Draft One, Day One

I tend to stall a lot before getting down to the brass tacks of writing a script. I keep telling myself that I'm not ready. That I don't have the scenes I need yet. That the characters haven't started talking on their own. But the reality is that if you don't just sit down and start the process, none of those things will ever happen. Yesterday I finally took the initiative of printing out my 13 pages of scene ideas and notes and then cut them into little strips to assemble on the wall. I used this approach during the last draft of "Living-Room War," and it really served to decrease my floundering quotient. Where the hell am I again? What happened so far? What am I writing next?—just look at the wall.

A funny thing happened this morning when I started to lay all my scenes out on the table in an order that might make sense. I began to get really excited. Not in the usual, "I'm finally getting to this thing I've been putting off way," but with a much more intense visceral sensation. I've never had this feeling before writing the first page of the script, but I had the sensation that I already knew where I was going, knew how the film would fit together, and could clearly see my characters motivations. So tomorrow I will sit down and start writing "Ten Years In" and I'm really looking forward to spending some time hanging out in prison with my main character, Louis Wolf.