11-04-98

Hi troops!

Well up to page 15. I fell a bit behind but I'll bang out 10 or 15 tomorrow as I'm off from work. I received an enormous amount of comments from the first page that I posted. Over 200 hits in 48 hours. I was very pleased. The majority of the responses were positive. A few were critical but you have to take the good with the bad.

My opinion about criticism is that it's all good. You take whatever you can from it, learn, and then apply it. In any type of creative field you must accept criticism. If you can't adapt, then you might as well give up. Criticism doesn't beat me down--only builds me up.

As far as the script---
As I was writing, I kept stopping and going back to my various references and resources. An example would be: I needed to know the distance from Ryker's Island to Queens. So I would poke around looking for the answer and by the time I got it, I lost that creative flow--the juices were no longer flowing. So I said to myself: No more looking at research--just type it out--keep the energy going.

Yes, it's like a big lump of clay. I just did a scene at Josie's Bar between Turk and Grotto (T & G are mob flunkies who occasionally work for the Kingpin doing menial tasks). The scene itself works nicely but the dialogue is very awkward. My golden rule about screenwriting is "never go back." In draft 2, 3, etc.. I'll rewrite, refine, revise and with each draft my block of clay will take shape.

"Is that Elektra on page one?"" everyone has asked. Hmmmm, I don't know. Could be.

Stay tuned....

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