Notes -AKA- You asked for it

Reader's Notes are a funny thing. On the one hand it's clear that working in a vacuum is a dangerous way to write, but putting your work in someone else's hands is a frightening alternative. Upon completing the last draft I made a decision to print up twenty copies of the 120 page script and distribute them amongst my friends and colleagues, asking each reader to provide me with a set of notes. It seemed like the right move to make. At a certain point it becomes difficult to kick one's own ass—how can you make something better if all you see is the good elements. However, I had felt that after all this effort I was nearing the peak of a mountain, and now suddenly I fear that I'm only a few steps from the base-camp.

The main difficulty is who can you trust? One reader's favorite scene is another's most hated. Reader A feels like the drama is too flat, while Reader B feels it's overstated. My girlfriend Sierra tells me that "I love it," with no comments following is a bad set of notes, but at this point that's all I really want to hear. One of my associates, a fellow writer, unabashedly admitted the he dislikes the route I've taken with the script, but part of me is tempted to take that as a compliment. My mom's notes where pretty helpful, even though she found the screenplay too crude and violent (going back over the first few scenes today I suddenly felt a little embarrassed at just how rude some of my characters had acted in front of my mother). It's all just kind of overwhelming. I wish I could just process the notes quickly, not take it too personally and then climb back into my vacuum to do another re-write, but I've got a development grant due on Thursday and I need to really decipher who's on the money and who's way off base. I guess it's better to be dealing with this now, rather than at the first screening—although from experience I’d put money on the fact that I'll be receiving a little feedback at that point too.