Long-distance writing

A month has passed since our experiment in long-distance writing. You know, writing is a very personal thing. Usually, it’s a solitary activity. So it can be difficult to write alongside somebody else, as we are finding out.

Dakota likes to “cook” his writing. He’ll write out a page or a paragraph, then go back over it again and again — basically, revise as he goes along. He’s pretty comfortable with the process and generally gets things done quickly.

For me, I need to get it right down there on the page first, in whatever form it spills out. It’s usually crap, but who cares — that’s what rewrites are for. The most difficult thing for me is to condition myself to actually *start* writing. While staring at a blank page (or screen), I can think of 10+ different things I could (or should) be doing instead. Suddenly the house gets cleaned, the dishes get washed, the laundry is folded — sometimes, even dessert for dinner that night gets made.

Once I get going, it’s usually a marathon session of a few hours. But getting started is the tough part. The revising is what really gets me going. There’s nothing I like better than sitting in a chair with a fresh printout of something I’ve written, pen in hand, ready to tear it all apart and put it back together again. I love the touchups. The initial construction, however, is a chore.

So we’ve been trying to resolve these conflicts in style. It’s tiring for Dakota to sit down regularly, at a presecribed time, and pound out something less-than-stellar in a couple hours while I’m watching. For me, I probably wouldn’t get much done without that sort of pressure. It may be the broadcast journalist in me.

Our Week 4 Compromise is: Hold a live writing session for two hours on Monday morning. Then, pick away at the script on our own throughout the week, emailing it back and forth whenever the mood strikes. Hopefully, this system will work out better for both of us.

At any rate, we are near to completing our 5th revision on “Amelia’s Ring,” our tentatively titled horror short for an anthology project with our friend, Matt Eppright. His own script is finished for his part and he’ll be shooting in the spring. We’ll be lucky to have something going by fall.