He was right.
This is a big one. I did it. I finished my script.
Well, not really (you’re never really done) but I have a first draft that I’m quite happy with. I’m not doing the numbers this week. You can probably imagine that I spent most of my time writing and everything else had to take a little break. I have to give some props to John August, his tweets about his write sprints were really helpful and made me write regularly.
“Die Klientin” is probably the fastest I ever wrote a script. It took me less than a month. I mentioned in an earlier post, that I’m really focused at the moment and I hope to keep that momentum (#ProjectMomentum) going. I’m a bit short at the moment but that’s something I’m going to fix in the next couple of days and weeks. I’m confident to have a decent 90 page version by the end of September.
I don’t know what I’ll do after that, I might go back and rework the Australia idea or I might start something from scratch (or a really old outline). I might have to do a vision quest or something to figure that one out. Riding my bike to work and my (almost) daily runs have proven quite fruitful in this area. Seems there is something to the saying: “Mens sana in corpore sano”. I feel really great. My weight is dropping and the more weight I drop the more pages I churn out. I should have started this years ago. In a way it’s fitting that I finished my screenplay roughly around the same time I reached the 10kg weight drop point. If 10 kilos of weight loss equal a first draft, I think that another then should get me to the final draft.
I’m going to tell you more about “Die Klientin” and what I learned during the process in the following weeks, while I rework it and correct all the silly mistakes I made but let me mention I few things while the memory is still fresh.
“Die Klientin” was my first german screenplay in a while. It was really strange at first not to write in English. I’m so used to writing in English that I had to look up some german words. It’s strange feeling when you have to look up words in your mother tongue. I think I have to start reading german books again and maybe even watch some German movies or TV shows.
I mentioned in an earlier post, that the idea is actually quite old. I found a document with a 2003 timestamp on it. It felt strange to come back to such an old idea but it was fascinating how fully formed most of it was in my brain. I’m not saying that the 2003 outline didn’t change but you can’t deny that it is the same story with the same basic plot points. Even more strangely, it seems like I had similar experiences 13 years ago that made me write something that I can still relate to 13 years later.
I’ll keep you updated on my progress.
There’s other exciting new though. Orlindo finally did some writing. He cleaned up his pitch for his current idea and it’s finally something one can work with, in the sense of there’s enough there to actually think about how to improve and tell the story. I’m really excited about his idea. It’s really different from my sensibilities and that’s what makes it interesting.
Stay tuned.
