Script Feedback

It drove me crazy to stare at the bare page of my notebook while listening to my kids play at the park in front of our apartment. I stopped writing first drafts on my computer a year ago to make the process a little faster since changing my mind seemed more permanent when I couldn’t simply highlight and press backspace. Sitting under my favorite tree and periodically looking up at my kids, it was all familiar. I was supposed to scribble the words to the soft white pages of my Moleskin journal with the ease I’d always had in this place.

The trees were a soundtrack to my scribing.

It took my son coming over to ask me the simplest question to get back on track. Children do this all the time. A friend told me, “Kids are more profound on accident than most of us are on purpose.” His question to me was simple.

“Dad, what are you doing?”

What was I doing? I hadn’t been writing.

His innocent face looking down at me was all I needed. I hugged him before setting my notebook down and went to play with him and his siblings.

That night, I began typing out my first true draft of the story, but I was missing a few key elements that would have made the struggle my MC faced actually make sense. But I’d get to them, I thought. I finished another draft before heading to bed, but not before submitting it to my writers’ group to see what others thought and hear my words acted out in a way that made them more real.

I loved my antagonist. I still didn’t know who my protagonist was.

Kendra, one of the contributors, gave me some of the best advice for this piece, which I don’t think I could have come to so soon in writing this. The story is almost complete, but I want to cry.