Nicholas Thurkettle

Hoo Boy.

I know that one of the reasons I am on this writing path is that, at certain moments in my development, people offered to take a gamble on my potential – and even if I wasn’t sure I could live up to it, I said yes and threw myself at the challenge. I believe that you need to watch for those moments in life, because there aren’t many of them, and they are the moments that can change everything.

There’s another piece of wisdom I’ve tried to follow in the last few years – screenwriter John August’s precept that the time you quit your day job is the moment when you absolutely, positively, cannot keep working at it and fulfill the creative obligations around you. Speculative work does not count – he’s talking about real, professional responsibilities in the arena where you want to be full-time.

Is it possible to follow both tenets simultaneously? I sure don’t know. I know I’ve gone without steady employment before in my writer’s life – sometimes it’s viable, sometimes it isn’t. The non-viable times have consequences.

The chance has arisen that I’m going to be offered a commission to write a play. A real, full-length play that would definitely be staged in a well-publicized (for the area) world premiere exactly one year from now. I would get paid to do it – not enough to live on between now and then, but certainly more than sandwich money.

This would not be a simple project. There would be travel, research, some very challenging performance elements to which the story would have to be tailored, and a branching structure that could as much as triple the length of the script. The concept is thoroughly, innately theatrical and I absolutely love that, even if the amount of labor that would go into just making the thing hang together is terrifying. If I had total freedom I would say that I needed, at absolute minimum, six months with nothing on my plate to come up with a solid first draft. As it is, they would need something they can start rehearsing and building something like 9 1/2 months from today; and I have a job to wake up for and a novel to finish and screenplays to get out to the marketplace. And, like I said – what they’re likely to offer is not enough to live on for that time, even as lean as I know how to live.

Now – there may be a way to stitch this together, and believe me I will be doing serious stitching, because I want to do this something fierce. A lot will depend on what commission they actually offer. My research into the matter has given me an expected range, and it could pay for a few months’ survival.

Financially speaking, the wisdom would be to hold the job absolutely as long as I can. My instinct as a writer tells me, though, with a hard deadline looming for something I’ve never done before, I should clean my desk of other obligations as soon as I can. The longer I hold the job, the bigger the gun I will be under to pull this off when I finally leave. And once the play’s over with – what? Will there still be a job for me? Will something else have opened up?

So much that is unknown – but I can’t let that frighten me. I know how rare a moment like this is.

That opportunity comes not through open competition, but because of a personal connection of mine. It’s not that they have nothing upon which to base their opinion that I can do the work, but I also didn’t exactly have to beat out the masses. The ultimate satisfaction for me has always been to have the work speak utterly for itself – no personal bias, no author’s note, just another clump of words pulled off the stack and studied only on its merits.

Early last month I was building an attack plan for America’s second- and third-tier literary journals with my short stories. I have no connections at all in that world, and the short stories I’ve written have not been exposed to anyone outside a few friends, so this is about as cold and naked as submissions get.

I set that goal aside when I got off on my recent writing streak; but before I did, there was one on-line quarterly that was accepting stories with a particular theme, with a deadline that was about two days away. The story that best suited it was the one I felt was the riskiest, the most esoteric, the most out of my comfort zone, so since it seemed so unlikely it would get published anyway, it would cost me nothing to just take that shot.

Last night, while at a birthday dinner with my family, my phone buzzed – they want the story for their upcoming issue; which is publishing next week. My first-ever submission of fiction, and it connected. I am still trying to fathom that. I gave myself a 5% chance at best after my plan of submitting four or five stories across forty or fifty publications. By that standard, this is simply not a sane result.

I admit I was in a grumpy mood most of the day. I didn’t sleep well, I’m pessimistic about my birthdays, and I was unusually out-of-sync at work. But during the family dinner expedition, my phone buzzed, I saw that e-mail, and suddenly everything was re-oriented in a positive way.

In one week, I will be a published author of fiction. And I did it without networking or nepotism or because I just happened to be around with a pen. Gifted as I am at kicking the pillars out from under my own accomplishments, it’s hard to wreck this one.

I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday present. Although I did get some books and Blu-Rays and an iPod dock after that.

I hit 88 pages the other night, which means that at my next writing session I should cross 90 – and that’s a benchmark I prize. Since the rule is that one page approximately equals one minute of screen time when it’s all averaged out, 90 is about the minimum length at which a screenplay can be taken seriously as a feature. I’ve seen less – hell, I’ve written less – the first draft of Snowblind was 82 pages and I do believe margin cheating was involved – but 90 is really the no-arguments edge of the strike zone. Hit too close to 120 – or, God forbid, beyond – and the professional reader who flips to the last page for the number before he starts reading will hate even starting your script. I know the sound of that sigh – I’ve made it.

So, for practical, reader-friendly spec writing, 90-115 is the range. Comedies, thrillers, and horror movies traditionally run on the shorter end of that scale since they are meant to be more energetic than hefty dramas or romances. As I’ve said before, I targeted 105 for this one but am bound to overshoot that – but that’s what happens in first drafts and I don’t fear the cut-down that will undoubtedly follow.

When I cross 90, basically at any point I could make a bomb go off, have someone say “Good night, sweet Prince!“, write “FADE OUT” and BINGO – I’ve written a feature screenplay. There’s a sense of power in that, because it’s like the labor part of it is accomplished triumphantly, now it’s just about writing the pages the story needs to be the best first draft of itself it can be.

I read an essay by Francis Ford Coppola today where he underlines the oddity that people write screenplays on spec at all. A screenplay is, after all, in great measure a technical document, filled with jargon, whose purpose is to tell the lighting department what to put on the truck each day. And to spend so much time creating that document without writing a good STORY first is startlingly premature.

This falls under the pick-your-poison heading – outline, treatment, prose summary, what have you – but what he’s advocating is that you get the creative elements right before you start swimming in the jargon. Because it’s so very easy to get all that stuff right and fool yourself into thinking that because of it you’ve written a good script.

Since Hollywood is relying more and more on stories from other media on which to base their movies, and there’s little market left for spec, this is not such a terrible thing to keep in mind. The last short story I wrote, as it happens, had been living in my brain for many months – as a short film idea. And if I ever do film it, I think having written it down like this first is going to make it better.

Wow, did not intend to go two weeks without a post here. It’s not that I haven’t been blogging, but for some reason everything I have written has felt more comfortable on my filtered blog. Maybe I’ll dredge some of it over here, but since I don’t really know that anyone reads this other than Russian spambots, the incentives aren’t there after I’ve already posted it once for the people who I know do read.

For the last two weeks I’ve been deep in to a good quality writing binge. It may have been triggered by the rush of creative energy from doing the Fast & Loose show – even if that didn’t play a role, the amazing experience is still paying dividends in other ways. But since then I’ve pinned 32 new pages to this screenplay, and we’ve got lots of daylight left over here. 2-3 more weeks and I should have a draft; and so much of my creative energy has gone into the novel over the last year (for obvious financial reasons) that it’s been far too long since I got to celebrate a finished screenplay.

The other impetus I’ve considered is that I’ve just reached a point of uncontainable annoyance that this script doesn’t exist yet. Every producer to whom we’ve mentioned the idea has one of those YEAH, why isn’t THAT a movie yet? forehead smack moments. That’s one of those subtle signs that you have an idea that could be worth money; and I’ve been beaten to the punch on those more times than I care to count.

I have made small-but-tangible progress on one screenplay for four consecutive days – this has produced eight new pages of material and boosted me over the transition from the beginning into the body of the story. I even had one of those mini-breakthroughs I enjoy so much, where an annoying logical question for which I kept trying to produce contorted solutions proved to be the thread that, once tugged, unraveled a bad scene I had been clinging to and revealed the much better scene hiding behind it. That scene is not even going to happen for 20-ish pages, but I’m looking forward to writing it now.

That’s a decent result, but at least on this specific script it’s probably going to slow down for the moment – I’ve reached one of the major sequences of the movie and so I’m going to have to step back from the keyboard and spend a little time with the legal pad plotting and outlining what has to get done in the next 8-10 pages, and how to get it done in a way that feels entertaining and organic.

I also spent a little time in that highly-personal script on which I work sporadically. I read through the accumulated pages the other night and surprised myself, because I forgot I had written “GOD THIS SCENE IS BORING” on top of an exposition-heavy dialogue in a cafe that I really ought to just torch. I also caught myself trying to write a Meet Cute (Screenwriting Lingo Translation: A charming or funny moment contrived to introduce two characters to each other that are destined to bond with one another somehow. Most often used in romantic comedies.) I’m getting rid of it. This script is not the place for Meet Cutes.

Actually, all this screenwriting, and that short story I finished last week, is just me taking time off from the novel. I’m going to have to transition back into that so I can finish the next chapter and trigger that payment I’ve got coming – I’m also meeting with my collaborator/patron next week, so the more work I can show, the better.

I have eliminated 40% of my credit card debt since November. I can be justly proud of this, but there is a long way to go, and it does bother me that if nothing breaks in the Hollywood side of things, I could easily be at this inglorious day job another year-and-a-half.

And, in the spirit of the old saying that the furthest you can go into a forest is halfway, I think there’s a special fatigue and despair that sits at around 30-40% of a task. Nothing worth doing won’t have asked a lot of you by that point, your initial momentum is spent, and you are a long way from getting that boost from the sense that the end is near.

I haven’t finished a major writing project in a year-and-a-half, and I am sure that contributes to my overall restlessness and dissatisfaction. I am fighting a strong impulse to go audition for a local production of The Odd Couple tonight, just because the desire to feel like I’m working on something TANGIBLE is so strong in me right now, and I would feel it more potently if I were working with others rather than alone with my keyboard every night. The waitresses at Rockin’ Crepes not only recognize me, they remember my favorite dessert crepe (The “Skid Row” – Chocolate and Marshmallow). And that’s delightful, but it’s not like they’re actually helping me tow this boat. A team effort sounds awfully satisfying.

But even if I auditioned and actually got cast, a six-week rehearsal schedule for a play would effectively eat all my writing time; of which I have precious little already. I don’t know if I can justify that to the guy paying me to work on this novel, even if he has never complained about my rate of progress so far.

Progress: I turned in a new chapter on Thursday, and have now completed just over 29,000 words. I’m aiming for a first draft of about 75,000 words. So that puts me at about 40% done. The screenplay Adam and I started has 33 pages out of hopefully 100-105 – about 30% done. That sci-fi screenplay I’m dusting off has 42 pages out of 100-105 – about 40% done. Ghost Light and the ultra-low-budget idea Adam and I want to write are both about 10% done.

I think we’re seeing the answer here. The major projects on which I am furthest along are nonetheless all in the stage where I have to supply all the momentum. So not only do I think about how long it has been since I finished something big; I have to recognize how long it is going to be UNTIL I finish something big. That’s onerous enough with one major project – to feel it from three simultaneously is plain cruel.

The usual tactic at this point is to pick one thing, put all my energy into it for a time, and see if I can can drag it to where it takes on some energy of its own. I’d like it to be a screenplay, but I keep deferring to the novel, because this nice man is paying me. I have never written a novel before, and we are now at the point where it is longer than any script I have ever written – and thus, longer than ANYTHING I have ever written. So we are truly in uncharted territory. This makes the work scarier and slower.

There’s no easy answer really. Like Tom Waits says, you gotta get behind the mule.

I started a screenplay eight years ago completely on a whim – an image leaped into my brain while I was stuck driving the Sepulveda Pass on my way to work. When I got to the office I immediately opened Word (GOD, I wrote screenplays in WORD back then!) and wrote five pages. No plan, no idea for an ending, just five pages to capture that image and follow it for awhile.

I continued writing like that for a few weeks, both in LA and a trip up to a film set in Montana, and eventually came up with 40+ pages with only the barest conscious design to them. I really like these pages – always have. Adam says it’s some of his favorite screenwriting of mine, and he’s among the few who’s read enough to make a judgment like that.

But I ran aground – got to the end of a scene, had no idea what happened next, and there it sat. I would read it maybe once a year, maybe polish a stage direction or something, but never found the way forward.

Last week, I moved it up the list of projects on which I’d like to make some progress, and started scratching out some ideas on where the plot could go. And yesterday, during lunch, I suddenly knew the right, real ending of the thing. It was satisfying, it was true to the characters, it would provide suspense and surprise, and it instantly made it impossible to even consider the former ending.

And all I did was step far enough back to – and this will sounds strange – ask if I was asking the right questions about the ending. If you search and probe long enough around the assumptions on which you’ve based your story, you might finally find that thing which it had never even occurred to you to change; but once you have, you wonder how something so obviously wrong could have become part of your foundation to begin with.

My bold experiment with not outlining on The Ghost Light has so far produced only 13 pages – which is far from nothing but only barely something, by my reckoning. I set it aside to finish a chapter of the novel and probably won’t come back to it until after I have finished enough chapters to trigger another payment. That story has waited a long time to be told; it can wait a little longer.

I’ve been working on a different screenplay for the last couple of evenings; one that Adam and I started as another collaboration awhile back before we ran aground at page 29. It’s not that we didn’t know what was going to happen – most of the story is outlined – we just didn’t have the same mutual fire under us that created the Football Script. It’s a fun idea, plays to our strengths, and very commercial – every industry person to whom we’ve told the idea thinks so – but when you’ve only got the last bit to motivate you, that is rarely enough; and we each had other projects that felt more creatively enticing. For these interim days, suddenly I’m finding pages for this one – we’ll have to see if he thinks they’re up to snuff.

But this is why it’s valuable to keep these half-projects at hand, along with all the notes and outlines. When you’re in a mood to write and your first-position project just isn’t moving your fingers, it doesn’t take long to get yourself back into the groove of something else. And the results can surprise. The other night I was reviewing my notes for a short story idea from three years ago, then I blinked and realized I’d typed 200 words. Again, that’s only barely something, but compared to the nights when it feels like you can’t find a single good sentence hiding anywhere in your brain, it’s an enjoyable feeling.

I’m blogging less but I’m writing more. I’ll take that trade. Sorry, Jimmy.

I never stop chastising myself through unproductive phases – I keep hoping I’m going to solve some mystery about the roots of the unproductive times and thus re-make myself as a happy, perpetually writing machine. I always remember that little legend of the late, great Isaac Asimov spontaneously writing a short story on a bet during a live TV show.

The problem is, I’m no Asimov, and I don’t think machines are happy.

So I remain imperfect, illogical, and streaky. I have phases. This is one of them.

I have about 10 pages of the new screenplay – it’s clear I’m going to be alluding to it so I suppose I should christen it the way I have The Vegas Project and others so you know when I’m talking about it. I’ve made no secret that it contains highly personal elements – this is distinct from an “autobiographical” project, which I would find boring. It’s more like a fictional remix of some sights I’ve seen and feelings I’ve felt in a world I feel like I know well. People who know me well would find things that are familiar, but would have to cope in their own ways with it not being literal.

Anyway, why hide the title? I’m calling in The Ghost Light.

10 pages is on its way to being a not-foolin’-around amount of material. What I’ve done has been easy so far – a lot of disparate entrances and fleeting moments. I’m not just straying from my methodical habits, I am actively fleeing them. I think that’s going to make these first pages go quickly, and the middle-and-end bits much, much slower. Should be an adventure.

I also have 7 pages of my new collaboration with Adam, and over half of a new short story. I put the novel work on hold for a few weeks, but yesterday’s session brought a couple hundred words to that and the rust fell off without any trouble.

It takes a few weeks to form a habit, and I’m in a good habit now of getting out a couple of nights a week. I think I’ll get twitchy if I don’t make my Tuesday night visit to Rockin’ Crepes – the waitresses know me now.

I fought that sort of thing for so long – I argued to myself that I have a perfectly good computer at home, and I don’t have to buy an overpriced cup of tea to justify sitting there, and therefore, if I couldn’t write there, I wouldn’t be able to write somewhere else anyway, so why go out?

Doesn’t work like that. For whatever reasons, I distract myself in my room, but put me in a library or a cafe, even one with free Wi-Fi, and the switch is flipped.

I am highly illogical. I am streaky. I am writing.

There is a screenplay I have felt the desire to write for probably 11 years now. For the longest time I forbade myself to do it, declaring that I would keep it germinating in my brain until I had the a) distance, and b) talent, to make it something more than a big pile of self-indulgence.

Now, to be fair, there is a certain school of wisdom that says a big pile of self-indulgence could have a very unique magic to it, but that is not generally how I roll.

Last summer, Adam actively encouraged me to work on something that had direct and clear personal meaning to me (instead of spelunking for meaning inside all these spec script-friendly stories in which I submerge myself.) And I found myself looking at the informal list of ideas I’d built up over the years for this story, and started going to work on it.

It suddenly felt so thoroughly natural – sorting out the major characters, the big sequences, the little detail flourishes. I am a well-designed refinery for story material now, and I had ample raw stuff with which to work. But at the top of my brainstorming document, I wrote in all caps:

“DO NOT BLOCK OUT SCENE ORDER”.

This was my way of spiting technique. For so long I’ve held to a discipline of drafting the actual script in order. Once the outlining is done, I do not let myself skip ahead, but proceed from Page One to the end, so as not to cheat my way around the hard stuff. I really cannot tell you if it’s a good way of doing things, but I’ve kept to it for all major projects since basically my third screenplay. But this time I decided to resist. Instead I would just write scenes – meet the characters there, watch what they do, and start finding the shape of the story that way. I don’t know what will come of it, but I am very curious to find out.

Then things got very, very bad financially (as they regularly do in my life), so I tried to focus on the things that were either making me money at that moment, or stood a greater-than-zero chance of making me money in the next year.

Lately things have improved financially, and I’ve been re-embracing the philosophy that working on multiple projects simultaneously is not so bad – because if you sit down to write and don’t work on the thing you intended, at least you didn’t write NOTHING.

And so, from time to time in the last few weeks, I’ve tinkered with the brainstorming list; adding and embellishing and choosing, assigning names to characters. Then, on Sunday, a scene sprang into my head. It was not an opening scene or an ending, just something that revealed an aspect of a character to me, something that was true, and involving, and fit into the evolution of a storyline. And suddenly it was absolutely, positively, unbearable that I had not written this scene.

Tonight I wrote it. Eleven years of waiting; two pages tonight.

Now I’ve gone and started something…

I’m in Peoria, Illinois, in the upstairs lobby of Bradley’s theatre building – the Hartmann Center for the Performing Arts. I remember quite distinctly that there were not computers just laying around for anyone to use back when I was here. I do remember there was an excellent little crash couch on this spot, and that at one overnight lock-in we set up a Nintendo 64 and played Mario Kart from it in the wee hours.

The students are all running around rehearsing the tech schedule for the shows tonight; walking through lighting changes and furniture moves, last-minute costume approvals, vocal exercises. I have had a big grin on my face ever since I got here; this place is a home to me, and that feeling took me the moment I walked back through the doors. The students are different people but the same types I knew – passionate and determined and still not-quite-formed, awkwardly brilliant and beautiful.

I don’t have any job to do today but plant my ass in the seat with the “Reserved” sign on it, but I am absorbing this hectic electric urgency happening all around me. There’s a show about to happen. Only hours to go.