Brief Weekend Update

I'm up to 1700 words in my screenplay. I'm happy with the progress so far, but I realize that the big hurdles are yet to come. When I sit down to write, I have two Word documents open, one with the screenplay, and one for brain-storming. It works well, and I keep a rough outline of where I want to go next on the brain-storming side. I haven't done a great job of sticking with the outline, but it seems to work. Also, I haven't done any editing yet. Lately, I've been obsessed with making sure I don't have any glaring grammatical errors--but if I do that on the screenplay, I'll never finish.

With Script Frenzy, you don't have to upload anything, you just put in your word count--which is another reason I haven't worried about any editing yet. It is both good and bad--I wish I was able to sneak a peak at what some of the other writers have written, but I haven't been able to find many already-written screenplays, or even partially-written screen plays for that matter.

A kind of cool idea just popped into my head--it sure would be cool to finish my screenplay out at the Coast. I'll be there on June 30th, and I've always thought the Coast would be a perfect place to write. Who knows, I might save the ending for out there.

Another thing I'm not really sure how to do is share my screenplay. Both share it as I continue to write it, and share the final draft once it is complete. Sharing it before it is finished might not be the smartest idea, but I'd like to put it somewhere online once I'm done.

"The Hermit at Harry's Crossing" is the screenplay I'm working on. I'm not entirely sure how to describe it, but it might be a cross between "Bridge to Terebethia" and "Home Alone". There isn't much fantasy involved, but there are two kids who like to explore, with an outgoing girl (when she's with Harry), and a conservative guy. Their exploration leads them to find a hermit living out in the forest. A bit like the salt-man in Home Alone, he frightens them off at first. But Mel's curiosity gets the best of her, and as a single-child to a single-parent Dad, she has to find out why someone would choose to live alone out in the forest. The Hermit turns out to both teach Mel and Harry many valuable life-lessons during the summer, and he also learns a lot about himself from his two new friends.

Exactly what he teaches, and what he learns--I'm not quite sure about yet. But I'm leaning towards him ending his hermit-like ways. Also, whatever he ends up teaching Harry and Mel will end up changing them for the better in some way.

So yes, lots of things in the story to still think out--which is fun. I wrote a few hundred words this morning, then took a break to clean up my clothes that I have let slowly envelop my room. I packed up a lot of my winter clothes, that I can hopefully take back to Seattle in June on the plane. I was listening to Pearl Jam's Lost Dogs CD while cleaning--damn, that CD is good!

I still have quite a bit of cleaning to do besides my clothes, but it was around noon, and I was up for some basketball. I zipped over to Kahle on my bike, and was there in time for the second game. My team was awesome again. We could all shoot and played good team-defense. Lots of switching, and lots of communication on defense helped us win six straight games before I had enough winning for one day and came back home. When our shots were on, we just pulverized the other team, and when our shots weren't falling, our defense bailed us out. It was good times, albeit exhausting.

Sunny and 70 degrees at 2pm. Beach time! I sure am in a unique spot to live. I live in a ski town, a gambling town, a mountain town, a lake town, and a beach town all in one. I walked down to the beach with a Bud Light I stole from the fridge (did I mention the open-container law town part? :) ).

Every other time I've been down to the beach, it has been practically empty. The first time, there were still icicles on the boat ropes... but still! Today was a completely different story. The beach was PACKED with people. Lots of scantily clad people. I couldn't help but feel out of place with all the tanned ladies and muscular men. Especially because I was sporting the best farmer's tan since Elmer Fudd. Ten games of ultimate frisbee last weekend really grooved those tan lines in.

I hopped in the water and dunked myself after a bit of hesitation. Spent 15 minutes drying off in the sun, while trying to rid myself of the paleness. Then I got up and decided to walk down the beach a bit to see if I could find Kristara and Jen. The beach was ugly-packed. I ended up walking through the parking lot, because in some spots, the beach was literally standing room only. I definitely prefer the solitary beach--although admittedly, much of the scenery wasn't bad to look at!

I found Kristara and Jen on the other end of the beach, with a bit more space to themselves. It was a good spot, that I'll come back to when I go beaching in the future. They had some friends who work that para-sailing boat, who offered to take them out if there weren't enough paying customers to take out on the last trip of the day. I guess there are some perks to throwing parties every night after all!

These guys can get boat rentals for super-cheap too, at around $50 for a day, which would probably be split between at least ten people. So I'm looking forward to that sometime this summer. We chatted for a bit, then the para-sailing boat came back and Jen went off to see if they'd get their para-sailing chance. My pale torso had enough sun for one afternoon, so I headed back up the hill.

Kristara and Jen showed me a nice little beach-side trail while we were soaking up the rays--and I think I'll go for a little run and bring my camera along to see if I can get a good sunset shot or two. If I get lucky, I'll post a shot or two~