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Sorry about missing yesterday, loyal readers (reader?), it's been pretty busy. We're gearing up to start production on a new movie and are expecting an offer from a studio any day now. It's pretty exciting, but it certainly makes me busy. However, since my boss is taking a quick break (ie- nap), I figured I had time to fire off a blog.
Part of my job is to read scripts, and frankly, it's my favorite part. There's nothing better an aspiring writer can do than read other people's scripts, especially from represented writers. What strikes me more than anything is how bad most scripts are. And these are people who are actually being paid to write. It certainly gives me hope. That said, I just read a knockout of a comedy. It's amazing how much a script that's even remotely original stands out like a sore thumb. It always makes me want to start writing again.
Which brings me to my current problem- I haven't done any serious work on any of my scripts for over a week now. Sometimes I just get into a writer's funk. It's not that I don't know what I want to write, I just can't get the enthusiasm up to write it. This is especially true of the drama I'm working on right now. When I write comedy, I'm always excited to go back and make the characters I've created say and do funny things. Sometimes, I even surprise myself and funny jokes flow out of my head in a stream of consciousness. It's exciting. Drama is much harder to get enthused about. I open up the Macbook, start up Final Draft, and think, "Welp, it's time to kill the character that's been living in my head for six months." It's unbelievably hard. I write ten pages, get depressed, then turn off the computer and forget about it for a while. It's amazing how much fiction, even fiction that only exists in my head, can affect me. I have another idea for a drama in my head, but I think I'll need to do another comedy after I finish this project. Or maybe replace the guns with banana cream pies...I don't think that would compromise the integrity of the story much.
Catch you next time,
Eli
p.s.- I just realized I'm still paying for eliselzer.com. Anyone have any good ideas for what I should do with a website?
Everyone gets into the funks. It happens. When that happens, tinker with another project for a bit, or force yourself to do a bare minimum of work per day.
ReplyDeleteFor you, you could just set eliselzer.com to forward straight to the blog.
I write ten pages, get depressed, then turn off the computer and forget about it for a while.
ReplyDeleteI do the same thing, but with 10 words, or sentences.
Eli, you have at least 2 readers—myself and your brother—but as he's a relative and I kind of am in a not-yet-official way, I don't know if we count.
Whatever you do, do NOT let eliselzer.com expire. The last thing you need is for some... not-safe-for-work/animals/vegetables/kids site to snatch it up.