Friday, July 30, 2010

Finding Writer's Gold

I could say I was taking a break, but really I was looking for distraction. Rewriting my ninth draft was making me anxious. After successfully defragmenting my C: drive, I turned my attention to cleaning out old files from My Documents. That’s when I stumbled across a one-act play that I honestly didn’t remember writing.

At first, I thought I might have written it with my former writing partner, but after checking the creation date in the file properties, I realized that wasn’t possible. When did I write this thing? I read it over and over. It wasn’t bad. Funny, fresh, and snappy. Where did it come from?

And then I smiled, because I knew. It came from me.

Two years ago, when I set out to be a solo writing entity, I didn’t have a single completed script to my name. Now I’m writing so much that I have pieces I have forgotten I’ve written!

The one-act was a delicious find. The writer’s equivalent of finding twenty dollars in the pocket of an old coat. I clicked through my writing folders. They were packed. Completed scripts, short film drafts, pilot pitches, outlines for a handful of features, virtual whiteboards filled with ideas – a beautiful mess of creativity. Treasures collected over months of exploration, inspiration, and being a writer.

I know I’m still a baby writer, but on that day, I felt triumphant. I tucked the confidence boost into my mental wallet and returned to rewriting my ninth draft. The tenth draft is almost done.

2 comments:

  1. Well Congrads Hot Shot,

    It's nice to find pleasent stuff that you didn't expect. And kudos on expressing it well through your writing.

    But you just reminded me that I have to go my storage and look through all of my clothes that haves pockets...maybe there's a twenty somewhere lurking :-)

    AAngel, :-) :-) :-)

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  2. Thanks Angel! :) I hope you find lots of twenties!

    ReplyDelete