the elusive finished script

I've been writing my first feature length script over the past few months. And I have just one thing to say.

I cannot wait to be done with it.

Not because I'm tired of it, no. It's just so I can print it out, bracket the thing together, hold it in my hands and walk around downtown Dallas showing every person I see that I actually finished a script. Sense of accomplishment, here I come.

I've hit a bit of a snag this past week. I'm not necessarily out of ideas, and I know how to end the thing... I just got caught up in the many things that cause writers to abandon their scripts. I got caught up in the things that really don't matter. That seems to happen a lot in my life, but I digress.

Being a student of film, having mentors who write copious amounts of scripts and have abundant knowledge that they have passed on to me, I know what a good script should look like. I know all the important things that a good script should have. I know what bad dialogue sounds like, what bad storytelling looks like, how to and how not to weave the stories together. So, is my script good? Is it following all the rules and regulations and things that I want it to? The answer is an absolute and defiant: NO.

Am I ok with that? Not yet.

Here's the thing. It doesn't matter. What matters is that I finish what I started. That I achieve my goal. The important thing is that I actually do it - so I know that I can do it again. I can fix plot holes and bad dialogue and other problems with the script. I shouldn't let myself get in the way of just doing it. One thing that I have to struggle with is failing. I don't like it - not that anyone does - but I don't like it so much that I end up just dropping it completely - that way there's no reason that I can fail. It's ok to fail. It's ok for my first script to not be any good. As long as lessons are learned, and I move on from my mistakes, it's a fail well worth it.

I'll let you know how it turns out.