This is different.  The sun is actually shining outside.  I usually post at night, but I’ve been doing a lot of split shifts lately, so by the time K & V pick me up, we eat dinner and attempt to put V to bed, it’s almost time for me to crash as well.  I just haven’t had the consciousness to post.

So it’s the middle of the day, and this works better.

As I’ve said before, sometimes I do my best work AT work.  And that’s been the case for the past couple of days.  I managed to put together an improved Act One, with my sights set on venturing into Act Two.  That should be interesting.

My writing group used to meet every other Tuesday evening, but the other guy is in a show through July, so we haven’t seen him in a while.  He tries to get pages done when he can – don’t know how that’s coming along.  So now it’s just myself and the other original member of the group.  We met at Starbucks on Tuesday and had a good meeting.  We read through some of her pages, I gave her my feedback.  She read my Act One outline and liked it.  We may keep up the daytime meeting thing because it does make things easier, and try to include the other guy to help keep him active.

I finished the last of my casual reading books yesterday, so now I have no excuse to NOT work on Act Two.

It’s interesting seeing how the whole thing is changing as I go through each draft.  Certain storylines and subplots have come and gone, but the concept remains the same.  It’s all in the execution, I suppose.  As long as it’s funny.

Getting the story to work comes first, then the insertion of comedy.  Not as easy as one would think.  I’ll do my best and see what happens.

STILL no word from Manager Guy.  He’ll get a note on Monday, which means I’ll get a response around…Thursday.  With a timestamp of about 2AM.  Why IS he up so late?

I took the plunge and sent the script to that other manager/prodco last week.  I figured it was better than doing nothing.  I really wonder if they’ll call back.

I’m also not holding out much hope from the Big Agency.  It took them 3 months to ask for the script.  Now that they have it, I seriously doubt I’ll hear back from them.  It’s been about a month since I sent it, and haven’t heard diddly.  Which I’ll interpret as ‘thanks but no thanks’.  And still I soldier on…

In a non-writing note, I’m still a bit bothered by my run-in with the law Wednesday morning.  For the first time in 7 months, I took a different route to work.  It involved stopping at a major intersection, where the light was red and a car was waiting to cross with me.  I stopped, looked left – nothing.  Looked right – nothing.  Okay.  Good to go.  I pedal across and the police car on the other side of the street hits the lights and pulls me over.  A big grouchy-looking guy steps out and asks if I know why he pulled me over.  “Because I went through the light?” I say.  I don’t deny it, but it’s 4:30 in the morning, it’s not exactly the safest neighborhood and there’s nobody but me and the other car.  And the officer, of course.

He asks for ID.  I hand over my license.  While he’s checking my record, another unit rolls up.  In case he can’t handle this no-good lawbreaking cyclist, no doubt.  He emerges and gives me some story about another cyclist who did NOT stop at the red light and got plowed by a drunk driver.  He says something about there being a point on my license and hands it back.  But NO TICKET.  I climb back on the bike and ride off to work.

Can you get a point against your license for something that occurs on a bike AND if you don’t get an actual ticket?  General consensus among my peers regarding both is NO.

What did I learn from this?  Well, I already stop at red lights and look both ways, so not that.   Probably to stay on the street I’ve been taking.

Oh yeah.  Almost forgot.  Three years of biking to work. That’s a lot of radio shows, sweat-soaked shirts and flat tires.  Maybe I’ll even get fenders before the next rainy season.  That would be cool.

I promise.

Hang in there.

Longer post tomorrow.  Too tired now.

Summary:

-Better version of Act One.  Journey into Act Two about to begin

-Still no word from Manager Guy.  Will send a note next week.

-Pulled over by a cop this morning whilst cycling for crossing against the light. Won’t be going that way again.

Again, more tomorrow. Off to bed…

That’s the speed of my progress on the latest rewrite.  I’m being more hesitant about just putting something down.  This is where that whole ‘plotting’ thing comes in.

The weirdest thing is that when I took my notes to work on Friday afternoon, it was a bit more productive than when I’m at home with the laptop.  Can’t explain it.  I’ll start doing this more often, but also keep working at home.

I really hope to get a lot done next week after K & V leave town, but it also depends on how many hours I’ll be working.  I told my boss that I’ll have plenty of free time, which is true, but it would be nice to actually use that time for my own purposes.

But if I can get at least a percentage of the outline done in a relatively short time, that would be good.  I’m not going to set a target date for completion, because I always go past it.

And when that’s done at a level I’m really, really comfortable with, then I can dive into actual pages.

In the meantime, I bring my notes to work and trudge ahead.

I got some really good feedback from both members of my writing group, which means I’ll pick and choose from their comments and apply accordingly to the rewrite.

At first I loathe the idea of having to do this again, but there’s a part of me that is compelled to get this story done.  And the more I think about it, the more I look forward to taking on the challenge of the rewrite.  No doubt this feeling will pass when I hit another wall.

I started the actual rewrite of the outline with some minor changes here and there.  It’ll be interesting to see what else changes along the way.

I keep each version of each revision, occasionally going back for something during the rewrite process.  It can be very nice when I find something to use in the latest draft.

I hope to get the first act done by next week.  Don’t know if that will actually happen, but it would be nice.

Still no word from Manager Guy.  Ugh.

My brother suggests I send along to the other place that asked me to resend the script.  I’m leaning that way.

I’ve also considered sending out another wave of queries for my Chinese restaurant romcom.  It would be very interesting to see what would come from that.  That and the rewrite may be my projects for while K and V are away.

And maybe pie.  Pie is always good.