Disaster Flags

I can see a lot of them… And unfortunately, they’re multiplying.  Needless to say I’m not very happy at the prospect, but this lack of progress is damning, in so many ways.

God help me.  This semester will be the death of me, figuratively, in more ways than one.  And it’s not even the Workshop class yet! Blah!

Panic And More Panic

There’s literally no other way to describe my situation right now, aside from seriously screwed.  Another deadline is looming in the next few days, and I’m nowhere done on the other delayed submission.  Oh Haruhi, were there more hours in a day… I’d probably find some way to waste them instead of putting them to good use.  Ugh.

I really have to find a way to kill off my internet for a few days. It’s the primary reason I can’t concentrate. Seriously.  It’s just so tempting to browse one more site. Then another. Then another.  The next thing I know, I’m creating a Character Sheet for Last Exile with more enthusiasm than I should give my project…  Well, one can guess how that turned out.

I’m hopeless, I really am.

Lots To Go Around

I am officially in despair at this point.  I still haven’t finished my twenty-pager at this point, which means it’s about two to three weeks delayed, and now I also have at least thirty pages worth of actual screenplay that I have to submit on Saturday.  Darn, but this is looking pretty grim.  And what’s worse, I think my system is resisting all those energy drinks I’ve been drinking, to the point that I’m actually getting drowsy instead of alert when I down a bottle.  Not good.  This pretty much means that I’m not only going to have to cut down on them for a while, but I’ll have to rely on what I can get from resting.  Ugh.

This hole I’m digging myself in… It’s just getting deeper and deeper.

Some Progress

Which is to say, no progress at all.  I am so disappointed in myself at this point.  Running on fumes (not literally, though I am on my second bottle of Lipovitan), with nothing to show for it though.  I worry about my liver, yes I do.

Percolating

Suffice to say that I’m busy, and I won’t be sleeping anytime soon. Hopefully I’ll have this done with before noontime tomorrow. I’d really hate using up a whole day on this, rather than using it for resting.

The Big D Word

Ugh, just… Ugh.  I have to wonder why I even bother booting up my computer when I get home, if I’m not going to be doing anything creative on it.  Another afternoon and evening wasted.  Good Haruhi, what is wrong with me?  It’s just so easy for me to get distracted it’s not even funny anymore.

Two more days until classes again.  And I’m still without anything to show for it.  At this point my submission has been delayed for almost a week now, without even an outline to show for all the wasted time.  I just feel so helpless right now, and not only that, but I feel terribly stupid as well.

I mean, is it really so hard to put up an outline, the start filling in the spaces from there?

Anything Goes

Despite the urgency of the situation, I just couldn’t find the energy to work on my already-delayed twenty-pager. I just couldn’t muster any motivation to even do the very simple outline.

Ah, I’m so screwed. I don’t want to fail this term, but gosh is it hard to be creative for some reason.

Is it because I have absolutely no idea how to write a story with a ten-year-old as a lead?  Maybe.  I honestly can’t even remember how I was when I was that age, and I don’t think my own personal family life can be used as a proper basis either. 

Ugh, I just don’t know.  Maybe something will happen tomorrow that can break me from this funk, but I won’t hope too much.  The irony, I’m actually waiting for a ‘plot point’ to help turn this sorry state of mine towards a new direction.

Obvious Solution

No, I haven’t actually started on my rewrite yet, but I think I’ve now realized just where it was I messed up.  Ugh, such an amateur mistake: outlining! It’s the one thing I never did during the treatment process, and I realize now just how much the lack of a formal outline had messed things up. I had a beginning, I had an end and… that was it, really.  Without an outline to guide me on what was supposed to be happening in which scene (and where each scene was supposed to be in relation to each other), it’s no wonder things are going literally nowhere.  Mmph.

But… That’ll have to wait.  It’s going to be another busy workday tomorrow, and I can’t afford to be drowsy.  I do hope to be able to finish this when I get home, but that’s providing I’m not fatigued out of my mind again.

The Usual Delays

Okay, now that was a terribly exhausting workday.  To give one an idea of just how bad it was, I normally get twenty-five odd customer service calls over the course of my six-hour workshift, but I was barely an hour into the shift and I’d already accumulated fifteen.  It was crazy.  This continued until around nine, which was around the time my supervisor noted that I was given priority on the Customer Service queue, and only the Customer Service queue (normally my duties are split between the Merchant and CS call lists).  That was remedied, but by that point I already taken in twenty-five calls. Sheesh.

Needless to say that I was dead-tired once I got home. I just didn’t care anymore, I just set up some downloads, then went to sleep… Five hours later though, I’m still feeling tired, and even now I just want to jump back into bed.  Sleep debt again? Very likely, given the disastrous last few days fueled by bottles of energy drinks, all for naught.

Anyway, the rewrite of the twenty-pager starts in earnest. I can’t afford to delay its submission for longer than necessary.  Five pages a day. I can do it, right?

Catching Up As Much As Possible

Okay, I failed miserably in submitting my twenty-pager earlier.  However if I work hard I’ll be able to email in a copy before Wednesday next week, but I’ll just to live with the fact that it’ll be tagged as a late submission.  Yeah, that’ll hurt as far as my grade for the class will be concerned, but there’s nothing I can do about it now but try for some damage control. The fact that our professor returned our five-page treatment earlier will help a bit, as the said five-pager now has his input and notes on what could be improved upon, expanded, or outright changed.  The comments will admittedly sting a little, but I’ve come to accept it at this point.  If it will help me improve, then any criticism can and will be accepted.

Moving on, after the twenty-pager we’re supposed to devote the remaining six weeks do writing the actual Screenplay itself, with the first twenty pages and the last ten pages to be submitted for review in two weeks time.  While we were told earlier that the maximum page target was about a hundred pages, our professor said that it would be best though to try for an eighty-page screenplay instead. It’s still a substantial amount of pages to do, but somewhat manageable, not to mention it allows some leeway in case the screenplay somehow needs to be expanded…

Gosh, talk about pressure.  Anyway that’s another wall that I’ll have to worry about once I get to it — what’s important is that I finish the twenty-pager first.

On other issues… We learned the other day that one of our older relatives in Cavite passed away the other day.  My father wanted us to pay a visit yesterday, but since I was too busy cramming we weren’t able to do so.  He did leave to visit them today though to make up for it, but at this point I’m not really sure if we’ll be able to do more than that, what with our work and all.  It looks like tatay, when the time comes, will have to stand in for us at the burial.

 As for less gloomy stuff… When we learned that one of the cans of tomato sauce sent from the US was about to expire (it was a straggler from a package that was sent early in 2010 I think), it was decided that it was to be used for pasta.  One or two-odd hours of cooking later, well, let’s just say that we won’t have any lack for stuff to eat for the next two days or so.  Seriously going to hate myself in a few days, since it’s practically a given now that I’ll be gaining weight again, as we’ll have to finish off the pasta (and its sauce!) first.  Oi.

And that’s pretty much it for tonight.  It’s back to work once more tomorrow, then the twenty-pager once I get home.  Hmm, maybe I’ll take my siesta as soon as I arrive, so my mind will be fresh for all the typing I’ll be doing after…