Page Sixty Meltdown
Sometime earlier this week I hit page 60 of the first draft of the Vehm script. For the non-scripty, this amounts to the halfway point. A few days later, I realized that this amounts to the accursed point in all scripts where I have an emotional meltdown. (These, of course, are emotional meltdowns in the Midwestern Style; they occur in utter privacy and their having transpired is always either ignored or denied after the fact.) I have written enough scripts that by now the pattern should have been obvious, but what can I say? I'm not so perceptive as all that, and I just put two and two together this week.
After some thought, I have pieced together the following: Page Sixty Meltdowns are not related to the story, because I don't start writing pages until I'm happy with the story. Page Sixty Meltdowns likewise aren't caused by some kind of in-progress frustration or desperation about not knowing what will come next, because I already know what will come next. It's in the outline. They're also not about despair that the first sixty pages are crap. I've got a pretty good perception and attitude about what one can legitimately expect out of a first draft.
So here's my best guess: Page Sixty Meltdowns transpire because I suddenly realize how much work has been done to that point, and it really seems as though the project's end ought to be in sight. And for a day or two, I rationalize that the end really is in sight ó that the figurative "Writing a Script" Progress Bar is muchly past 50% ó when recalling how much time was spent outlining before the writing process began. But then, after a day or two of stewing about that, I remember how much more work will remain after all the pages of the first draft have been written. That, in fact, the Progress Bar for the project as a whole is probably more in the 30% ñ 40% range.
So, here I am, and I can feel the meltdown coming ó not immediately, but in the next couple of days ó and I feel more-or-less powerless to prevent it. I'm hoping, however, that having aired and mocked this preposterous tendency, that I shall avoid it this time. I'm hoping that, instead, I can move on and instead engage in some other emotional weirdness in the Midwestern Style, such as being passive-aggressive about some injustice, either real or imagined, in the workplace.
Meltdown, consider thyself aired and mocked. I bite my thumb at thee.
Comments
Jeff, please don't target your officemate while redirecting your script meltdown into passive-agressive workplace behavior. I am but an innocent bystander! ;)
If it's any consolation, I get the same way with my novels. I get about 40k into a novel and hit a brick wall, even though I have the outline to follow as needed.
Somewhere in there the words stop flowing and it becomes _work_ to drag them out, beat them over the head, and stick them onto the paper or screen before they come around.
I'd like to think that knowing about this tendency makes it easier when it happens, but it never seems to work that way.
Persevere!
It is possible that you are being beseiged by your Myers-Briggs "J" score here. Why is it so important to know how far you've come and how much you've got left to accomplish? If writing a script is really a good thing to be doing, then it's probably worth the beating-your-head-against-a-wall days and wandering in the wilderness someplace between "very well along" and "can't quite see the finish line from here."
I write all of this as a moderately high-end "J" who is trying to learn the wisdom of those enjoy-the-moment, go with the flow "P"'s. Perhaps you can simply thumb your nose at the progress bar until you're safely past that sixty page hump.