When I started this whole writing venture, I started with a screenplay. That screenplay still isn’t finished. Screenplay #2, however, was finished two years ago.
Or so I thought.
Once I got the novel published, I wrote the first draft of a short story and the beginning of a novella (and I’m outlining Novel #2), but I also remembered that I still had Screenplay #2 was still sitting there (how I came to remember that is a blog post for later). I had submitted it to a screenplay contest and got coverage back that included some good suggestions. (“Good suggestions” are the ones where people are critical of something you’re really proud of, and you read them and say to yourself, “Yeah, they’re right.”) So i went back and made the changes. I just finished them. The next step is to get some people to read it and tell me what they think, clean up whatever needs to be cleaned up, and — that’s right — submit it to another screenplay competition. I have found that this is how the writing process (for screenplays) works: rewrite, submit, repeat.
And I’m cool with that. After all, I finished a screenplay. Twice.