Writing on Christmas

In his awesome and inspirational book On Writing, Stephen King discusses his writing regimen. He said he tells interviewers that he writes every day except Christmas* and his birthday. But then he says this is a lie. He does write on Christmas because writing every day is what he does.

I've been trying to institute a write (or rewrite/edit) every day policy, but was definitely challenged by the travels of the last few weeks. I did however bring my laptop in the car on our 2 hour drive to Christmas dinner and got some work done. I'm plugging away at the first draft of the pilot for one of my original series ideas (due upon my return to the CFC). Because the draft will be used by others to figure out what scene(s) I should film for a "teaser," I want it to be a very solid first draft, which means really a second draft, as I'm the queen of what Anne Lamott calls the "shitty first draft" - just dumping some dialogue on the page to fill those dreaded early pages.

Had a good time in Vegas and visiting friends and family in California. As always, travel and sleeping on unfamiliar beds proved to be good for the muse, and I've got a couple fun ideas for what will hopefully be a feature script and a chick-lit novel.

My week in Winnipeg will also be spent finishing the edit of Rave Review, and clearing through papers I left in disarray when I departed for Toronto in September. (only 3 1/2 months ago? Feels like a lifetime!)

Happy New Year to All! May 2007 bring you ever closer to your dreams and goals!

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* In the back of my mind, I think he possibly he says the Fourth of July, but that doesn't really fit in with my story

Final Draft

Since I last wrote, we turned around a third draft and got to hear it at a table read with a collection of very talented actors. I'd like to thank them all for donating their time and passion: Jared Brown, Ben Carlson, George Ghali, Gabriel Hogan, Helene Joy , Geoff Kolomayz, Melissa Kramer, Matthew Lemche, Zoie Palmer, Courtenay J. Stevens, Sugith Varughese, Asim Wali and Ron White.

It was an amazing experience to hear our characters come to life, and to get the questions and comments of the actors, even though they pointed out a flaw that we've had to return to the drawing board (literally) to address. Today is our last day in the story room, and I definitely feel sentimental. It's been rough sometimes, but the energy of bouncing our ideas off each other, and having the opportunity to contribute in the direction of this ship, has been outstanding. Very few awkward silences, lots of laughter and a true egoless collaborative spirit. Our producer Barbara Samuels has given us so much that we can take forward with us in our careers. I can only hope that getting to work with people this creative, professional and generous is preparing rather than spoiling me for my future collaborations.

We'll get out one more draft for Friday, and then we have a few weeks away from the Centre. A "working holiday" I'm calling it, as we will be working on the first draft of our original series pilot, a spec script or two, and our business plan. So the laptop will be coming on my travels! But I'm looking forward to sinking my teeth into all those projects, so it's not a burden at all! And I find I get great ideas staring out airplane and car windows...

Had time to take in great free entertainment the last two nights. On Monday, got to see the calling card projects of the writers and directors who are finishing up their CFC programs. Great stuff, congrats to them! And then last night, saw Snow Cake at an Academy screening, and then a groovy light and music show in Nathan Philips Square.

Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver in Snow Cake

Snow Cake is a beautiful film, though there were one or two moments where they crossed over the fine line of sentimentality that they tread so carefully through the whole film. Having met with composer Tim McCauley this week, I was perhaps overly-tuned in to the use of music to emphasize a point, and there was one speech that was perfectly beautiful on its own without my having to be told to pay attention to it with piano notes. Then they brought part of the speech back at the end of the film in voice over, when in my opinion, Alan Rickman could have just uttered a single word to bring us back to that moment. Ah well - a personal choice in a film of lots of great moments.

Another thing Tim said that impressed me was that sometimes he watches films ten times. I've been watching a large quantity of stuff over the last 8 months, but maybe I need to re-watch me some Friday Night Lights and Battlestar over the next few weeks to see just what it is that grabs me and won't let go.

11 Hours

That's how long we spent in the writing room yesterday. A record for us - we had to get through day two of notes on our second draft so that we can turn around a third draft by Sunday for a table read next week. Really looking forward to that - hearing our words through actors' mouths. And we've got some excellent Toronto actors coming in! Major bonus of being at the CFC!

It's been a very busy couple of weeks:
- Revised a five page pitch document for one of my original series; and based on feedback of another idea (basically "This will never fly") created a new show and wrote a five page pitch doc for it too.

- Got feedback on the first draft of our miniseries. It was intense to say the least! We were given plenty to change, but since my partner and I have hour four, we got our last notes on Friday afternoon with a Monday due date. Luckily my sister, a talented actor, was in town, so she helped me by doing a table read of my edited half hour and gave me a lot of great ideas to integrate. Nothing like hearing your work read aloud to let you know what's not working!

- Was given guidance on which series to move forward with, and got encouragement on what I want to do and how to take it forward. I've started outlining the pilot, which I'll be drafting during our December break.

- Met writers and creators from four different shows. Took lots of notes! Very interesting to see that while there are many routes to finding work, they are finite and all involve working hard, meeting people and keeping an open mind. One thing I opened my mind to, was the idea of writing an animated show...

- Had a session on pitching, which will come in handy as we begin pitching our series ideas.

So plenty of writing to do this weekend... But that's what I'm here to do!!