How’Zit Goin?

The Screenplay

With only one month left to complete my 2021 goal, I’m on track. I’ve “finished” the screenplay. After much effort, it’s finally below 120 pages, currently at about 116 pages.

You’ll notice the word “finished” is in quotation marks. Is a creative work really ever finished? Generally, no, because the creator will tweak the work until the very last minute. (Eric Kripke said he continuously rewrote a key scene for the pilot of Supernatural until they filmed it. And he still wasn’t happy with it.) But my reason for not being done is less esoteric.

I’m trying an alternate beginning, based on feedback from my screenplay course instructor. It’s still exposition-heavy, but I see no way out of that because the sci-fi world has to be set up quickly. The alternate would just get into the action a bit more quickly. The downside is that some lovely prose that Dark Space author Lisa Henry wrote would be lost.

But my biggest struggle is the ending: it’s pretty weak. I didn’t mind the book’s ending (although a few reviewers on Goodreads did), but it won’t do for a movie. For one thing, it violates the first commandment of Robert McKee‘s 10 Commandments of Screenwriting: Thou shalt not take the crisis or climax out of the protagonist’s hands (or, no “deus ex machina” endings). So now I have to come up with an ending where Brady is the master of his own destiny, or rather, gets himself out of the jam the other main character put him in.

This should make December interesting as I’m not a creative thinker. But there may be hope. Someone once told me of a study done with creative vs. non-creative people: the only difference researchers found was that the non-creative types didn’t think they were creative. So perhaps if I spend thirty days or so exercising my “creativity” muscle, a spark will ignite.

The Afghan

I’m more or less halfway done, with 12 completed squares: Charlie, Echo, Delta, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliette, Kilo, Lima, Mike, and Papa. I’ve had some struggles. After trying three with different patterns, I’m finally happy with Foxtrot (red diamond on white). I was a bit over halfway through with Lima (yellow and black squares) when I realized I had the colors backward. I thought I could just turn it upside down, so I kept going. Except that: only three rows from completion I discovered turning it upside down does nothing to change the color layout. And since the knitting pattern I used has a back and front, I can’t turn it around.

But it’s not all negative. I’m quite happy with the way India (black circle on yellow, in the photo at the top of this post) turned out. Thankfully, no other flags have curves. (Diagonals are hard enough.)

I’m now taking a break for a while. Oh, I’m still playing with yarn, it’s just that it’s all crochet now. (More on that later.)

The Easy/Boxy T

I am this —><— close to finishing the sweater. Actually, I’ve been there for a few days. I was going to try to finish it Sunday. See above for the reason it still sits in my “to do” pile.

It’s done!

I might make it again someday, using different yarn and modifying the sleeves to make them smaller.