Self-Portrait?

Revision is an unfamiliar process for me. The dissatisfaction I feel for low-caliber writing is too potent a force for me to ignore, rendering me incapable of just “moving on” and fixing the troubled portion at some later time. I have to achieve the desired timbre before I can write another word. The romantic notion of being a writer who conjures words effortlessly and passionately at the slightest whim has been abandoned for some time, replaced by less sexy, pragmatic ideas of hard work, scrutinizing self-criticism, and persistence.

As such, my attitude has become one of, “why wait?” If the piece is being written with the intent of some future repair, why not ration out those changes in the moments of conception? It is a perversion of the Kerouac-ian philosophy that “expression is purest at its unrefined origin”, which has always held sway with me, but the idea of staying in the mindset at the genesis of inspiration before moving forward remains present.

Screenwriting has posed a unique set of obstacles to this approach, as a screenplay is not an end product. Everything else I have written in my life has been meant for distribution exclusively as that - writing. A script is innately different; it is meant to inform the creation of something of a completely different form, and therefore must speak a different language using the same words. Writing a script is equivalent to the creation of potential energy, becoming kinetic once a production is engaged.

As I have begrudgingly discovered, rewriting is an essential part of screenwriting. Finding the right images and situations to convey subtext in a film takes time. The short script I am working on now is about to undergo its sixth revision, which has become an easier process to stomach with each attempt. When I set out to do my first revision of the original draft, I sat clueless in front of the computer for an embarrassingly long time. I had no idea where to even begin, and pondered a question that still creeps into my mind in moments of weakness – was I straying from my original vision of the story and turning it into something artificial?

I have managed to convince myself that I am mired so deeply in an unfamiliar process that I am in uncharted territory, lost and directionless. Normally I find this an exciting place to be, creatively, as my intuition becomes my guide and it usually serves me well. But something about digging further into this piece is frightening me, repulsing me like a finely tuned defense mechanism. It is a barricade that has delayed my progress substantially, but I know that by working through it, this script in particular and my work as a whole will be the better for it.

This has been difficult to achieve though. I write most of my ideas down with pen and paper before executing them in the screenplay proper, and I can feel my pen rumbling as I write, the nightmare ink inside coming to a rolling boil before inscribing its foul incantations on the pure, naked page, spoiling it forever. This heuristic practice has taken me places I never intended to go when I conceived this project, nor are they places I necessarily wanted to be in when I got there. But there they are. They exist, and since they have made themselves known to me, they cannot be ignored. Somewhere in their realms lies the shitty truth behind it all that I desperately need to find in order to complete the script and move on.

Or maybe I just need a new pen. Perhaps I am no longer meant to use the Uni-Ball Signo Micro. No longer shall I enjoy its equally-proportioned ink distribution, gliding across the page like an old man trying to navigate a freshly-mopped wood floor, actively encouraging these microscopic etchings that so many others are built to deter…

It is a wretchedly effective succubus; the devil is clearly a master of seduction in all of its forms. I can imagine the factory where these cursed writing utensils are made – a sort of underground steampunk bazaar, hundreds of people wearing ink-spattered robes, all racing towards some inexplicable congregation, concealed by the seething mass of bodies surrounding it. There is a scream, quickly muffled by a loud crunch, and the crowd surges back. Exposed is some fell creature that has claimed its first meal of the workday. It defies description beyond its enormous teeth and the endless streams of drool that flow from between them, forming milky puddles that make the floor perilously slick.

As the enrobed peons recede further, more of these beasts are revealed. In the middle of their pack is cruelty manifest – a woman of ideal sexual proportions and barbed genitals whose fantasy partner is Hitler’s burnt corpse possessed by Baal. As she laughs at the man being eaten by her pet, the black hate-fluid jettisons itself from her seven perfect breasts in high-pressure streams. The workers push forward once again, trying to catch this viscous pitch in copper buckets while attempting to avoid the unending hunger that awaits even the slightest misstep.

Forget filmmaking. I want to work in a pen factory.

My sweetest friend