Friday, October 21, 2011

Sailor Moon No More-ish

I've decided that I'll no longer be posting script snippets for my Sailor Moon screenplay.

Just to be clear, this is NOT because I'm giving up on the screenplay, or because I haven't been able to write new material-- in fact, I've got lots of new material scribbled slipshod across multiple ramshackle old notebooks.

The reason I've decided to stop posting the script is that. . . well, it's a really bad idea, both creatively and from the standpoint of publishing and selling my work. When I started out on this, I was under the impression that this screenplay would never go anywhere anyway, and that putting it on my blog was the only way that this silly idea would ever be read. In fact, that's still almost certainly true. . . but that doesn't change the fact that it's lousy way to do things. Regardless of whether this goes anywhere or not (and whatever its artistic merit), I've put a lot of time and effort into this project. It's time to start taking it more seriously, to start treating it like something that I will, one day, actually try to sell and get on the screen. And that means NOT self-publishing a spoiler riddled first draft for everyone-- including potential buyers-- to see.

On top of that, it's a really shitty way to create something. While I did, and do, have many aspects of the story (including the ending) planned out, a lot of what was published in the script was stuff I made up as I went along. Now, there's nothing wrong with just sitting down and writing, seeing where the process will lead you. There IS a problem with letting your readers see that process unfold, and having to live with sometime egregious mistakes seen in hindsight when, really, you should just be revising those mistakes and pushing forward. I've lost so much time agonizing over how a published snippet will look, how the words will flow, whether it will make sense given what came before, etc. instead of just writing it and revising it later, when I have the whole thing in front of me to examine and fix. Publishing online was motivating once-- now, it's just counter-productive.

Besides. . . I do have a life outside of this screenplay. There are other things I'd like to write about. Like excitons, or Japanese, or cooking, or travel, or how I would've written Enterprise. Yeah. . . I've been think a lot about that last one recently.

So stay tuned.

1 comment:

Naomi said...

I can respect this. Also, I think you should bring back Wednesday "Wire".

 
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