Nicholas Thurkettle

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.

Last night I polished up two 10-minute plays. One of them I wrote in a flurry of creativity back in September; the other I wrote nearly seven years ago as a wedding present for a dear friend in one of the many penniless phases of my adult life. The first was relatively simple – its fundamentals were strong, I just needed to clean up a few places in the dialogue where my central idea went cross-eyed.

The second was more difficult. Certainly that many years provides more than adequate emotional distance for re-writing; unfortunately it created more than a little inertia. As in – “the play has existed for this long like this, why should it not stay like that?” This also grows out of the undeniable truth that I was a far worse writer back then, and the script was weak and limp in more than one place. Too many places to salvage in one night? Very possible.

But I have become nothing if not deft. Once I identified the most egregious problem, there was no hesitation; I knew exactly what to scalpel out and replace, and didn’t miss the excised material in the slightest. It is not great now, no, it was not going to be that; but it is…presentable.

Tonight was all the time I had left to generate a third script for tomorrow’s deadline. I came home with an idea and a half-page of scrawled notes. Now after a couple of hours of work/procrastination, I have a half a script. It feels like good stuff – well, it feels consistent to the oddness of my idea. The beauty of the 10-minute play is, since you have far less time in which to wear out your welcome, you can pursue peculiar impulses in bite-sized form. Just throw it up there and see if it plays.

But I think this is all I’ve got for tonight, and I can go to bed satisfied. I think I can make this deliverable with enough time. I might just have to sneak in a few moments to finish tomorrow morning.

I wrote this article last year – it was published back then, but reading was something of a pain, since you had to download a .pdf and page through it. They have since made it more easily available; so if you want to read a little travel piece about a State Park in the mountains undergoing an extraordinary recovery from a fire, make like a dance machine and Do the Clicky.

It is a rare thing to be able to write your first novel for money; and more rare still to be cashing checks from someone patient enough to understand you are learning on the job. Not every form of writing is the same ol’ Amish barn to raise, and it’s difficult to estimate progress when I am essentially inventing my working method as I go. I have this nagging sense I could be getting more done, and more quickly, but it’s rare that I don’t feel that way when I’m on any substantial project. That’s just that snapping, hungry pet called “Self-Criticism” I brought home from the pound many years ago.

It’s already one of the longest pieces of prose I have ever set down, and we are still very early in the draft. Word count comparisons to screenplays aren’t entirely useful, but by the time I get to “The End” I’ll have pasted enough together into sentences to constitute three or four screenplays at least. Put it that way and it wouldn’t intimidate me; but I won’t get to put these words that way.

I have been at this for months, and any day in this span I have worked on or even thought about this book, my overarching belief is that there’s no way I will actually do this. But I am kind of comforted by that, since that’s how I feel about every screenplay I set out to write. And it’s usually not until I am near to done with the first draft that I start to think anything like otherwise.