– a 23-page working first draft of the script was submitted on Sunday (15 April);
– on Wednesday (18 April) an actual, like, complete first draft of the script was demanded by the coming Saturday (21 April);
– Thursday was day-job day, and was full-on, maaan;
– Thursday was so full-on that it spilled into Friday, duuude;
– Friday was further made exciting by having to wake up at 0430 to ensure The Goddess caught an 0640 flight, and lengthened by having to stay awake to collect Her at 2400 later that day.
Friday, I must say, for all its excitement and marathon-like/-lite duration, was a little frustrating.
Oh, and then I was reminded that:
– Saturday we were expecting seldom-seen relatives.
Forcing condensing three potential writing days into five hours can be an exhilarating experience. I love it. After the fact.
Experiencing it is another matter as the knot in the stomach gnaws and gnaws, your fingers won’t type fast enough – and they keep inserting typos! – and a headache tries to distract you with variations of “How you like me now?”-type pain.
But it’s not all bad. Honest. There’s the actual exhilaration – the fevered and/or inspired connection and transformation of notes-to-self into a story, the page count in the bottom corner of the screen clicking over and reinforcing the sense of hard work in progress, and the process of writing, throwing shit down, cursing as you delete, mentally high-five-ing as it just flows. Five minutes to the contracted deadline, and you’re done.
One thinks, Gaw, that weren’t so bad!
Oh how quickly one forgets.
(Final page count: 33 pages.)