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My Pesky Partner, Fear
We are doing the last tweaks on the TV script, yeah, the one we will hopefully be able to tell you about by the end of the month, scheduled to shoot. In B.C in March. Just production stuff, guiding the FX people mostly, scaling down a couple of sequences where we went a little crazy. Fun.
The point is that I was supposed to do it last week, and froze a little bit. Had the paper draft with me on the road, but never looked at it. And…I couldn’t tell you precisely why. Some kind of anxiety. Maybe scared that anything I did might screw things up.
After all…there are two different parts of the writing process, the “flow” and the “editor.” The. “flow” is pretty much a little kid, just playing. That’s where all the good stuff comes from. The “editor” plans and prunes. It is more the “adult” part of me. And that means that the rewrite comes from a place that is not as creative as the original writing. No wonder I might be a little nervous!
So I break the process into chunks, and just do the chunks.
- Detail the changes that need to be made.
- Print out the manuscript, put it in a binder.
- Hi-light the changes to be made, the areas that need tweaking.
- Make the changes a little at a. time, bold-facing the areas. Possibly do this while watching television to get into. “second attention” where I am distracting my conscious mind.
- Polish the changes.