Thanksgiving

New York wisdom

No I am not American. And one day to say thank you a year is not enough for me. I say thanks a lot. I said thank you a lot today.

So what did I do all weekend? I sat inside. And worked hard.

And …

Finished my script. I locked myself up and wrote two hole days and ended writing “The End” on the bottom of page 85 this afternoon. There are a couple of places where I need to rewrite things a bit and there are still some gaps here and there, but the story structure is there and the title is too. And fixing those last things will certainly bring me past 90 pages.

I am realistic, I know that there are millions of screen writers and scripts around, so I don’t expect this script to be made into a film or anything. But the feeling of accomplishing writing 85 pages is a good one. Just writing as such is wonderful to do.

I also know that, should I take this seriously (and I think I do), tons of rewrites are ahead of me. That’s just how it is. But to have the basic shape of the story is a good start I guess.

Many writers say that once they start writing the story unfolds itself to them. I always thought that was rubbish. And I wouldn’t write anything without having some kind of outline for the whole story in my head.

This time however, we were advised not to do that. Of course I had a basic idea of the story, but no more than that, we just started writing. It is scary to just start writing without knowing where it goes, but it is true, the story takes you by the hand when you do. I find this intriguing and magical. And it is really cool when it happens. There are scenes in my script I could never ever have thought of from the start, the story lead me to them.

But enough about all that. Here is the thanks giving part. I couldn’t have done any of this without the following:

• Sondre Lerche. I just checked my play list and am shocked to see that I have played his songs at least 100 times this weekend. He has been in my ears nearly continuously the last 2 days, it brought me in the right mood. Couldn’t have written the last hard pages without him. I am very sure of that.
• Bill. I wouldn’t have been writing if it wasn’t for him. I wouldn’t have been inspired to write the story I have written, and I wouldn’t have a clue about my male character if I hadn’t drawn heavily from several Bill performances. He is cool.
• Richard Curtis. Reading (yes reading) both Notting Hill, Four Weddings and Love Actually was extremely useful, and I like to think that I learned from it. And he is the king of Romantic Comedy, no doubt about that.
• Yorkshire tea the milky way. Did drink a lot of that this weekend.
• Oldtimers liquorice.. Need to take a break from that now, otherwise my blood pressure will rise to unhealthy heights
• Sam, my tutor.
• And call me weird, but I like to think that my trip to New York has been of major importance too. Without that trip no “Dan in real life”, without Dan no Sondre Leche, without Sondre and without Dan – no inspiration. It turned out to be well planned.
• Oh, wait wait wait. I couldn’t have done it without you either. Yes you, the people reading this. All the comments, when things went down the hill, and when crawling up the hill again. It really helps. So thank you too. A lot.

Now I have one whole week to fill in the gaps, and then, about 2 weeks from now, it’s class again. Let’s see how that goes. At this very moment I am just happy about “how far I have come”.