I won! Script Frenzy is over!! Well, at least for me. Officially, two more full days are left plus whatever is left of today. I find it hard to believe that I both finished my screenplay for Lifeliner and met the 100-page goal.
When I began, I wondered if I’d be able to survive the first weekend, it being Easter and all, meaning that I’d have to write extra before since I wouldn’t have any time or energy during and after Easter. I not only survived, I exceeded my goal. And then I kept piling up pages, page after page after page. Oh, oops, too many pages for where I was in the story. Now I worried about writing so many I’d have to hack at it drastically to get it back down to 110 pages at least. You see, even though the Script Frenzy challenge is to write 100 pages minimum, for a screenplay to be taken seriously it needs to be 100 to 110 pages, from what I’ve read. And I want my screenplay to be taken seriously.
But worrying about page numbers was not enough for me. Oh no, I soon realised that writing a screenplay was way tougher than writing a book, draining me faster, making me stop my day’s writing sooner. So of course I worried about whether I’d be able to finish the story by end of April. To top it off, I had also decided to get my script sponsored. “It’s like a walk-a-thon. But seated. With coffee.” I find asking people for money, even though it isn’t for me, difficult. And watching the goal meter inch up slowly then stop short of goal excruciating. But with encouragement from older relatives and my therapist, I went for it, kept at it. And it paid me back by being my motivation when fatigue and doubt almost stopped my fingers typing.
I reset my writing schedule. I began each morning with 30 minutes of writing right after breakfast, before the draining distraction of checking e-mails. I tracked the page count against the chapter I was on so as to harmonize the two better. I took a day off each week to recharge. And I won 5 days ahead of the end!
Since then, I’ve fixed some formatting issues with the scene headings and action sections. I next need to go through the whole screenplay to ensure I haven’t chucked out a crucial piece of the story (screenplays are so much tighter than books, even short ones like mine) and to ensure it flows. Meanwhile, I’m going to republish the eBook format of Lifeliner to make it available on all the big platforms like Apple iPad, Sony Reader, Amazon Kindle. I’ll announce here and on my Twitter stream when it’s available. I will also continue to look for an agent for my novel She, which I wrote during NaNoWriMo. And I’m going to start work on my next book. I’m still looking for volunteers to help me with the research for the latter: financial, government policy and legislation, car crash statistical research.
