The plague has attacked my household. Dirty, vial, and intrusive it has made its way from my fiance to myself and somehow skipping the children all together. I have no idea how that could have occurred, it’s not like I’m a licensed nurse or that we come in close contact at all. Oh, yeah…nevermind.

In any event, I’m starting to come around. The only thing plaguing me now is a continuing case of congestion, so thankfully the body wagons can just keep rolling. I plan on being back on track with the screenplay tomorrow, however the man of the house is home from work so we’ll see how much I actually get accomplished.

May I just throw out there that I appreciate all of you who have even glanced at this blog. I hope to make it worth your while soon. Interested in a screenplay teaser? I think that’s coming next. Stay tuned.

Happy Thursday – Sarah

Allow me to rewind a bit. I have a good idea for a film. I would say it’s a “dramedy” about a woman in her mid-twenties whose forced to make some serious decisions about her life after the death of her parents (I promise I’ll fill you in more later). I’ve had pages of notes and outlines written for months, but when I would sit down with Final Draft (screenwriting software) I would freeze. I then misplaced my notebook for a while and mostly forgot about it.

When I recently decided that I was going to hit this writing thing full force, I tracked down my notebook (thanks Levi & Alex), patted myself on the back for the many brilliant oscar-worthy ideas contained there in, and realized I had no idea where to begin. Enter Syd Field. Now I subscribe to emails from various writers magazines, and I received one saying that Mr. Field was holding one of his famous screenwriting classes in Los Angeles in a few months. Three days of intimate instruction with a demigod of the screenplay, all for the bargain price of $450. Now I’m sure you’ve taken note that I’m a fledging writer. That means unpublished, unheard of, and broke. My fiance and I have four kids to feed. That means no money to run off and bask in the presence of the Syd Field. (I wonder if the kids could live on Top Ramen for a month? Nah, nevermind.) So, being that I’m occasionally resourceful, I surfed the web straight to Amazon. Sure enough I found Syd Field’s screenwriting workshop on DVD for the bare knuckle sale price of $14.99. Yippeee! Twenty-four hours later it was in my hands, and that was two weeks ago.

Procrastination being a large makeup of my DNA, I just took down notes for part one of the workshop yesterday. The first assignment is to write a four page treatment. Syd said himself that you should expect to write four terrible pages. At the moment I have 176 terrible words that I’m getting ready to attack with the delete button. Why so soon you may ask yourself.

Because I got distracted!

The first half page, yes only a half page, is supposed to be my opening sequence in a dramatic narrative. I knew in my notes what I had planned for my opening, but failed to pin down any details. In the opening, the main character is auditioning for a Master’s degree acting program at a prominent acting school. I had originally wanted her to give a 1-2 minute monologue that was about heartbreak and/or adversity, as a foreshadowing for the rest of Act 1. Anyhow, I also wanted to be authentic in this audition scene so I emailed the graduate admissions counselor for the actual university to see if she could give me any tips. It turns out that their auditions are 5 minute scenes, no monologuing allowed. She did recommend some audition pieces, one of which is the play Proof  by David Auburn. You may have seen the Gwyneth Paltrow/Anthony Hopkins movie version. Oh man, did I find the mother of all distractions with this. Thank you YouTube.

I’ve been researching most of the afternoon, trying to find the script for the play online so I could read it. Since it didn’t seem I could do that for free, I turned to YouTube for some video. Two hours later I find myself still watching, (well done by the way to the Broadway West Theatre Company. Bravo!), with nothing figured out and not a single word written. All because my internal movie critic won’t shut up long enough for me to get past it. He tells me, (yes it’s guy, don’t ask), that the audition piece needs to resonate, and be engrossing, and blah blah blah. I don’t even know if i’m going to keep it in the opening sequence! Aaaggghhhhhh!

So here I am. It’s 10:30, my ass is aching from this chair, and I only have 176 words to speak of. The ironic part is this blog is already over 750 words. . . .

Ok, it’s now 9:10 in the morning. See what I mean, distraction. I’m going to head to the gym, sweat out some frustration, and see if I can’t send my critic packing. Today I just want to write. Four terrible pages.

The next great reality show fad? Could I be bigger than Heidi & Spencer? Picture a camera crew in my dining room catching every engaging moment of me “living the dream”. What pray tell would you see on the tube tonight? Me, hunched over my laptop with a cup of tea and a throw blanket over my shoulders. An anticipatory glint of moisture on my brow as I ever so carefully choose my next word. Will I finish my blog today? Will I take a break to clean the dinner dishes? Will I shrug the encapsulating mold of the fledgling writer and move ever onward to glory and fame? Will I get heartburn from the dinner that left me all those damn dishes? Truly thrilling stuff. I’m sure the producers of “JerseyShore” and/or the “OC” will be chomping at the bit once they read this.

Daydreaming aside, I’ve decided to take the plunge and really make a go of this writing thing. This strange little monkey that’s been pawing and picking at me since I was ten. I wrote an ambitious series then, “The Adventures of Super Raisin”. If you had asked my mother I was a child prodigy gearing up for a Pulitzer. I was just happy for the gold star from my fifth grade teacher. I do believe that sticker was scratch-and-sniff. Banana scented, wouldn’t you know, because just as soon as she stuck it on that damned storytelling monkey climbed on and just won’t go away.

For whatever reason, be it cosmic, natural talent, pure insanity, or otherwise, I have some stories to tell. I was flipping through my notebook earlier this evening and it was surprising even to me the sheer volume of material that’s waiting to leak from my fingertips.

Please Be Warned:
I never said any of it was going to be any good at all. Most likely it won’t be. I’m expecting a huge pile of steaming poop to slop its way onto the page. If you are unlucky enough to be a friend of mine, and get roped into reading the sludge I will produce, I apologize pre-emptively and rest assured that you’ll get an extra nice card at Christmas. (That’s saying something since the cards I meant to mail out 4 years ago are still sitting in the box with the tree decorations!)

That being said, I guess I have nowhere to go but upward and onward. If I’ve set the bar at stinking sludge, it may prove easy to impress or hard to disappoint. Which ever way you look at it, I might as well give it a whack. I may even surprise myself, along with a few of you. Feel free to take this journey with me. I’m sure this blog will be good for at least a few laughs, and maybe a few tears.

My name is Sarah Sharp and I am an aspiring writer. This is my story.