Finally...

Last year around April I began working in earnest on a screenplay that had been in my head for years. Years, I tell you. My writer friends will tell you about how maddening it is to walk around with an idea gnawing at you and you just can't figure out how to complete it. These stories play out in your head and you think, "That's it, I've figured it out after all of these years!" But then life interrupts and the work never gets done.

Or it gets interrupted.

Last year I was some 60 pages into this script and I came up with a new twist for the story. It was just a random "what if" I thought of that not only brought everything to a crashing halt, it froze me up for a good six months.

What did I do in the time while I tortured myself over not being able to complete this one script, a story I've been dying to tell for nearly a decade? I wrote a spec TV script, I wrote countless reviews, I tried to start a new column for Popdose, recorded a weekly podcast, I wrote 3/4s of ANOTHER screenplay, and of course, I tried to be a good father and husband.

When we came home from our holiday trip back east, I was in the shower one morning and the fog cleared. I realized that I had everything I needed to finish writing the original script, and I set off the finish what I'd started.

Today, I printed the first draft of the script. There was no better feeling than holding the 108 pages of my new screenplay.

Finally, a first draft is complete. Finally, I can say I've told my story (or at least started to, depending on how many revisions it goes through). Finally, I can take a deep breath.