Finishing What Was Started Part 3, the middle

I knew I was in trouble when I considered the long months I had been stalled out on Coppertown. I knew I was in trouble because of derelict condition of my thoughts about the manuscript. I also remember the moment, sometime last spring when these thoughts occurred to me.

In the spring I knew two things: I would have time come the fall and I would not be able to rejoin the manuscript with any sort of easy. It's like running a race, making it half to the finish line and then sitting down for months, or years and trying to move on after the hiatus.

What I did know was that the entire story of Coppertown revolved around the town itself. A dead Colorado mountain town that has seen it's heyday some time ago. I knew that the town had been part of the gold then silver rush then died in or around 1890. I knew the town had been the site of the 1977 film Blood Sucking Coal Miner Zombies. So, that's what I knew of the town I had manufactured for the story.

After being stalled out for as long as I was, I knew I had to do something drastic, something to get the story back on my mind. So, I started with the 1977 film Blood Sucking Coal Miner Zombies.

Now, as you may have guessed, there is no 1977 film, I made that up earlier in the story. There was no film. So, I decided that there should a screenplay, at least.

I wanted to write the sort of trash-nearly porn-bad plotted screenplay. Then I started to write this screenplay. I did it freely, without any sort of confine. I didn't think about a director or a director of photography or anyone else and their opinions.

And then I became the the proud owner of the world's worst screenplay.

It put me back into the town. It put me back into the mood. I often think that the pursuit of the next great screenplay is where writers are going. For me, I didn't want I great screenplay, I just wanted to hammer out a few words.

Should you write a screenplay, which in theory is mostly dialog, and you don't care what people think... you can write a 120 page screenplay in a day or two.

It helped.

Next time:

Finishing What Was Started Part 4, the beginning of the end

Finishing What Was Started Part 5, the end