This weekend my goal was to finish a good chunk of my feature script. I wanted to pull an all-nighter (or two), just like in college. Back then, I wrote all my papers the night before they were due. Which is probably why I was a C-student. But toward the end I started making B’s and even A’s. I convinced myself that I’d learned a valuable skill: producing under pressure. (Self-inflicted pressure.)
There was another element to my plan though. I wanted to get out of the house. I imagined sitting in a corner booth at The House of Pies for twelve hours. Drinking endless coffee and pounding away on my laptop. Breaking the monotony with a patty melt. The drunks would come in, then the hipsters. Then the strippers. Imagine the conversations I’d overhear! The rhythms and the voices and the accents!
Ah, but The House of Pies was a no-go because they charge $2.50 an hour just to sit there. Bullshit. Starbucks? Barnes & Noble? Denny’s? IHOP? I agonized over it. Finally, I left the house, laptop over my shoulder, and drove to my favorite bar, McElroy’s, second-guessing myself the whole way.
It wasn’t crowded. I found a back booth where I could hide. And an electrical outlet. The coffee was free because the bartenders know my name. But it tasted like burnt popcorn. Worse, it made me sleepy.
I had written maybe two pages and I was stuck. I was at the beginning of Act Two. That wide Sargasso Sea that swallows the souls of so many screenwriters. I knew my midpoint, and the basic beats I needed to hit along the way, but I was fuckin’ stuck. Lesson learned: outline! Especially for Act Two. (I never really needed one for Act One.)
My eyelids got heavy and I gave up. I drank a beer, tipped, and went home where I watched Groundhog Day. Lesson learned: get some sleep the night before pulling an all-nighter.
The next day I slept in as much as the dog would let me. Once awake, I did anything to avoid writing. This mostly consisted of planning my next night of writing. Once again I obsessed over the venue. Evening came around, I dealt with a few distractions, and then headed to Brazil in the Montrose. The coffee was excellent, the sandwich was delicious, the overheard conversations were great, and writing felt fantastic. I could have stayed there all night. But alas, there wasn’t a damn electrical outlet to be found. None. My laptop can get maybe five hours of power on a good day. But somehow I’d neglected to fully charge it before heading out. So after two and half hours it was time to go.
It was a “teaching moment” though. Goals for the future: be decisive, pick a place and go, be prepared, charge your batteries, get some sleep, and write a damn outline.
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