, I'm the writer but nothing logical or cutting edge or shocking was coming to mind (all the requirements of a GOOD screenplay). My friends were sick and tired of hearing about "The Deadliest of the Species" (name of the screenplay) and my struggle to finish it. Finally, I let my best friend look at the first twenty pages and she says "You can't have three killers. That's too many to keep track of." Okay - this is good feedback if she had given it to me say - THREE WEEKS AGO! But she utters these words about 24 hours before the deadline. Now in all fairness to her, I had only started letting people read pages in the last couple weeks. But her feedback made sense and because writers are neurotic (if you are not - good for you) I took what she said to heart and went about trying to strip down the story to a more manageable size.
Megan you were right :)
Anyways - once the story was more centered - I was still left with this nagging little problem - NO ENDING! So I dove into the deep end and just started typing - ANYTHING - that came to mind. It didn't matter if it had anything to do with the story. After about an hour of this insane writing exercise I was able to pare it down to something that made sense. As the clock ticked I felt like I was starring in my own movie "Racing Against Time." It was like I was cramming for my finals in grad school, again. The characters were every where.
The story line slipping out of my grasp and I could not make heads or tails of the plot.
Keep in mind I have been working on this thing for six weeks - solid. I was using up every square inch of the time
allotted. But do you think these little annoyances stopped me from hitting that submit button?
Of course a good "beat the clock" movie would be no where if it didn't have a final twist. When I did hit the submit button - I was informed that the server had CRASHED! That's right folks - with less than 15 minutes to compete the application, upload the script, key in my identifying info - I got the dreaded "We are experiencing technical difficulties." I thought my head was going to blow off. I was sitting at the Sisterspace computer at the time (yes, I kept my volunteer obligation for that day. Who can say "no" to Faye and Cassandra?). So I was limited to how many expletives I could say in that moment:) I had to go through this torture three separate times (starting from the beginning each time) before I was finally able to get through the submission process. And in true movie style - I was left with exactly one minute. Now there is a funny part to this story (unless of course you've been laughing at my lunacy all this time). When I decided to enter this contest, I put a couple safety nets in place to guarantee that I made the deadline. One of those things was to create a false deadline time. I moved the submission reminder up by one hour. This was in hopes of buying more time in case anything went wrong. Well- I FORGOT that I had set the clock up. So while I was having a major heart attack at 6:58pm - I really had an extra hour to finish the process. Funny - right? NOT!
Don't worry - the product ended up being far better than I'm making it sound. But now that the screenplay is out of my hands, at least for Project Greenlight, I must move on to the next thing. I have my eye on a couple projects and that should keep me busy. So when Hollywood comes a knocking I'll be ready but until then I'll keep writing. If you are interested in participating in the review portion of the contest you can go to www.projectgreenlight.com.
No, this is not a direct link to vote for my script. Now that would be too easy.
The scripts are distributed randomly so the chances of you getting my script - to review - are slim to none. But I will take your positive vibes and well wishes.
So that's what's happening in my part of the universe. Drop me a line and tell me what's going on in yours.
Now go on and dive in to all the possibilities for the week!
Michelle
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