Writing from the Real World

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Column: Writing from the Real World
Title: Writing is rewriting. Rewriting is agony.
Author: Victor D. Infante

I know writers who can finish a screenplay, or a novel, or a particularly long grocery list and step outside, have a smoke, and turn right around and start the next big thing. I hate them. Hate them like I hate the DMV, like I hate long lines at the supermarket. Like I hate Bubble gum pop. Because, at least for me, writing is emotionally and intellectually draining. I was reminded of this just recently, when I finished my most recent screenplay. It would have been nice if I had gotten to the very, very end, typed, "END OF SCRIPT" and said, "Hey. It's a screenplay. Cool." No, I got to the very, very end, had that pleasant, new script moment of afterglow, and then proceeded to go rip out Act Two and rewrite it pretty much from scratch. There are two funny things about rewriting, however. The first is that every bit rewritten means you have to change bits and pieces after it. And often before it. Which I dutifully did. Meaning that almost all of Act Three and a good, honking chunk of Act One got re-hauled. Which is okay, and I felt much better than I did at the beginning. Except for the second weird thing about rewriting: you're never sure you're done.

For me, it becomes the thing of Chris Carter plot lines. A chilling sensation of fear begins to creep down my spine. I wake in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, grab my flashlight and creep tentatively-yet-stylishly to my office, thinking, "The Truth is Out There!" I then proceed to read the damn thing again from cover to cover. And again. And again, until I am no longer at all certain whether it's any good at all, and it gets shut in a drawer for two weeks and forgotten. Well. maybe not forgotten. Actually, it's quite omnipresent in my head for those two weeks. It becomes every other thought, the paranoid belief that there, sitting in my desk drawer, is around a hundred pieces of paper which constitute a million, billion dollars or a colossal waste of the past year.
Both of which ideas are probably equally untrue, but by this point I am no longer rational.

A fortnight passes, and I allow myself to read it again. It's okay. I laugh at a joke I made early on. Work in a new scene for early on Act Three. Decide I like my lead character's wife and work in a few more lines for her. It's all very Zen. I revisit it daily. I poke at it. I correct my spelling. I decide that I should probably get it into an agent's hands before I start hounding David Bowie to play the villain. I am calm. I am cool. I am collected. I don't live in California anymore, so I can resist the urge to call everyone I've ever met and say, "Hey! Don't you go to the same podiatrist as Kevin Spacey? Want to read my screenplay?" No, instead, I poke at it.
And poke at it. And poke at it. And by this point, I'm not doing anything interesting or exciting to it at all. The new phrasings I come up with are really no more exciting than the old phrasings. The new dialog is only slightly different than the old dialog. I resist the urge to write in zombies, because no one ever lets me keep my zombies, anyway. I am done, but because I'm not finishing at "The End," I don't really FEEL done. Oh, I go through the motions. I send out the query letters, I call friends and acquaintances in the business. Get a few bites right away and send them copies out, but really, I feel like I'm a fraud. I tell myself to move on to the cool urban fantasy story I've had brewing in the back of my head, but it doesn't come. I cannot escape the previous screenplay. And it is laughing at me. It jets off to Hollywood through the magic of the Postal Service and the internet, while I sit here and stew, and I know full well it is being intercepted by Screenplay Gnomesyou know, the magical fairies
that intercept it before Agents and Producers can read it? C'mon! You MUST know about the gnomes! I'm not kidding!!! Hollywood makes every single script it receives, but the Screenplay Gnomes steal most of them, so every producer makes whatever they can, and if they're stuck, they re-envision Planet of the Apes.

Obviously, by this point I have dissolved into paranoid dementia again, and although I try to write again, although I know I SHOULD move on to the next thing, I remain preoccupied and unable to think of anything else. Sigh. Let's try this again tomorrow. And Bowie really would be perfect for the part, y'know?

(Victor D. Infante is a regular contributor to the OC Weekly and the Worcester InCityTimes, and is seeking representation for his two screenplays, “the List” and “Nihilist Chic”. Visit him on the web at http://www.quantumredhead.com/victor.)

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