Day 110: Writing on the Redeye

Much of today was spent travelling across the country, making my way from sunny southern California to sunny southern Florida. The only white I’ll be seeing this Christmas will be on the white sand beaches of the Gulf of Mexico. While I’ll be spending most of the holiday season visiting with family, I hope to find some time to squeeze in some writing. I’m severely behind schedule and may not even make my minimum writing quota for the month. That will make December even worse than November. Luckily I will have several long opportunities for uninterrupted writing while sitting on planes or in terminals.

I prepared for the journey by making copies of not only Come Ups, but several other projects as well. My thinking was if I get stuck on Come Ups and I will have other writing endeavors to fall back on, or, in a case of wishful thinking, should I finish Come Ups, I’ll have something to fall back on. I can’t afford to let any free time slip by unutilized.

I spent part of my layover in Denver going over Come Ups and trying to resolve the issue of the Reydel/Calida scene leading into the midpoint be there or should I jump directly to the strip club or go back and reinsert Tyler’s scene at the car dealership. By the time I boarded the plane, my head was spinning with possibilities, none of which seemed to offer a clear plan. So from Denver to Tampa, I decided to proofread the script. There have been a number of changes since the last time I did that and I was working with a Word version of the script as I don’t Movie Magic Screenwriter on my laptop. The Word spelling and grammar check found numerous errors that MMS had not caught. To be fair, most of the corrections were made to new additions to the script, but not all; there were several obvious mistakes that MMS did not catch, but then neither did I. It just goes to show you can never proofread enough.

After 15 hours of travel and layovers on the redeye, plus prep time before hand, I’m pretty well exhausted, but managed to get some good solid work in. The problem will be finding that time again between now and Christmas. After Christmas it should slow up a bit, but I have a feeling the next 5 days are going to be crammed with family, shopping, visiting and probably some gift assembly. Even if I can’t get any writing done, I’ve got to take notes or create a list of options for when I finally sit down at the keyboard again.