The second consultation for my script of Dig Down was set for the Tuesday after Memorial Day. I’d be going into the conversation after having three days to relax, while also being able to find time at my leisure to skim through the script and prepare for the meeting. I also took that Tuesday off, just to remove the distraction of work prior to the meeting, and allow myself a little more time to prep.
If you thought the combination of a) having the luxury of this pace to prepare, b) having already gone through one of these in depth looks at my script, and c) having it be about a story I’d already combed through several times, both by myself when I was writing it, and with my editor when I was bringing it to market, that all of this would put me at ease for this meeting, you’d probably be right with most people.
Unfortunately, I’m not most people.
When I first was scheduled for this consultation, I felt I was in good shape to discuss it. But as the meeting drew nearer, nagging thoughts started to creep in. Yes, I’d had a consultation already, and a very positive one…but that was over two months ago now. I was very familiar with the story, having written it in two mediums, but that had led to a lot of changes during the adaptation, and the revisions based off of that first consultation. I had taken notes during the first meeting, but it wasn’t until a few days before this scheduled second consultation that I had found the notebook I had taken them in. When I opened it, the pages looked warped, the ink and handwriting didn’t feel familiar, giving off a sense that this had happened so long ago.
That was a bit of a surprising feeling. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten plot points from Dig Down. I think I’d have to be separated from it for years before that would start to happen. But it was things that I’d discussed in that consultation, and even thoughts and insights that people who’d read the book had shared with me, that didn’t come back to me until I’d seen these notes. It gave an odd sense that even though I’d been through this before, I somehow wasn’t going to be prepared to discuss something that not only had I created, but that nobody could no more deeply than me.
Even with that, I went through the script alongside the judge’s notes I’d gotten just a few weeks prior. My intention was to take any of the comments they had made, good or bad, and record the number of instances and page numbers they occurred on, so that I would be able to address them if they came up in this conversation. I also made the same recordings of certain elements in the stories so that I could have some additional talking points to bring up during the call, my goal being to leave them with the undeniable feeling I know my story inside and out.
I did this more and more as Memorial Day weekend went on. They operated in California, so this was going to be an afternoon meeting for me, so this prep work became my main focus the morning of the consultation.
As the morning wove down to the afternoon, I would quiz myself on talking about some of my notes without referring to them, but would otherwise just sit and relax. I was following the same pattern for my first consultation, and that had been very positive.
Yet as the final minutes ticked away, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this second consultation wasn’t going to be.