I got the feedback from Scriptapalooza on my first 20 pages of my Lock the Doors script on October 3 of last year. In the span of two months, I had gone from an incredible high of finding out that I had placed as a finalist in the first screenwriting contest I had entered Lock the Doors into, to the low of not even placing in another two, and further feedback that while not terrible, was far from good.
I still had one last contest I was waiting on for results, but the optimism from the summer had long since faded.
This, unfortunately, was not the only rough patch I was experiencing with writing at the time.
While I had been awaiting the results on these competitions, I was working on the first draft of a new manuscript, for a story that wasn’t going to be a novella, but at the very least I full sized novel, with the hopes that this would be the first true novel I ended up publishing. I was heavily outlining this story when I was first entering Lock the Doors into competitions like 13Horror.com. I believed the two actions combined were going to mark a roaring return to writing for me. This was shaping up to be a huge year for me, as I had just been promoted to manager at my job in May of last year.
In terms of writing, the promotion was actually problematic. This new position brought many challenges with it, and demanded lots of my time. I was to lead a unit that I was building up from scratch, and that meant lots of interviews. The work wasn’t put on hold for these interviews either, so I was taking work home me, opening up my laptop after an hour or two of recharging from the day and working, sometimes until 8 or 9, and logging back on at 5 the next morning to apply some finishing touches.
I had started the first draft of my manuscript the same week I had visited my cousins in Airzona, only wrote a page, and put it on hold until I returned to New York. I tried to keep a steady writing pace, sometimes satisfied if all I could do was write a page.
I managed to type the first 100 pages of the manuscript before considering stopping at that milestone, suspecting that the workload might catch up with me. I tried to forge ahead, but after another chapter –about 15 pages– I realized I was asking too much of myself.
I loved the story, felt characters were really coming alive, and had jotted down plenty of notes to smooth out the rough edges of a very rough draft, but the schedule I was keeping was very draining. I felt continuing to forge ahead would have resulted in largely diminishing quality. And while this could be overcome with future drafts, I was concerned my outlook on the manuscript might be forever marred, and that I’d be resentful for how hard I was having to work to “fix the story” even though the story wasn’t the problem, my ability to write it was.
On October 21st, I decided to shelf it, with the hopes of picking it up again one day and giving it the love and attention it deserved. It was sad concession to make in what felt like right on the heels of the feedback from Scriptapalooza. Nothing I was doing writing-wise seemed to be working, and what was even more crushing was that this new story idea felt like the only suitable one I had come up with all year.
Everything around me felt like it was sinking, and I felt I needed to do something to reverse this awful trend.
I’ll share what that ended up being…next time.