New screenplay

I've been test-driving a software program by writing a new screenplay with it. I'm 37 pages along, into the second act, and everything is progressing smoothly.

I must say, screenplays may be the most "fun" writing I do. Not the most satisfying after the fact but the most fun in the process of writing. I think that's because the rhetorical issues are less difficult than in other forms of writing. It's a story-driven process, not a rhetorically driven process. There's not much actual writing involved in terms of word count, though it's not like poetry where you spend a day trying to find the right word. You just tell the story, writing a blueprint for a movie, knowing all your collaborators are going to add most of the flesh. Consequently, you can draft an entire screenplay in a few weeks if you have the story structured correctly, which is what the software I'm using is designed to do. I've already staggered away from it here and there but otherwise it remains in place and looks strong. We'll see how the difficult second act goes.

I think in 2007 I'm going to try and write four or five screenplays and market them passively, which is to say, post them at InkTip, an online marketing site with a damn good track record. Unless, of course, this Chicago agent looking at my old stuff has something ambitious in mind. We'll see. Not losing any sleep over it one way or the other. I don't have the energy to do the marketing I did when I was younger, but at the same time I apparently am not quite ready to be put to pasture yet either. A screenplay is so damn much fun to write and you have to do something with it when you're done. I put them in my archive, of course, but I still have a bit of non-posthumous ambition floating about. InkTip provides a good service and, for me, a good way to keep my toes wet without spending a lot of energy doing it.