It was a nice, relaxing period in February 2023, having submitted my script for Dig Down to three screenwriting contests, each offering some level of feedback. I was both moving forward with my writing career, while being able to take a step back and wait on someone else before I had to do anything again.
I didn’t want this to stretch on for too long, but it was a relief knowing that even though I wasn’t actively writing, there was still some momentum. Things were moving forward. And with that feeling, ideas for new stories started to pop up freely, because I wasn’t trying to force them.
My stance on writing is I never want writing to feel like a job to me. I already have one. I write because I enjoy it. I hope people continue to read my stories because they enjoy them. While this means there may be some stretches where I go without a new idea that I feel is good enough to explore, it also means I avoid the expectation of deadlines and timetables of when people will want the next installment of a series to come out.
For example, if I had started my writing career with a trilogy, I would have had to have had the first two books written, edited, and ready to go, with probably at least a drift of the finale under my belt so that there wouldn’t be too long of a gap between each book.
I enjoy reading though a long-running series, of varying sizes, from trilogies to serials. But these aren’t what I set out to write. If I were to write a series, it would be because the core idea would be too long to naturally fit in one book, and the length of that series would be what I felt was appropriate to capture the ebbs and flows, and peaks of valleys in the best way possible for the reader.
All that being said, I’m also glad that it didn’t take too long for feedback on Dig Down to start coming in. The first contest to forward me notes on my script was from Finish Line Script Competition. After almost a month of being able to take my mind off the adaptation, it was time to get back to work.
In the following week’s posts, I will share the notes that I had received, and then my comments/notes as I began to plan out how to incorporate this feedback.