So…

I’m making a horror flick, and I picked that against a couple other ideas (I’ll talk about those at a later date). I did that choosing about a year ago; in early 2015. The concept for the horror hit me and I wrote a few pages, didn’t like some of it, and then took a little bit of time to think. After bouncing around the other ideas I went back to the horror, it was the best. Then spring came and I had no time to write. Day job, garden, other farm shit, house work. Essentially it got warm and I had a long list of things to do, all of which had priority over what was little more than an idea in my head.

It was still up there though in the background, and increasingly in the main rotation of thoughts. The idea was building itself up, the story coalescing, the locations around the farm either fitting into this scene or that scene, or presenting me with inspiration for a new one. And as the creative parts came together in my mind the logistics of it all was ordering itself out also. The how and when of a shoot, the scope and scalability of it all, and who I would try and involve (family & neighbors, not exactly crew at that time). What would the scope of the crew be; what I could do myself and what would I need others for.

As the end of 2015 neared I had a fair bit of the process mapped out and the story nearly complete in my head. Winter set in (I’m not the biggest fan of winter) which is when I planned to start writing, and so I did. I had hoped to have a cleaned up 1st draft done before Christmas; that didn’t happen and the script didn’t end up getting in the hands of my producing partner until January. That was fine though as I had left the first few weeks of the new year as a buffer, to change up any plans based on if the story changed much through the actual writing process.

And now we’re in the drafting process, and spring is essentially on us here in the show me state. Which brings us up to about the progress report from last week. To use a silly train analogy last year was all about filling up the coal car, and the winter (writing the script) was getting the boiler hot. Now the old iron wheels are starting to turn slowly and we’re moving on down the tracks.