I'm not sure when my copy of Final Draft will show up, but I keep watching for the mail. I'm on a route that gets mail near the end of the day. I don't remember if it's being shipped by U.S. Mail or UPS...
Not that I could do much other than install the program on my laptop and then get back to the school work. Fortunately, the semester will be over soon (two weeks) and I can then think about the script project. So hard to focus what's important at the right time. That's the procrastinator in me. I have to ask myself that question daily, what's the most important use of my time today? When it's a paper due in a few days, it's the paper, not the script. But the characters and events are usually not far from the front of my mind.
Writing is a strange activity. Part of the drive to write is the feeling that something has to get out, for me, it's getting something out of my brain and turning an idea into "something." I remember the feeling I had after finishing my first script. I had to make three copies at Kinko's, binding them with brads and them shipping copies off to the small screenwriting contest I was entering. My script didn't win, it effectively got fourth place, the first of the honorable mentions after the big prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd where handed down. Actually, none of the prizes were "great" it was just a nod in the right direction. For me, the contest served as a deadline to finish the project. To commit to something new from beginning to end and put my work "out there." The feeling of being in the game was uncomfortable at first, but that awkward feeling is now gone. There's some confidence in that this isn't my first attempt at writing for screen.
My writing background...
Always a writer or one type or another. Stories as a kid. But at five, when asked what I was going to be when I grew up, my answer was "a director." My first career was as a journalist. I took a playwrighting class early in college but never got past writing short scenes and one-act plays. Yet it was good for learning classic structure and the rules of stage writing. As a journalist, the writing was different yet interesting because the topics changed daily and I got to meet interesting people and as a crime reporter got to hear the details of creative crimes of white collar criminals that are more clever than some are given credit for.
After a long break from work and school, I returned to school and got a B.A. in Political Science studying international relations and American politics. When entering grad school, my initial areas of study were international relations and public policy, but I've since dropped the IR component and changed it back to American government keeping the policy. It's an amazing breadth of knowledge that has given me way more to write about than I probably could in my lifetime. The original plan with grad school was to stay and get the PhD. But life changed and so did plans. I'm absolutely OK with the decision to stop (for now) with the MA. There is a large part of me that is tired of the semester schedule, the workload, teaching incoming freshmen and all their drama...the long hours of little sleep, the grueling exams. In September, I'll take comprehensive exams and if I do well enough to be recommended to continue at the PhD level, at least I'll have left the door open to return. But for now, I'll be more than happy to have completed the MA. Graduation is in December if I pass comps and get my thesis done.
Back to watching Life on Discovery. Amazing pictures even on my non-HD TV.
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