I've been writing a lot

Just not here.

A few days ago I was going to announce my intentions to the world (ie, my dad and two friends) that I was going to have the first act of Current Draft finished by October 4th (at first I typed "first draft." That will not be happening. I will not finish an entire screenplay in two weeks. I'm glad I caught that typo.). ... Buuuut, I've finished the first act, more or less. It's very rough, but it's there, and I feel pretty good about it. I think I might clean it up and send it to my creative genius life partner to see what she thinks. Sometimes I feel like she's the brain and I'm the monkey who sits at the keyboard and pounds on the keys until something readable comes out. What're the odds for that again?

I'm also working on a new creative project, the details of which I can't discuss here.

I basically said that just so you would be burning to know.

Still not talking about it.

I think the project I really want to knuckle down on (because that does seem to be my problem half the time. Which one of my gazillion unfinished projects would I like to work on?) is my TV pilot. I was struggling for a while. The next scene wasn't playing out right. And I think I realized that the problem was 1. bad plotting on my part and 2. the characters wouldn't have done what I was trying to convince them to do. Basically this realization came about while I was thinking about how to write the trouble scene and realizing that I wouldn't approach the problem like I was trying to write it, so why would my characters? A little replotting and restructuring, and I think I've got a workable beat sheet. I took the 15 pages I had written, modified, rearranged, and embellished, and I'm halfway through Act II now, feeling good about being able to write the next scenes. Sometimes the answer to a problem scene isn't approaching the scene a new way. Sometimes it's writing a completely new scene. And I was discussing the premise with my family, and they pointed out an entirely new aspect to the world that opens up wonderful possibilities. Season two? I'm thinking yes. So the goal here is to have my first draft of the TV pilot done by October 9th. I have a wedding the next day, which seems like a good reward (a reward that's completely unrelated to my writing and also predetermined before my writing goals, but a reward none the less).

Also, I've been reading Alex Epstein's "Crafting TV Writing: Thinking Inside the Box." I'm really enjoying it, and I think it's positive reinforcement for principles I've learned throughout university and writing on my own, as well as some new ways to look at the craft.

Basically, things are going pretty good over here with the projects. I'm in taking a lot of caffeine and outputting a lot of pages. But someday, it would be nice to get paid to do this.