Snickers Bars and Chaos
This is Finish Your Monsters, a weekly blog/newsletter/blogletter about the creative process. I'm sharing adventures in art and life as well as setting CLIFFHANGER goals for myself, so--
--DID I MAKE MY GOAL?
Last week, I committed to getting some legal advice on a crucial document for the feature film and finish setting up a live comedy show to celebrate my birthday.
And on those multitasking, plate-spinning goals, I would give myself a success rate of 47%. Could have done better, could have done worse.
For the important legal document, I made some strides forward. I’ve got a second draft of the document 80% done and I’ve got good leads on some legal advice, but I need to actually get a meeting locked in.
For the live comedy birthday show, I just ran out of time to decide on a title and build the graphics. But I did brainstorming on both so I rolled this goal up the hill a bit, too.
I’m experimenting with setting these goals to prioritize tasks, but sometimes other goals come along and rudely shove them down like that a-hole Toby who liked to play king of the hill on the parking lot snow mountain when I was in third grade.
I am mad at Toby and I am Toby this week.
Trying to get this indie feature film pulled together means juggling lots of things that should all maybe be the most important. This week, thanks to help from my co-producer, I had a lot of great meetings which re-ordered my priorities. I spent a lot of time looking at cast ideas, more business emails, and a quick pass through the script for some essential revisions. And when I say “quick pass” I mean 3 days of most of my work time.
On the positive side, there’s nothing wrong with being flexible and responsive. On the not as positive side, I really need to get those stated goals done. Will I win my war with goal-related hubris this week???
Let’s find out together when I type this week’s goal/s below!
ADVENTURES OF THE WEEK--
Very soon, one of my weekly goals will be DELETE A LOT OF PHOTOS. I’ve had an iPhone since 2013 so I have over 10 years of photos on my phone. At current count that is about 64,000 photos—at least a third of which are frozen pizza pics.
The reason I bring up my bonkers photo count is this: A few years back, I realized I use my photos as my personal journal. Scrolling through, I remember where I went, what I watched, drank, felt, accomplished, etc. A lot of heavy lifting for a picture of frozen pizza.
Some weeks when I sit down to write this blog, I need to flip through my photos to figure out how I really did spend my time.
And even though I didn’t get all my goals done this week, my photos help remind me how much I did work and the number of understandable distractions there were. (34 guilty counts.)
What I did accomplish this week (and feel GREAT about) is revisions to the script for the indie-horror feature film. Among the accomplishments in this draft:
-I trimmed out a few smaller roles to make casting easier
-I trimmed dialogue and took four pages out of the script
-I punched up some of the scares and horror set-pieces
-And, in my biggest creative adventure this week, I wrote a new 1.5 page scene
So this little scene was a fun, but challenging, paint-a-big-pictue-on-a-postage-stamp type of scene.
It needed to accomplish multiple tasks. It needed to add a missing emotional beat where one of the main characters questions their life choices. It needed to resolve a running joke with a background character. It needed to be add a different kind of scare to the script. And it needed to have juicy moments for one particular actor for casting reasons.
I knew everything this little scene needed to do but not HOW to make it happen. It’s like knowing exactly what you want your dinner to TASTE like with having no idea what you’re going to cook and limited ingredients in your cupboard.
And this scene was one of those great experiences where I basically wrote the entire thing in my head while being far away from my computer. I was getting frustrated with it so I went for my daily walk, thought hard about it, didn’t quite get it.
Then I went to the grocery store, stopped thinking about it entirely. When I was waiting in line, I was absent-mindedly staring at a Snickers bar trying to decide if I should buy one.
Then an idea popped into my head. The key idea that tied all of the needed elements together for the scene. The idea was this: “He should ask them to tell him a joke.”
I would love to tell you there was anything logical at work. That I saw the Snickers bar and it triggered a deep, repressed memory about the nature of life or something. But it was not logical. The idea just popped up like a wacky neighbor over a fence in a sitcom.
So that’s my writing advice for this week: Stare at a Snickers bars and see what happens.
MY GOAL FOR THE WEEK--
Oh no, this came up very fast in my typing. I’m going to lean into the second time being a charm. So once again this week my goal is to finish setting up a live comedy show to celebrate my birthday in August. This time, for real. I’m serious, guys. I’m going to do this. (While also doing lots of other stuff.)
YOUR GOAL FOR THE WEEK--
I would absolutely LOVE to hear what you're working on this week in the comments below. What's your goal? Is it creative? What are the challenges? What are the joys? How can I help you finish your monsters?
LIGHT PLUGS--
A huge JOY for me! Our short film The Nightmare Adorable will be screening in the UK! Screening in July at the B Beside the Seaside Film Fest!
I also wanted to share about Vote Forward—it’s a program where you sign up to write letters to voters. There’s a typed form and you add a personal message about WHY voting matters to you, nothing partisan. The org has done follow up studies and it really works to increase voter turnout. My goal this year is to write 200 letters. I wrote the first 20 this week. If you’re interested, you can find out more by visiting Vote Forward!
A LITTLE SKETCH--
This week’s sketch is aspirational! An idea getting an idea. We should all be as lucky as this lightbulb. I hope you and your lightbulbs have a great week!
