Still Sprinting

It was a good weekend, productivity-wise. Both City of Truth and Beaudry have reached the halfway point, and I don't think it's an accident that they are suddenly marching along at the same rate. As I continue to figure out exactly how my work relates to standard movie outlines, it makes a certain sense that I would focus on one chunk at a time. In other words, now that I've reached the midpoint in two very different scripts, what's the next set of beats? It actually helps that I'm working two scripts at once--in Save the Cat! terms, how does "The Bad Guys Close In" apply to both scripts? Figuring this out, how to apply one principle to two different sets of requirements, forces me to really absorb the underlying principle.

All of this meant that my nice three-day weekend was largely sacrificed. I was up at 6:15 each morning in order to be ready to work by 9:00, I've had the DVD of Mr. and Mrs. Smith in my player for days but simply haven't been able to get around to it, and then there were the bizarre moments--twice this weekend I tried to go somewhere and found myself trapped in the parking lot because some nimrod had parked their car so as to block the only exit. Not once, twice: Saturday night and Monday night. Kinda hard to go pick up food if you can't get your car onto the street, isn't it?

But the next two weekends, I get my life back: Marc will be at Sundance, and then he'll be busily pitching to production companies and attending the DGA Awards. I'll still be writing, of course--we work together on City of Truth, but Beaudry is all mine--but I won't have to get up quite so early, and won't have someone else's schedule to consider.

One political note before I go: if Al Gore had delivered speeches like this back in 2000, I would've voted for him. And at the moment, he seems to be one of the few Democrats not afflicted with foot-in-mouth disease. But enough of that for today--now I've got to get back to writing.