Although I wouldn’t say I was dallying, after one full week devoted to edits and rewrites of my script for Dig Down, I was really starting to feel the looming deadline, just 10 days away. While I had been making incremental progress, I felt I was nowhere near capturing anything close to all the areas that were covered during my two and a half hour phone consultation just the week before.
I knew that I needed to make the most of this upcoming weekend.
While it was daunting, it wasn’t all bad. I didn’t feel close to finishing, but that was because I had invested a lot of time during the week towards identifying the areas of the screenplay that needed improvement, as well as brainstorming and drafting several ideas to implement those improvements. I had come up with new character introductions that I believed captured them very well for a first impression. I also had drafted a few new scenes to showcase characters that might have only been referenced in the script (and the book) to help better convey who was beyond some of the obstacles that Rob would face during the story.
One character of note was Ruth, who in addition to being only briefly featured in the book, something that I believe worked to the strength in that medium, barely had any screentime, something that was a criticism in all three forms of feedback I’d gotten. I had come up with a brief storyline to weave in through the early going of the screenplay to give some context to who she was.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t all good either. The temperatures picked up, so all the snow we’d gotten in the middle of the week began to melt, and most of it found its way into my basement. While I had a five gallon bucket there to capture the water as it came in, it would fill up every fifteen minutes. This meant if I wanted to keep pace with the water coming into my house, I would have to break away from my work every quarter hour to empty it out.
It wasn’t ideal, but this was what I ended up doing throughout the weekend. I’m an early riser, so I would wake up, empty the bucket, replace it with a smaller bucket, and wet vac my floor until it was just damp (essentially emptying out the wet vac at least 15 times). I’d replace the 5 gallon bucket to collect the water, shower, go to the basement to empty it out again, have breakfast, empty out the bucket one last time, and then get to work.
I’d start my revisions/edits around 8 in the morning, and aside from taking a break for lunch, I rigidly kept to a schedule of going through the script and implementing changes, heading downstairs to the basement every fifteen minutes to empty the nearly overflowing bucket again, and keep to this routine until 8 at night. Yes, you read that right. Aside from a lunch break, I would work nearly 12 hours straight throughout the weekend.
My mind would be swimming by the time I logged off. My body sore from stooping over to lug a bucket to my sump pump four times an hour. A social life was non-existent, and I knew Monday morning it wasn’t going to feel like I had any time off. I felt like I worked harder than I did at my job.
And while it may have been grueling, I can’t say I hated it. I wasn’t thrilled about the basement, but to me, this was something I’d worked my whole life to achieve. Putting myself in a position to be working on my story, a story that people were praising and wanted to see it elevated to what it could be. Yes, it was tough, but it was what I loved, and to me, how could I not work hard, put in the work that was necessary for something that I loved.
I was thoroughly worn out by the time Sunday night rolled around. Yet as my head hit the pillow, willing myself to get mentally prepared to start a new week of the work the next morning, two things brought a smile to my face. One, as tough as it was, I had loved the experience of locking myself in my house just to work on one of my stories.
And two, for the first time since the phone consultation, my script was really starting to take shape.