Starting Off The Week Wrong

As of today, I technically have thirteen days left until the final submission of my screenplay rewrite.  Time to get some work done, as in ASAP.  So it’s off to the laptop again, and see if I can knock off at least five pages a day (which is really modest, considering what needs to be done).

Ah, don’t you hate it when things end up coming down to the line, again?

Too Panicked To Care

Yeah, I’m actually in a rush right now, so as the title suggests I can’t really put in anything long or thoughtful.  But if there were a word to describe my situation right now, it would again be: hellish.  Yeah, cramming sucks, and I’m feeling the side-effects of having to rely on energy drinks to keep up.  Ugh.

If I collapse after 2 or 3 days, then it’s no surprise at this point.

Much Hand-Wringing Done

I have just one comment for myself: I suck.

Seriously.

The next few days… will be hellish.  Like cramming to the extreme.

 

 

Progress… Not Really

Things are moving along, but not really as fast as I would have liked.  And somehow… I’m getting the feeling that, while the screenplay is moving in the same general direction as the draft I submitted last term, it’s somehow turning into something completely different.  Or something like that anyway.

But hey, progress right?  Now if I could only keep it up for the rest of my stay tomorrow at the library.  Even getting to forty pages by Friday doesn’t sound so bad, since I’m aiming for a much more compact page count this time around (like around eighty-pages, single-spaced and unformatted).

Not Dancing Happily

It’s the third day of my LOA, and while I’m making progress, it’s not as much as I’d like.  Rewrites are tough, and even reimagining essentially the same scene, but with a little change in dialogue brings a whole lot of headaches.  On the bright side, I have a good idea of what parts to tinker with, and which parts of the screenplay I can more or less leave alone.  Now if I can only follow up on it…

Incidentally, I spent the day once again cooped up somewhere in the DLSU main library.  It’s a great place to actually do some work without distractions (unless you bring said distractions with you), though with the air conditioning going full blast it’s hard at times to keep awake.  Oh well.  Lets see where I end up in tomorrow, yes? 

 

First Day Out, Not Too Good

 

Although it’s technically the second day of my LOA, it was only today that I was actually able to take advantage of it.  I went to school, and pretty much stayed in the main library as planned, but the visit wasn’t exactly as fruitful as I’d liked.  At the most, I was only able to do some edits to the ten pages that I already had, and whats worse I actually had to cut out some of the existing lines. Ugh.

Let me tell you, it’s kind of hard to make up lines for ten-year-olds without them sounding five years older…

I really hope I can do better tomorrow, but for now I’ll have to see what more I can add tonight.  Time to break out the energy drinks, I guess.

As for other stuff… I just noticed how someone finally opened one of the two big bags of Oreos cookie sandwiches that was sitting in the fridge.  I think those cookies single-handedly put back my dieting efforts for the day, as a pair of the cookies apparently weigh in at whopping 140 calories.  And I think I ate five pairs over the course of ten minutes…  Darn my sweet tooth.

Anyway, lets see if I can actually do a better job tomorrow. Fight! Fight! Wooooh!

 

Saturday Slacking

While I can’t say that the last few days have been fruitful with regards to my screenplay rewrite (the usual things preventing me from concentrating apply), our class today was another matter entirely.  We had a special guest fore our lecture: Chris Martinez, screenwriter and director of One Hundred, Babae sa Septic Tank, Caregiver, Here Comes the Bride, Kimidori, and many other movies (including the upcoming I Do Be Do Be Doo).  Mr. Martinez was nice enough to give us a bit of his time (he was supposed to be overseeing the rehearsal in I Do Be Do Be Doo) and answer some of our questions regarding screenplay writing.

First off, let me say that, compared to some of us in the class, the guy is a monster, in both finding inspiration for his scripts (One Hundred was inspired by his musings on mortality; Babae sa Septic Tank was due to the reactions of international festival watchers of One Hundred), as well as the pace at which he writes says scripts: while he mentioned that the longest time he’s spent was about a year, he normally is able to finish a screenplay for a full-length production in less than three weeks.  Some local writers can do the same in less time of course, but for someone like me, who’s struggling with even five pages a day, it’s very impressive.

Mr. Martinez was candid throughout the time he was with the class, and answered what he could of our questions (which, not surprisingly, were just a few, given how my classmates have a propensity for clamming up whenever they’re put on the spot). And, yeah, it was kind of expected that he sympathized with how hard it was to do a rewrite after pouring everything out on one’s first draft.

The rest of the class was spent on the nitty gritty of what we’re expected to submit after the Holy Week.  On the plus side, no need for Hollywood-style formatting, or keeping to the expected eighty-to-one-hundred page limit.  On the down side, by naming a final submission date the pressure I’ve been feeling over the past few days was ramped even more. Darnit.

Anyway, I have the rest of the week off to finally focus on the rewrite properly, so it’ll help move things along.  Being a reserved LOA though my salary by the next payday will take a hit, but it’s worth it, I guess.

As for other things, my sister’s wedding (on the 15th of April) is fast approaching.  While I’ve somehow managed to slim down to the point where I can squeeze into my old jeans again, I’m still not sure I can comfortably wear the ensemble she’s going to have us wear for the occasion.  And frustratingly enough, my weight hasn’t moved a single bit from where it was at the start of the month. 

I think it’s now time to apply the pressure on the dieting side of things on top of the usual exercise.

Every Little Bit of Progress Can’t Hurt

Well it’s not much of a progress report at this point, but I was able to get 15 pages done during the week, and around 7 more pages besides.  While I’m not quite caught up, at least I didn’t have to cram all of those 21 pages over a single evening.  That said, I’m still a little delayed, and it’s another 15 pages for next Saturday.

As I’m slowly getting to the minimum page mark for the final screenplay submission, other worries are starting to make themselves apparent.  One of the main problems right now is the fact that, 45 pages in, I still haven’t hit the midpoint for the plot (an issue noted in my 20-page treatment), where it should have reached the midpoint at page 40.  I might have to do something about it, which means trimming down some of Act 1, and then beefing up Act 2.  Joy.

Anyway, I need to focus.  Need to do the next 15 pages, then I’ll try to do necessary rewrites.  And judging by the comments so far by my professor on my submissions, the latter will be needed badly.  Tsk, again, it’s kind of painful having the knowledge that I suck rubbed in my face, but what can I do? 

Ah, I need rest.  Maybe a nap for an hour or two.  I’m feeling the start of a big headache, and it’s best to preempt it by resting.

Fleeting Freedom

As of this writing I’ve completed my final project for my Literary Translation class. All I need to do now is email it to my professor and I’m pretty much done for the term. It’s not as polished as I’d hoped, but then again this wasn’t an ambitious effort to begin, so it all works out in the end.  No more worries for me until the next term starts again, but that’s still a few weeks away, so it’s a load off my mind.

As with these situations though, I seem to have loaded up on food over the past few days while I worked on the project, so I suppose it’s back to square one with regards to my weight-watching/exercise regimen. I’ll have to see about some running tomorrow, so hopefully it doesn’t rain that hard in the afternoon.

Fun fact: this was one of the least-stressful Thursday shifts I’ve had in… forever, actually. Like yesterday, I wasn’t swamped with calls (at one point I went up to an hour and a half without a call), but this is likely to end by next week. Still, it was quite enjoyable, though with the new hirees on the floor I have to watch myself more.

So, with the project taken care of, what’s my agenda for the weekend? Hmm, I suppose catching up on my usual hobbies would be nice again. For example, I’m currently downloading the Warhammer 40000: Space Marine demo, but as is the usual case for Steam-based downloads, that ’2 hours left’ counter was very misleading, considering the fact that I went to sleep around two in the afternoon, and yet when I woke up around six it still wasn’t finished. Heck, it’s past ten-fifteen now, and it still isn’t done. Oi.

Oh well, judging by the opinions from the folk in B&C, as well as the people who I follow in Twitter, it should be worth the wait. Now, if I just had enough cash to spare for the full version.

Speaking of cash, it was payday again for me today. However since I spent the afternoon sleeping, I wasn’t able to withdraw from my payroll ATM account until early in the evening. Once again it’s pretty meager, compared to what I used to receive, but no matter. Pay is pay. Now to deposit it into my savings first thing tomorrow morning…

Ah, so tempted to purchase the Land Raider Crusader upgrade for my extra Land Raider right now. But I have to hold on any purchases for a bit, as the heavy-hitting bills haven’t arrived yet.

Decisions, decisions. Still it’s nice that I don’t have to worry (much) about the project anymore, and could go back to what I’ve normally been doing on my weekends: that is, goofing off.

Midweek Shuffle

It’s Wednesday again, but after all those nights I’m this close to formally finishing my translation project. All that’s missing are the footnotes for the actual translated text — that’ll take some work, but probably won’t take a whole evening — and the bibliography/references.  After that, I can just email the thing to my professor, and spend the weekend no longer having to worry about it constantly. Finally.

Now if I can only forget that my submission probably won’t hold a candle to some of my classmates’ projects, and I’ll be good for a while.

Speaking of good… My shift today was uncharacteristically relaxed. Instead of being swamped by calls as usual, there were huge intervals in between calls, but that was easily explained by the fact that we have new hires on the floor.  I’m guessing that, as they’re technically in their nesting period (and as such under active surveillance), they were given a higher priority on the call queue.  That said, the fact that I was able to take in calls at a leisurely pace really helped, as far as my temper is concerned that is.

Might as well enjoy things while they last though. Experience tells me that it’ll back to the usual next week, but with the added warm bodies on the floor for the morning shift, at least the tail end of my workweek will become somewhat bearable again.