• Almost have my #script­frenzy pro­jected prop­erly out­lined. Screen­writ­ers: do you break down scenes before­hand (note­cards, etc) or go w/​flow? #

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• If you were try­ing to avoid a napalm blast in a rain­for­est and you were sans vehi­cles, how would you do it? (research­ing a story…) #

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• So far today isn’t so much Tues­day as Mon­day, Con­tin­ued… #

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• @EdHans AVG and Mesh both kill my net­book per­for­mance, but both are too vital to dis­able. in reply to EdHans #

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For rea­sons I won’t bore you with, I’ve been with­draw­ing from the world a bit recently. Friends and asso­ciates are reced­ing into the back­ground and I’m focus­ing more and more on my writ­ing. This is nei­ther good nor bad, it’s just the way things are, and I’m try­ing to make the best of it. But in the process, I’m dis­cov­er­ing some­thing about writ­ing that I don’t think I fully real­ized in the last 23 years that I’ve been writ­ing seri­ously. Writ­ing alone is hard.

To a cer­tain extent, we all write alone, of course. It’s the nature of the job. But what I’m find­ing now, cut off from my for­mer writ­ing part­ner and hav­ing left the cri­tique group I founded long ago, is that I miss the fel­low­ship of other writ­ers, and could really use some­one to bounce ideas back and forth with. It’s just not the same ask­ing myself ques­tions and try­ing to answer them.

Case in point. I’m gear­ing up for Script Frenzy in April. I’ve got a good idea for a screen­play, some­thing I’ve been kick­ing around for about a decade that I’ve always known would make either a kick-​ass action movie or a good Crichton-​esque (before his State of Fear sell­out hack­i­tude) tech­nothriller. Per­fect fod­der for the “100 script pages in a month” white heat of Script Frenzy. But I’ve got sec­ond act prob­lems. I know how the movie starts, I have a great, kick ass end­ing, but how to get from one to the other is a mite fuzzy. And it’s here that I really wish I had some­one to ban­ter with, some­one who could help me answer some of the ques­tions I have about get­ting to that cru­cial plot twist that takes you from the end of act 2 and car­oming into act 3.

But I don’t have any­one left that I trust. This is fool­ish, I know, since there’s real­is­ti­cally no dan­ger in talk­ing openly about my story. Give two writ­ers the same basic story and you end up with “Armaged­don” on one side and “Deep Impact” on the other. But old habits die hard, and I’m keep­ing the details to myself. The story ques­tions I’ve teased out of my out­line I’ll have to answer myself. The answers will come, and at least I have sec­ond act prob­lems and not the third act prob­lems (good story but no sat­is­fac­tory end­ing) more com­mon, and deadly, to screenplays.

I didn’t appre­ci­ate the social aspect of writ­ing until it was gone. Like so much in life, I sup­pose. So I ask my read­ers, those of you who know the soli­tude of the writ­ten word. How do you deal with the iso­la­tion of writing?

• Good morn­ing, tweeple. Installed Win­dows 7 7057 this morn­ing, test­ing to fol­low. This is the not-​quite-​RC build. #
• #fol­lowfri­day WM peeps: @win­dows­mo­bile @back­lon @Alli_​Flowers @PhilNick­in­son and a bunch of oth­ers I can’t spell from mem­ory in reply to PhilNick­in­son #
• OMFG just nation­al­ize them already! RT @dailykos: “AIG sues U.S. gov­ern­ment for $306 mil­lion http://tinyurl.com/dku34k ” in reply to dai­lykos #
• @chippy Wrong ques­tion. With cloud ser­vices like Mesh and Google, what IS a “pri­mary PC”? I use what­ever PC is handy at the moment. in reply to chippy #
• Nearly ready for #script­frenzy Just need to flesh out the out­line some more. Also try­ing out Celtx. #

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• Today’s big soft­ware release at work may be over before I get to it. Noth­ing to do but pre­pare for tonight’s MaxGeek. Any sug­gested top­ics? #
• @tib­bar­erew It may be one of those days, but at least you have a Max­i­mum Geek pod­cast tonight to look for­ward to. #
• @tib­bar­erew 9 cen­tral, 8 moun­tain #
• Ghost Ronin shelved for now, plot­ting out my movie for #script­frenzy in April. #sol­i­dar­ity #
• @tib­bar­erew Well, I don’t even get home from work until after 7 moun­tain, so not much ear­lier. #
• If I were to start up a new solo pod­cast, what sort of top­ics would peo­ple be inter­ested in? #

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• “But most of all I’m a big fat muf­fin that loves to explode.” #
• You will take me to Jabba now. #
• Too… Tired… To write… #sol­i­dar­ity #
• Look­ing for­ward to a relax­ing evening at home before chaos tomor­row. #
• @RobT43 I did used the Jedi mind trick. I am appar­ently a weak-​minded fool. in reply to RobT43 #

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• “But most of all I’m a big fat muf­fin that loves to explode.” #
• You will take me to Jabba now. #
• Too… Tired… To write… #sol­i­dar­ity #
• Look­ing for­ward to a relax­ing evening at home before chaos tomor­row. #
• @RobT43 I did used the Jedi mind trick. I am appar­ently a weak-​minded fool. in reply to RobT43 #

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• 606 words yes­ter­day, for a total of 7452 on Ghost Ronin so far. Hop­ing to get 20k before Script Frenzy Apr1. #sol­i­dar­ity #
• 278 words so far this morn­ing, build­ing speed. #sol­i­dar­ity #
• Got my annual per­for­mance review today. Missed a raise by 1%, so it’s time to reeval­u­ate my bud­get. /​sigh #
• Still thrown by my per­for­mance review today. Try­ing to fig­ure out what I want to do with my life. Con­sid­er­ing clown col­lege, maybe. #

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