The First Draft is Shit!

I got a wild hair and started a new screenwriting blog, The First Draft is Shit. It was created for all things having to do with screenwriting. I moved the progress bars over to the new site also so you can still track my progress, or lack of, whichever the case my be. It will be a work in progress for a while until I figure out what to do with it. I just wanted to give my screenwriting a little extra attention and a place of it's own.

New Script, New Pressures.

May 1st is fast approaching and it's time to start on the second script for the 101 project. This time I decided to put a little extra pressure on myself. Did I just say that? Christ! What is wrong with me?

Anyway, I've seen these little progress bars in the sidebars of some blogs that I've visited and thought they were cool so I did a Google search and found this site that showed me how to make them. (Thank you... I think) So, now you can track the progress of my latest screenwriting adventure.

Nothing like the feeling of being watched to keep you moving in a forward motion. I can't believe I'm doing this to myself. As if trying to write eight screenplays in 1001 days isn't enough, now I invite people to track my progress??? Can you say, "MASOCHIST!"?

#76 Make Sopapillas - Completed!

15 Tasks Finished
86 Tasks Remaining

One more task completed this month. I made tacos and sopapillas last night for dinner. I got the grease for the sopapillas too hot and tried to burn my house down. Just kidding. No fire just a lot of smoke. I'm glad we have an attic fan. Once I got the grease thing figured out, they made a real tasty treat. I haven't made them in years. I don't know why, I love these things.

I remember the first time I had sopapillas. I think the restaurant was called Casa Bonita, in Denver, Colorado back in 19... Never mind, we won't go there. But it was a very cool place. Part restaurant, part carnival or something, very entertaining. Anyone else remember that?

Here's a link to a Sopapilla recipe if you're interested. I cut this recipe in half and it was plenty for four people.

#97 Reorganize the file cabinet (yuck) - Done!

14 Tasks Complete
87 Tasks Remaining

Actually this task wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I guess if you put it off long enough, you can just throw it ALL away, haha .... Well, almost.

Color or Black and White?

Since you guys liked the Cloud photo, I thought you might like to see the original color version.

Which do you like better, Color or Black and White?

#83 Try 5 Different Cocktails - Complete!

13 Down
88 To Go

Mom and I hit the town yesterday and knocked out this task from our lists. Mom had a Mist Creme and I had a Devil in a Red Dress with our lunch. Then after a few hours of shopping we each had a Tequila Sunrise. It tasted so good, we had another one. We were thirsty from all that shopping.

We had a lot of fun with this task. What do you say Mom, how about adding another 5 cocktails to our lists? We still haven't tried a Martini.

Tweeking My List Again

4 tasks needed to be changed.


#16 I didn't like the online part of the online drawing classes so:
Old - Complete Wetcanvas Basic 101 Online Drawing Classes
New - Work through How To Draw What You See and Keys to Drawing
Note: How to Draw What You See is the book the online classes use, I just prefer the book form it's more mobile.

#17 I found a perspective book that has more actual lessons so:
Old - Work through Perspective Made Easy
New - Work through Perspective Without Pain

#18 I chose the first figure drawing book because it is smaller and I thought I could work through it quicker, but I simply like the second book better. The second book is twice the size but I think I will learn more as a result, so:
Old - Work through Famous Artist's School: How to draw the Human Figure
New - Work through Figure Drawing for All it's Worth

and #70 was not measurable so I made it more specific.
Old - Start a CD collection of my favorite music. (One CD is a start, but where's the fun in that?)
New - Add at least 10 CDs to my music collection

#30 Take 25 photos in Black and White - Done!

12 Down
89 to go

I only needed a few more black and white photos to complete this task so I went ahead and knocked them out and checked off one more task today.

See the photos here.

#1 Write 1st screenplay for 2006 - DONE!

11 Down
90 To Go

Whew! I Finally finished the first screenplay for 2006. Actually, One Week is a script I wrote in 2005. I edited it and rewrote it in 2006. But since I spent more time rewriting this one then I did writing it in the first place, I'm counting it as a completed task.

Rewriting SUCKS! Hopefully, the more scripts I write, the better I will get at planning the story elements before I start writing, and identifying trouble spots after the first draft is completed. Less time spent rewriting, means more time for writing. That's where the fun lies.

Rewriting One Week was the reason I went back to the drawing board, reviewed my old screenwriting books and eventually wrote Writing with POWER. I got stuck in the rewrite and didn't know what to do with it. I liked the story, believed I had a good idea for a script, but it just needed some tweeking and I didn't know what to tweek and how to tweek it. This was a clue that I didn't understand storytelling as well as I thought. Writing is easy. Knowing how to fix what needs fixing is the hard part. For me, anyway. One Week even forced me to go back and REWRITE part of Writing with POWER. The first draft proved to be less helpful than I had hoped. But after more thought, things began to click and the story problems suddenly became clear. I'm happier with the story now and think I learned a lot from this rewrite experience.

I'm thrilled that I finished this script before the end of April. It gives me a couple of weeks to cleanse the pallet before I get busy writing the next script. It also gives me time to work on some other tasks that I want to start or finish before the end of the month.

Stay tuned for what I hope will be a task thrashing couple of weeks.

New Trick

...this is
what a pullquote looks like on the right-hand side...

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? I learned this trick from a fellow 101er. (Thank you very much.) It's called a "pullquote" and you can find the instructions Here .

...and this is
what a pullquote looks like on the left-hand side...

They're a cool way to add color to your post without adding a graphic. Thanks again. I'll have a lot of fun with these.

#12 See the Oscar Nominated Movies... - Done!

10 Tasks Completed
91 To Go

I have now seen all of the Oscar nominated movies for Best Picture or Best Original Screenplay since 1990, with the exception of the three 2005 nominees that have not been released on DVD yet - Syriana, Munich and Matchpoint, but since they were added to the list after January 1st, I'm considering this task complete.

I thought this was going to be a bigger task than it was. 15 years, 2 categories and 5 movies in each category comes to 150 movies, minus the few times that movies were nominated for both categories. But when I wrote them all down, there were only about 30 movies that I hadn't seen yet.

I'm happy to say that there were a few surprises left. Passion Fish, Il Postino and Billy Elliot were among my favorites. Deconstructing Harry was surprisingly good as well. I say surprisingly because I'm normally not a big Woody Allen fan, but that one was pretty good. I hear Matchpoint is his best work yet. I guess I'll find out. And I'm glad I gave Moulin Rouge another look. The first time I saw it, I started in the middle and gave up within a few minutes. The "Silly Love Songs" make more sense when you start at the beginning and know what's going on.