A few weeks ago, when I was about eight months pregnant and the size of Jupiter, I was telling my students a story about how one afternoon people on the downtown M15 bus kept trying to squeeze into the seat next me, and how frustrating it was. I needed space! One of my students said it sounded like a great short film, and I should write a screenplay about it.
Now that I have nothing but free time, and I'm stuck on the 21st floor most of the day, I decided to take my student's advice and try writing about the assorted ways I was jostled around as a screenplay. It's turning out to be quite the exercise, since it's a totally different way of writing than what I'm accustomed to. Also, I'm writing in Microsoft Word as opposed to Final Draft, which is likely making things ten times more difficult than they need to be, at least from a formatting perspective.
I've taken one basic class about writing screenplays, which is all I think a person really needs. It's a great companion course to any other writing class, since it teaches you to write economically and tightly, and to make sure that every word counts. That's not bad advice for life, either. Also, you're telling a story through dialogue and visuals, which is a far cry from the journalism I've been doing for years.
Back to the grind! It was hard starting at first but now that I have some food and caffeine in me things are flowing a bit better.
