Got a novel/play/screenplay in your head? Get it on paper! Here is the page count thread for hopeful and actual writers.

[wilbur]

Are you a writer in need of some motivation? Post here each day or whenever you can with your page count. Or post your hopes for how many pages you want to write each day and then come back and see if you managed them. Even if they are rubbish, at least you will have them down on paper and can make them brilliant at a later date.

I will start. I am hoping to write a second full-length screenplay before August 2008. I have two days a week where I have time to write my own stuff and I am aiming to do 5 pages on each of those days.

See I can't even be bothered to strike words out properly, let alone research things. Used to be a researcher in another past life too

Smaug? What happened?

Elf - what I find, is that if there's something serious I want to write about, I usually need to write about it because it chimes in with something in my life or past. And often it's the emotions which are the key to making it plausible, the facts can be slotted in later. So what I do is a bit like method acting, try to throw myself into that character, write from within them, find the part of me that relates to this situation etc etc. I am not always v good at it though, and it's this that is always the weak point in my writing.

But I may have got completely the wrong end of the stick, and you might mean, like archaeology, in which case, go and watch a dig. Seeing is always better than reading, you need to get the sensory feel of something.

I used to be a factual researcher too, Toots, and so I too know just how possible it is to be seriously waylaid... I sometimes have to turn the internet off to write.

And what vonsudenfed said.

I have a jealousy headache. If someone could drag the words out of me, that would be very kind.... 1500 words, my foot!

I think you guys sound very productive to me I have this afternoon off work, so will use some of it to write, I will, I will, I will. (me my notepad and a coffee shop?)
I think it helps to shadow people sometimes when writing if you have the time, if you don't and you're not writing from past experience, a well placed phone call can help, as well as sitting on the net, or visiting the library.

Hello ggg! 'Fraid we are unable to drag words out of you, but you do have a v small baby, so are excused any kind of page count... How is he, btw? And dd1?

Re research, I do factual stuff in the same way as I do for my journalism - either online or at the library and sometimes specialist bookshops. Quite often looking around like this brings different inspiration which is great . I had a job once that took me to The Forbidden Planet bookshop, scifi and fantasy specialists, hilarious and fantastic place, a total gift if you want to get into the minds of certain types of young men.

Good luck with your time to write this afternoon, Frizbe. I am also turning off the internet later so I can get stuff done.

Different Planet Bookshop, eh, what?

I have just submitted my storyline again having added in the b and c story which are much funnier than the A story and took about 1 56th of the time to grow and write up. But then the A story is the heart and the spine that carries it all through. Expect there will be lots of notes to address and another draft or two to get that straight and then onto the script.

It all looks rather blase written out like this but I have dragged myself along my my fingernails on this version since about October. And that is quite apart from a horrible spell (thought I was going mad) last spring/summer when some development I was doing on the characters and thinking what their childhoods might have been like made me wig out in grand style about my own.
Don't think losing your own plot is in any way essential to the screenwriting process but can't help thinking I've earned my tortured artist spurs in the last year and deserve to get stuck in and write some cheeky dialogue and pratfalls.

ggg - jealousy headache! Very well put. Know it well. Good luck frisbe

well done toots, so I managed not a lot yesterday bar quickly adding a brief character detail of one person to my current ideas.....however this morning, I did manage a fair few more notes to self on things and feel my idea is now heading in the right direction! I may possibly have written 200 words or so to start myself off (unless I change them again!) then real life has caught up with me and I've had to attend to the day job, bah.

So a month from when Wilbur first started this thread I'm nearly ready to start that 5 pages a day challenge.

Notes on my amalgamated storyline weren't too onerous so I should be able to incorporate them all tomorrow and then fire up a script template and get them all yapping and doing.

Of course, this being life, I will be hard pressed to keep to the page count as a big chunk of paying work is about to kick off in furious style in next couple of weeks. But I will do my best.

So come on all you writers - write! I am in this delicious/terrifying position because I put blood sweat and tears in. So come on all you lot out there. Stick with it. Keep at it. Yes it's horrible but if you're compelled to do it then do it. Move through it a baby step at a time. Working out what it isn't is even more hellish than finding out what is is about but you will do it if you keep on it's tail like a workaholic detecive. Who is/are your main characters? What is their flaw? What do they want? What crap can you throw at them and how are they going to respond? How does it end? What are the themes?

Progress reports please!

Excellent Toots - you rallying cry arrived just at the right moment! I was feeling a bit useless (busy day, lots of running about, am just about to head for class assembly and then swimming and then maths homework hell) on the writing front, but I will def think of it in baby steps. While I haven't managed the full 40 pages I was hoping for by now, I have at least finished (yes, finished, and even shown to dh ) the short script I have been tinkering with for too long. PLus I have done a lot of structure and scene work on my full length and started to write a but of the beginning, just to keep myself interested. Must get a full story line done though - need to know where I am going. Your stuff sounds great, well done on getting to grips with all the planning. I'm sure it will pay off for you.

Smaug - where are you? Did you get your chapter in?

So what did DH think of the script, Wilbur? V brave of you.

I think the baby steps thing is the way to go. I was reading an article about procrastination (I know a lot about it, that's why I do it so well...) and they suggested just doing 10 minutes of something a day if it's scary or daunting or important. Then you demystify it, and accidentally find yourself doing more.

I'm back on baby steps once more. I'd really got onto a roll last week, and was feeling positive. But then dd was ill, I was ill, we had two sets of guests and I have forgotten everything I thought and am back to square one.

I do wish I'd known how much time I'd wasted not writing before I had dd; I got an email from a friend a couple of days ago. He is doing a Creative Writing PhD in California. I would happily donate an important bodily organ for one tenth of the writing time he has....

Know how you feel vonsudenfed, one of my good friends did a Masters in Screenwriting a couple of years ago and I lived vicariously through her course, sooo jealous of her time to concentrate on writing. I also wish I had done more before ds1 arrived, but the last 11 years have been very complicated for me and so perhaps it was necessary for me to wait until I had a bit more distance from thing before getting back to it.

Toots - dh said he liked it! Although, typical bloke, he really only had one specific criticism which was about a technical thing (how did the character get something they were carrying across a pond) that he didn't quite understand. I think he would have preferred a more detailed "carrying heavy things over ponds manual".

vonsudenfed, I truly don't believe you have forgotten everything and are back to square one. Do a brain dump into a blank doc on the pc when you have ten minutes. Just automatic write and I bet you'll find it all extrudes out and probably more.
Please, please, please when you and Wilbur notice jealous thoughts just tell yourself very kindly to stop and use the time you have available to think very kindly about your writing instead - specifically about one aspect of it: a crisis that could happen, what the character most wants, What is it in his background that makes him so clingy - or does it serve you better if he is rejecting? (Anne Lamont in her lovely book about wriring 'Bird by Bird' calls them 'short assigments'). I only say this beause if I start to think amorphously about the project as a whole, the following thing happens - firstly I think how I'm getting precisely no-where (vonsud? Ring any bells?) then I think about how maybe I'm kidding myself and I'm never going to get anywhere, then I think about people who are somewhere I'd like to be, (which is where your friends come in) and then I'm nicely stuffed because I physically can't be them so they've won and I've lost. Ricockulous ain't it?

I know this might go over like a piece of poo on a Persian carpet but I wonder if Mr Phd and Ms Masters might ever think 'lucky Vonsudenfed and Wilbur, they probably make better use of their writing time because they have to, whereas we just swan around not doing it for longer because we've got so much time'. Then, inevitably their thoughts turn to how jealous they are of other people who are writing at nicer desks or something pointless.

Just keep hoovering up the stuff that you want to write about and spitting out the stuff you don't and if you keep turning up at a computer to write it up coherently then you will start to be more excited than you are scared.

BTW Anne Lamont's title refers to her brother when they were at school who had had three terms to complete this project on birds and had left the whole thing until the night before it was due in and was, inevitably in a bad place. His father's advice 'All you can do is do it bird by bird, Buddy'.

BTW I hope this is coming over in the positive way it's intended. I just feel that at this time I've made it some way up the mountain and it feels good and I want to say things that make other climbers grab hold of their ropes and dig into the toeholds with renewed spirit. PlusI'm hoping you have Kendall mint cake and you'll give me a bit at some point.

works for me toots

Thank you madam.

Toots - thankyou for the encouraging words. They are very positive. But I now feel rather guilty, as though I've been mis-presenting myself here.

In many ways I'm in quite a good place - I have 70,000 words written (of which a small portion is very good, a larger portion needs substantial revision and quite a bit still needs to go in the bin). I need to write about 10,000 or so joining-up bits, I guess, and to retype the whole thing twice, to polish.

And I am now working like the wind whenever I get the chance. But every time I just get in the groove, there is illness, or guests or something, and I fall off again, and forget all my thoughts about how it all joins up. Which is infuriating, as if I had my own way I would write, if not all day, then certainly every morning [guilty mother face]. But two mornings a week is all the childcare we have right now...

But yes, you are right. Mr PhD wouldn't necessarily want my time, but he would exchange a body part for my home life.

And Wilbur - 'detailed carrying things over ponds manual' really made me laugh. Next time I get a particularly detailed bit of pedantry at a writing group, I will remember that, and it will stop me getting cross.

Vonsudenfed! Talk me up the next bit, will ya!

I love how you know what you've got and what you need to do next.

I enjoyed the pond thing too Wilbur.

I think my heady high of the last couple of days is receding a bit now, as the reality is that I do actually have a one hour script to write, plus a job to do and a family to run and I haven't been sleeping that well... but onwards.

Bird by bird. I like that. Every time I get anything done, or complete a task, I realise that that is how I have done it, bit by bit, with a bit of method and application.

Vonsudenfed - dh's reaction was slightly annoying in that for once I had resisted the urge to write out every step of a process. I have a tendency to overwrite bits of action, put them down exactly as I see them in my head, but I learned my lesson about this when I was doing a film course a number of years ago. I had written the final project, and someone else was directing, but during the actual shoot I was also the sound recordist. And I sat there watching what I had written coming to life (bless the director for sticking to the script word for word) and thinking "oh get ON with it". There was far too much "she crosses the room, she unpacks the groceries, blah blah..." Talk about a script in need of some rewrites!

Wrote first 7 scenes today, totalling five and a half pages. Rewarded myself with an evening in casualty with dd2 who bumped her head in the park and went all pale and eye rolly. We have to go in at 10, 12 and 4am to make sure she's alright, which I expect she will be. Glad I bagsied today to do some work, might be a bit tired tomorrow...

Yikes Toots, hope she's ok {{{hugs}}}
Well done on the work
I got no writing done today, too many small people about! did lots of baking instead

Thank you Frizbe, she is fine. Bouncing around this moring. Hope you're baking will sustain you for some good scribbling in the week ahead.

Glad she is okay toots, and well done on the opening scenes. Can you have a delayed reward glass of something nice tonight?

I won't be doing much this week as our au pair is away and I have some paid work to take up my few hours while ds2 is at nursery. Plus I am recovering from a large night out at Mark Ronson at the Hammersmith Apollo last night, so not many brain cells at my disposal. I did see Jade Jagger though, up close, and got stage dived over by genuine rock star, so it was worth it.

Rock and Rooooooolllll! Does sound v large.
Might have a glass later. Shuffling papers nervously today as starting work on 52 part animation series, so will be fitting in my script where I can amongst that.