So it’s my usual hour of discontent: four o’clock in the morning. Last night I slept for three hours, woke up at eight-thirty, went driving around the city for the entire day (without air conditioning—it’s busted), and I just got home three hours ago. I spent that precious time revising the first seven pages of my romance, titled, “Anonymous: A Love Story.” If I don’t bail out of writing the rest, the script should add up to a hefty seventeen or twenty pages.

I am in a bit of doubt as to the quality of the story. I came up with the outline in a half hour; good timing, but I suspect it was hasty. Francis Coppola did say that young writers are their own worst enemy: they judge their own writing self-consciously and abandon their work before completing them, a big no-no. Better to finish what you have and simply rewrite the darned thing. As McKee said, “Stories are not written. They are rewritten.” Amen. And so on those merits I think I will persevere.

Alright, out with the details. It’s why you’re [hopefully] still reading, right? I’m not gonna deal in specifics, but I’ll say it takes place inside a car on a third date. The girl recites a poem that sets up the theme of the story. Her date is intellectually challenged and wants desperately to impress her with knowledge of literature he does not possess. Thus in his attempt to woo her he…ends up introducing the ‘B’ story into the mix. This ‘B’ story acts as a catalyst to the date until the boy and the girl arrive at an epiphany, which is defined as “the sudden realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something.” In this case, the meaning was embedded all along in the girl’s otherwise nonchalant dialog as well as in the poem.

Yep. It’s a dialog piece. I want to be as much Edith Wharton as possible. She understood that the spoken word can be more than base expository: it can peel back the soul of the story in playful ways the viewer will not comprehend until the time arrives. Richard Linklater understood this in Before Sunrise. I’m not that big of an egotistical ass to compare myself to those two artists. I just wanna take a crack at it, for practice sake. And because Mr. Coppola is telling me not to give up, even though I want to.

Unlike my other project, this script has been tangibly composed in Final Draft, so rest assured that the B.S. meter is low on the threshold. I dislike hyping anything I do, apart from practical means, like this personal blog, which is more a conversation than look-at-me! marketing (right?). On the internet it is too easy to become an attention whore, and I wish to look where I tread. I should have the script printed and sent to Sean by Sunday or Monday, where I can gauge his opinion. And hey, maybe we can shoot soon enough.