discovery channels

my first new-screenplay deadline is this friday.

all these weeks, i thought i knew the story i'd be writing. i mulled and weighed and pondered and worked out details in my head and made copious notes... but i couldn't seem to really connect with my own material. it felt hollow. fake.

the screenwriting book i read was enormously helpful, but also served to spotlight the flaws in what i'd been wrestling. i figured i'd forge ahead, though, because i'd already picked away at the idea enough that, however imperfect, it was at least fully formed with a beginning, middle and end.

yet for some reason, over the past few weeks, my mind's frequently drifted back to another, vastly different screenplay idea i had a long while ago. i remembered working on it, in fits and starts but somewhat successfully, for a couple of months. and i remembered really liking that idea... even if i'd abandoned it nearly two years ago.

so, while procrastinating just now, i decided to dig up the files on that long-ago screenplay idea to see what i'd actually managed to finish.

turns out, i finished quite a bit. not quite an outline, but enough of a roughing out of the story that it had structure and description and feeling. and, in rereading it, i surprised myself with the richness and texture i discovered i'd written. who knew?

and now, with two days to go before my new outline is due (three, if i give myself until end-of-day friday), i'm suddenly thinking of dropping the cheery-but-unrealized idea and investing my time and energy in the darker, deeper one i left behind instead.