Great Expectations

I have high expectations of myself. I fully expect that I will always do well in my classes, that I will continue to write good papers, do quality research  and soon get out of grad school adding those little initials after my name. I expect the same with my scripts. I never go into the writing thinking that I'll write something adequate or acceptable. From the outset, my intention is to knock it out of the park.

Home runs always? No.

The difference between having high expectations and of expecting perfection, is that high expectations still get the work done. Sometimes, you even impress yourself and others. Sometimes, you fall short of impressive and maybe you barely get to "it's OK." If you expect perfection, I doubt that anything will ever get written. Even if it does get written, it will never get shared with others. It will never get to the outside. Perfection, of course, is impossible. It's incapacitating because it's an unachievable goal.

My great expectations are to get the work done. That's the work of a writer. I've got the October deadline for Scriptapalooza for the TV pilot scripts. I plan to get a little writing done this weekend if the Universe allows it. My scripts won't be perfect, but they will be far better than the guy who claims to be a writer but can't get past the fear that others will deem his work to be just "OK." I've written long enough to be over that. My fear is in NOT getting the stories written. My fear is that you won't have the opportunity to see my stories on your TV or at your theater. That would be tragic for you and disappointing for me.

I don't want you to have to suffer that tragedy. But more importantly, I don't want to disappoint myself.

The History of Writing and Waiting

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.

Letting go...

At some point in every paper, it's time to say, yeah, it's done. I want to be at that point right now. I think it's done. It feels done. It is concise and has all its parts. It's not my best work -- nothing is these days, grad school doesn't allow for that. Not with parenting tossed into the mix.

I'm going to consider this paper done, but since there's another six days before its due. I'll let it percolate. Moving on to the last research project. Time to build a dataset and see what's missing before running the regression. Yeesh. Due Wednesday. Nothing like waiting until the last minute to see if things blow up in my face.

Back to work.

Day 1 -- Procrastination

Last summer I came up with an idea for a movie. No, I'm not going into details. I don't trust you. Not "you" a specific you, but "you" the aggregate of anyone and everyone who might come across this blog, or overhear a conversation I may have with someone about my idea...ok...forget that...I don't talk about it with just anyone because it's back to the point that I don't trust you or anyone else not to steal my idea and run off and make $25 million from it.

It's that good.

But that's not the point. The point I'm trying to make is that right now what I should be doing is writing. Not the script, but a paper for school and I'm really good at procrastinating, which is why I'm building a blog -- ok, it only took 10 minutes -- but you get the picture. The point is, I'm blogging instead of finishing up a research paper that's due in a week. Oh, yeah, lots of time. But that's only one of three projects coming due in a week, followed by a final exam the week after.

Grad school. Seemed like a good idea two years ago. But it's coming to an end soon enough. In the meantime, in that spare time between papers, reading, research, a thesis and comprehensive exams, I have this screenplay to churn out. Research has gone well. Character development has been slow. Plot points are coming along. A few scenes sketched out...so-so progress there. I had a huge conceptual problem that was resolved with a scientific (re)discovery earlier this year, so I should be able now to progress without anything more than the usual bumps in the road.

Final Draft 8 has been ordered and it should be here by the time I finish the last paper and take the last exam for this semester. I'm tired of freeware. I had a free template for the last script I wrote (2000) that worked in Word, but it's no longer available. I'm ready for something more robust, more serious. Yeah, I know, it has its problems...

This is a start. I'll keep filling in the blanks as I go.