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Revisionish History
Aug. 3rd, 2007 04:48 amAh, the exhaustion of the writing process. The ramping-up of intensity and stamina, the endless pages of notes and counter-notes, the glory of writing a great page and the agony of having to cut ten pages to fit it in. The work list, with all the additional clever remarks and pretentious references I jotted down in rehearsals and readings and workshops over the past few months.
Dramatis is starting to feel less like one of many tossed-off stories and more a defining statement. Which was exactly what I did not want to do with something on this subject, because then people will think that's all I can write about. But ah well. You gotta dance with them that brung ya, as the late Grace Kelly once opined. Still, the emotional impact of having to revisit this particular screenplay is always a little draining. I can't keep my professional distance when I'm writing the scenes. I always have a nice, clear blueprint for what I'm about to do, but when I get in there--well. It's hard not to be swept up in the emotions. My friend Jill is...what's the word here...she has recently rekindled a relationship with someone she loved a lot, and lost, 20-something years ago. And so she said to me "you shouldn't give up hope, you never know what life will do" and that's the exact wrong thing to say, of course. I've spent enough years pining. For the fjords.
So I'll stop that. Yup. I will stop checking his MySpace. It's unseemly for a man his age to have a MySpace anyway. What kind of shiftless adult spends all their time writing on cheesy teenage blog sites?
Anyway, the rewrite's going very well. I've pared some stuff down, made some small but surprisingly powerful changes to a couple of scenes/characters/backstories. I'm always hesitant to make major changes to something that's working fairly well, for fear the magic of the thing will vanish into nothingness like a mirage, leaving only page after page of pendulous dead words. But maybe I've picked up a little craft by osmosis. And by the numerous helpful notes I've received from actual writers. By careful study, I can at least pretend I know what I'm doing.
I guess I typed this thinking I was going to say something interesting to others, but on that note I have failed utterly. I'd better sleep. Have a good weekend.
It's August already?
Dramatis is starting to feel less like one of many tossed-off stories and more a defining statement. Which was exactly what I did not want to do with something on this subject, because then people will think that's all I can write about. But ah well. You gotta dance with them that brung ya, as the late Grace Kelly once opined. Still, the emotional impact of having to revisit this particular screenplay is always a little draining. I can't keep my professional distance when I'm writing the scenes. I always have a nice, clear blueprint for what I'm about to do, but when I get in there--well. It's hard not to be swept up in the emotions. My friend Jill is...what's the word here...she has recently rekindled a relationship with someone she loved a lot, and lost, 20-something years ago. And so she said to me "you shouldn't give up hope, you never know what life will do" and that's the exact wrong thing to say, of course. I've spent enough years pining. For the fjords.
So I'll stop that. Yup. I will stop checking his MySpace. It's unseemly for a man his age to have a MySpace anyway. What kind of shiftless adult spends all their time writing on cheesy teenage blog sites?
Anyway, the rewrite's going very well. I've pared some stuff down, made some small but surprisingly powerful changes to a couple of scenes/characters/backstories. I'm always hesitant to make major changes to something that's working fairly well, for fear the magic of the thing will vanish into nothingness like a mirage, leaving only page after page of pendulous dead words. But maybe I've picked up a little craft by osmosis. And by the numerous helpful notes I've received from actual writers. By careful study, I can at least pretend I know what I'm doing.
I guess I typed this thinking I was going to say something interesting to others, but on that note I have failed utterly. I'd better sleep. Have a good weekend.
It's August already?
