Finishing the hat

In my final year in film school, I developed a reputation as someone who could get an entire first draft of a screenplay done in a weekend. For the beginning of my screenwriting “career” (“career” is in quotes because, try as I might for the past 20 years, I’ve never been able to manage making it into my full-time job), I continued to get brought on as a collaborator or writer for projects largely because of my ability to work fast. My ability to work fast and write on deadline is a big part of how I found success in my accidental career as a sportswriter, which began in 2011. I started out as a newsdesk writer for four regional hubs, which meant that in any given four-hour shift I may have had to write 30 250-plus-word posts or more.

I can still churn out a fast draft when need be, but I have a job and a family that takes up a whole lot of my time and energy now, so I tend to take my time unless I’m really up against a deadline. Still, when I really start rolling on a project I set a minimum page or word count per day/writing session, and when I can see the finish line I usually do whatever I can to power through and get to the end as quickly as I can. (The most recent feature script I wrote from scratch had a first draft of over 120 pages and it took me around 20 days, although there was a weekend off in there due to family commitments.)

In my screenwriting and extracurricular writing, I tend to start up and focus on whatever project seems the most pressing or whatever project I’ve been outright asked to get done right away. That means that I’ve often had to prioritize projects I’m not particularly attached to or invested in, or projects where I’m not the creative force and more of a tool to accomplish and end goal. What that also means is that over the years, I’ve had a lot of projects that I am emotionally connected to get put on a shelf or fall by the wayside. But I’ve also put off some of these passion projects because I’m just not ready to tackle them, and sometimes because I feel like I’m not in the proper place to do them justice. (Or maybe I’m worried that the end result won’t be as good as I hope it will be. I’m sure that sometimes has something to do with it.)

But this year, I’ve completed one massive project that I’ve been putting off for the better part of 20 years, and have just begun putting in the daily work on a project I’ve been letting idle for at least a decade.

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