I ventured off into more action based and fantasy/adventure scripts and I believe some of the elements of my writing improved. I began getting really good with “building story.” My “concepts” were fantastic, but my dialogue was still horrible. Scratch that, my characters were not very multi-dimensional so I couldn’t find their own voices. Well, I began sketching cartoons and drawings of what my characters looked like and for some odd reason, that little exercise helped me hash out my different personalities. So with my new process in tact, I wrote ‘Epic’ and ‘The Dirty South.’ This was eight years ago. I’ve written several things since including, attending Screenplay classes and seminars and well just writing and writing. Well, since Meter, I have not written anything from scratch. I like to think I really began understanding the “story” and learning creative ways to tell it with all the practice. So now, with Meter being two years past and Jeopardy being more a film about camera rather than page AND a first draft of maybe the coolest script I’ve written put on ice due to our budget, behind me, it’s time to do something else. In between breaks from the kids I’ve been slowly rewriting Epic using my new sense of maturity in screenplay writing and it shows in the first twenty pages already. As far as ‘The Dirty South’ is concerned, well it is gone. There is one copy of it on a zip drive somewhere between here and Los Angeles and my friend had a hard copy at his house-- He moved out of six years ago. Is it good enough to rewrite? Then, probably not. Now, absolutely. It was a great concept and I even had fantastic characters, but it just needed some tweaks and a more maturing writer to fix the holes. On top of that, I have “Bunktown Asylum” under my belt. (The B Horror Movie Script I wrote in two weeks, that actually has a lot of potential with the exception of it being way too big a movie for our alloted $300K.) --- But there’s no reason to touch this script for awhile because well, I won’t be in a position to pitch nor shoot it anytime soon. Then there’s ‘Blood on Ansel River’ which is my ode to slasher flicks that ran completely stale about 20 pages in. I think I just got busy with Jeopardy, the opportunity in LA and life so my urge for writing a slasher flick kind of got lost in the shuffle for now.
So to make a long story short, with a some time in front of me, I want to do some writing but I am torn. There are three scripts, (one written already,) that would be great “specs” considering I may get some agent/professional attention come festival time with Jeopardy..... And those would be good ways to break in the door or do I do like I’ve been doing for the past 4 years and write with the intent to shoot myself. (All more low budget stories.) There’s only two of those I would consider and I honestly think I would only want to do “Debauchery” if I were to go that route. It’s a script I’ve written half of but in the four years that I haven’t touched it in, has figured out all the holes I had been missing in it and am ready to go at it again. I have to make a decision before I begin the venture into the next writing project because I cannot work on five projects at once, hell, two at once is tough. I am a focus on one thing at a time. It has seemed to work over the years, so make a decision on what to write and stick to it.
So you are wondering what “Thee Blue Pencil” is? It’s simple. Any script, story, drawing of mine is done, (or at least started,) with a 2H Sanford Turquoise Pencil. My first script’s first draft when I was 18 was written in a notepad with that pencil and the first 20 pages of my latest ‘Bunktown’ was as well. It’s a superstition and Carolina Office has a box of twelve for me reserved at all times, so when I say it is an Obsessive Compulsion of mine, I mean it. Everything is done with it. If I do not have one on me, nothing creative is accomplished until I do. That’s where “Thee Blue Pencil” comes from.
So the Writer’s Journey begins and here like my Production Diary, I’ll lay it all out to you from where I find inspirations, articles and insight I read on the craft as I go and who knows, maybe somebody will lend me a hand with their intelligence and ideas.
For now, let’s start at the absolute beginning. Below is the first “script” I wrote the summer of 1994. The whole script is here, but trust me... You won’t get past the first 5 pages without understanding why YOU MUST PRACTICE, PRACTICE, AND PRACTICE SOME MORE. The script-- Eddie’s Lawn.
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