Writing is hard. That’s what’s flowing through my brain at the moment. It’s a process of having small or big ideas, and then refining those into sharp instruments of dramatic surgery. Life is full of pauses and vagueness…drama emulates those things only in presentation. Its real contrusction is laser-like, bright and focused. Getting to that point is…a lot of work.
I finished a draft today the the Icarus script, and I do think it’s a step forward. Enough, at least, to send out into the world for feedback. I’m just bracing myself for the feedback to come. I sent it to some bonafide writers, and I have fears, I guess. Fears about sounding like a n00b…reading as untalented…or mostly that things will be pointed out that I don’t know how to fix. I guess that’s really what it comes down to, that holes will be poked in what I’ve written that I don’t understand how properly to fix. That I’ll try to fix them, and it won’t work.
To be honest…there’s a large chunk of writing that remains a mystery to me. It mostly has to do with the underpinnings of what makes something good and what makes something bad. See…I know what bad writing is, and I know what good writing is…but the path from one to the other remains largely dark to me.
See…people are so complex. We don’t say what we mean, but yet words are constantly falling from our lips. Noise. Getting the signal through the noise is hard for me, at least in script form. That’s really how I’d describe it. In prose, I can write precisely what I want a “scene to be about” and I can use language to set a style and a mood. It’s a cover, however, for something I find really difficult, which is doing the same thing exclusively by describing body language and writing dialogue. The exterior sides of a conversation. THAT I find to be really fucking difficult.
But, that’s why I’m doing all this, I guess. I want to get in there, see the nuts and bolts. Watch how it’s done. Learn.
That’s all I got tonight. The angst of a draft I still wish was better…hopefully some of the fun comes across. We’ll see.
Artwork tonight from Ian McQue