120 Pages
I’m about to leave the house to work on the screenplay. As I mentioned before, I have written over 120 pages so far, which is kind of amazing to me. It’s satisfying to look at a binder filled with that much paper and think “I did that!”- not that I’d show a single one of those pages to anyone right now. They’re in terrible shape, but that’s all part of the process.
When starting a huge project, I have to find ways to make the work less overwhelming. In this case, that was setting a goal of writing 120 pages. I didn’t care how good they were. I didn’t care if they made any sense. All I knew is that I finally put something down on paper.
It’s not like I went into this recklessly. I did plenty of planning beforehand. I’ve been writing Mr. Grant for years. Even when I was doing the webcomic, I had the whole story line plotted out. I have boxes filled with notecards, pages of outlines. If anything, I had been planning it to death. Mike had finally had enough of the endless stream of notecards, and demanded that I finally write something down. I didn’t have a large part of the second act ready, and that frightened me, but it was time to move forward.
I needed to set a goal. Creating a “good” first draft is too vague; I could keep writing and writing and never find satisfaction. Breaking the task down into modest chunks could propel me forward and give me a sense of accomplishment, and so the 120 figure was established. Now that I’ve finally hit that benchmark, I’m onto the next. I’m close completing the first pass, but even with 120 pages of writing, there are still issues with the second act. The second act of the Mr. Grant story is composed of three distinct episodes, each of which are halfway finished. My new goal is complete them, no matter how many pages it takes. It shouldn’t take too much longer, although this is the hardest part of writing for me. These episodes are the only parts I didn’t have completely planned out, but once I’m done with them, the real fun begins. I’m really looking forward to the editing and revising process.
