Unlikely to finish

Though I made great progress today. 11 pages. Lots of new material.

Also, I'm retitling it. No longer "Guardians" or "Keys to the Garden" or anything like that. Now I'm going to call it "Even Angels Swear."

Progress Report

Sunday, I wrote fifteen pages.

Fifteen.

Sometimes, being a binge writer is rewarding. Most of the time it's just frustrating and self-deprecating. But sometimes rewarding.

Yesterday I wrote five. I had modest intentions for yesterday anyway because I had about an hour and a half to write instead of all day and it was all new material. Page thirty-five.

The deadline's Saturday. I'm out of town this weekend. Basically I have to be completely done by Friday morning (notice I did not say Thursday night...). Odds are not in my favour. However, since I'm keeping most of the third act completely intact structurally, I'm crossing my fingers for a speedy finish.

Wednesday I have about zero time as well, so tonight's going to be clutch.

Sometimes

Sometimes life moves very quickly. For someone who lives at home and no friends, I've been incredibly busy the last couple weeks. Which is nice in most respects except (A) I wasn't sure I was going resist collapsing from exhaustion yesterday, (C) I'm completely missed *two* Bones episodes, and (C) the Nicholl deadline is now a week away.

...

Last time I checked, I think I was on page 12.

One of the most frustrating things about writing is fitting it into the schedule. Trying to balance life and writing and employment requires more grace than I am known to have. Having a job means coming home exhausted and drained. Taking trips means several days that are a complete wash. Pursing other hobbies means less time time to write. Add in friends, and I'm pretty sure I've suddenly become overbooked. There are so many ways NOT to write that it's a wonder anything ever gets written at all.

But it means that those who really want to write will. It takes sacrifice and discipline, something I did not show when I come home last night, threw on sweats, and proceeded to watch several hours of television. The key is balance, though. I don't think that it's worth missing out on life in order to write. The writing relationships is one of the only ones that actually suffers from monogamy.

Oh, and deadlines are incredibly helpful with productivity.

It also helps that I've now finished watching the first two seasons of the BBC Robin Hood series online. I'm going to go through severe bouts of withdrawal now that I have to wait for my DVDs to come in the mail. Netflix is such a tease.

Not gonna lie, I might choose Robin Hood over Mr. Darcy.

Where I've Been

Michigan. I've spent the last five days in glorious Michigan. Tonight I go home to Jersey. I work two days and then head down to Virginia Beach for the weekend. I'm busy. In lieu of a real post, how about a great song?

Shortcutting

Rewriting can have some good days. Like the days where you gain five pages by cut and paste. Those are good days.

Ain't No Line like a Deadline

Last night I had a dream within a dream. Like I woke up once, went about whatever I was doing, and then woke up a SECOND time. I have some crazy dreams, but this is the first time a dream within a dream has ever happened to me. Doesn't that only happen in scary and poorly written movies?

I am not participating in Screnzy this year (I know you all have been on the edges of your seats to know what I decided). I am insanely busy and can barely fit in my regularly scheduled writing, never mind a completely fresh story I hadn't even thought of yet. Screnzy, you're so much fun. Maybe next year.

Because, oh how productive deadlines can make me! Former screenwriting professor recently emailed me details to a screenwriting contest. They were giving a discount particularly to Michigan students. This weekend I thought maybe I had a shot of cleaning up Keys to the Garden in time (when, of course, I haven't even started my draft), but welcome to reality, Amy, you're not in college anymore where you can spend 7 hours at the coffee shop writing for your day of deadline.

Those days were so awesome.

Juggling a job, a life, and my writing doesn't allow for that anymore. But did this contest I won't be able to enter get my butt in gear? Heck yes. I wrote 7 pages yesterday. I got through my inciting incident. If I can keep this self discipline up, maybe I can finish the new draft of Keys by the end of the month, which I NEED to do because that's the Nicholl deadline.

So the deadline to a contest I won't be able to enter will have me pushing to finish my script by April 11th, the deadline for Creative Screenwriting's contest, which I will fail to reach because of the rest of my life, BUT it will give me enough momentum to finish in time for the Nicholl.

It's nice to know that I need THREE deadlines in order to complete one draft. But truly, self imposed deadlines just don't work as well as real deadlines do.

Crazy-A Storm of 2010

A couple of weeks ago we had a massive storm. Power out, floods, trees down everywhere. I was, of course, driving through a large chunk of it, but it wasn't even the storm itself that was the worst thing. The flooding was just unbelievable. Firefighter Friend steered a BOAT down a street where the water was above the mailboxes. And while a lot of cleanup has happened, people are still working on their homes and their yards, especially since we just had another weekend of rain on top of waters that still haven't completely receded.

I snapped this picture today in front of a house in my town. Thank goodness the tree didn't fall *toward* the house.


I would have taken a better picture, but there was someone working in the yard next door, and it was sorta awkward already with the parking and the getting out of the car and the picture taking. You get the point.

Also, still haven't decided about Script Frenzy, which starts tomorrow. I'm sure I can fill the 100 page quota, but I'm not sure I should be focusing on original material right now. And whether it be Screnzy or NaNo, I always have something time consuming and writing-prohibitive to do on the first. This year it's cupcake baking and dinner with friends. Man, such trying obligations!

Restful Monday

I spent about two hours today thinking about cupcakes. I need to make more friends so I have more people to pass my baking off to so my family and I don't get fat. I'm so glad I haven't been keeping track of the pounds of butter I've used these past few months.

Because I was intentionally super bored today (my weekend was craaazzy) and in an effort to distract myself from all things cupcake, I tried out our Wii Fit. Can you believe it kept telling me I was unbalanced? It even asked me if I found myself tripping frequently! Malarkey.

Script Frenzy starts in three days. I participated their inaugural year in 2007, resulting in a bottom-drawer script that I still maintain has a good premise, if terrible execution. I hadn't even considered it this year, really. ANOTHER script, COMPLETELY new? Seriously, why bother doing that to myself, especially right before contest season, when I'm trying to get Keys to the Garden through another draft and a TV script presentable.

But then I read Bitter's Screnzy article, and I started thinking, "3 pages a day? I could do that. It's really not much at all, especially at the first draft stage. And it's not like I'm getting much work done on the other projects anyway... I do have my 17th quirky drama idea that's been niggling in back of my mind. I could use it like a warm up. Sit down, write 3 and a half pages for Screnzy, move onto Keys, get some real work done instead of doodling around in that crap novel idea. Even if I got lazy and just wrote my Screnzy script, at least I'd be getting SOMETHING done. Yeah, maybe this could work..." Basically I will do anything to procrastinate on real work.

So maybe. We'll see. I'm going to think about a stellar idea. But the truth is, I love Screnzy and NaNoWriMo. They're fun and exciting and the closest thing I'll ever get to a marathon. I haven't done either in years. And first drafts are so much fun to write, unlike stupid rewrites. Also, I want a cool Screnzy t-shirt.

I came up with the most killer pen name. I figure I'll have to change my name, since Amy Butler is a queen in the craft world, and apparently it's more likely that I'll get famous before I get married. I've been trying to think up something firey, and it finally came to me as I was spacing out in the coffee shop this afternoon -- B.A. Butler.

Done and done.

A Piece of (Cup)Cake

Recent exciting things --

1) I bought a kitchen flame thrower. Well, it's more like a mini torch, but it's amazing fun. I used it yesterday to toast the icing on my s'mores cupcakes.

You wish you knew me for realsies now, don't you?

2) I applied for a job. It's a PA position for Game of Thrones, which I'm cautious of getting too excited about, but I was excited anyway. I thought I wrote a pretty kick-a cover letter, though sometimes it was difficult to convene how no one else is going to be as passionate about this project as I am without sounding like a pandering fangirl. In typical Butler fashion, I wrote my cover letter last night and woke up at 5:15 to do my resume this morning. It's just exciting to start applying for film jobs. This is the first of many (unless I get it!).

3) It was warm here. We had a picnic last week. Even though it's cold again, it's still warmer than Michigan.

4) This week's Lost was an episode to make all of us who stayed proud.

I fell off the wagon

Write every day. Even if it's just a sentence.

Advice frequently given to new/aspiring writers. A rule that is not to-the-letter followed by all writers. Here's how I found out that maybe it's a maxim worth designing your entire writing life around.

About a month ago I got fed up with my lack of productivity and decided to actually get some stuff done. Every day for the next 90 days I was going to make progress on my writing, whether it was outlining, rewriting, brainstorming, notecarding, character sketches, whatever. I had to do something to push a project forward, even if it was as small as writing a sentence in my off the books fiction story. And for the most part, actual progress was minimal (except on that fiction piece). But it was the habit that was important. Every day I'd have to make time to write, no matter how busy or tired I was. And sometimes, once I got started, I would actually make some progress. Keys to the Garden has been restructured and is now ready to undergo the next rewrite. This wouldn't have happened if I hadn't made a little effort every day.

And then something happened this week. I was really busy one day, and I just forgot. And then the next day rolled around. I was annoyed that I had forgotten to write the previous day, and I was really busy again. Forgot AGAIN. And when the third day came around, I was busy or not in the mood or something, and it was so easy for me to say, "Heck no way am I writing today. It's not like I've been keeping up with my goal anyway." (This is how dieters gain weight.)

But the next day, I climbed back on the wagon. I wrote. But I had lost my momentum. It's like starting back at Day 1. Write a sentence here, there, make it count as progress, fulfill the (oh so difficult) quota and move on. Putting in too little effort on projects that will never amount to anything. It might take another two weeks to get myself back to a habit of working for a significant amount of time on projects that might really move forward. All because I didn't write for three days.

Kinda a pain. And now I have to go pick up my pen and jot a few sentences of my story down before I collapse for the night. Gotta fill the quota.