Six Things I Like About My MIP

1. It’s DONE!
Well, the first draft anyhow. It’s a play about a young woman executive who is sent back in time to the Oregon Trail.

2. I’m a Script Frenzy Winner!! Whoopee!! Yea!!
Script Frenzy is a program to write a 20,000 word script (stage or screen play) in the Month of June. It’s put on by the same folks who do Write a Novel In a Month in November.

No one reads your script. There are no judges. You copy and paste your story into their word calculator and if there are 20,000 words, then You Win! You don’t get a prize, but you do get a little “winner” banner by your name on Script Frenzy and you get to use their “winner” icon.

So you could write “HOORAY!” 20,000 times and win. But it wouldn’t feel like winning. You can find Script Frenzy at: http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/

3. The Four Main Characters
I didn’t like Madison, the heroine, at first. Too perfect. Ha! I was gonna show her, stick her on the Oregon Trail and see how perfect she can be! Well, she handled it. Freaked a little, but I liked her.

The hero, Ben, turned out to be a really interesting guy who was just the nameless “romantic interest” when I started.

Then there are the children, Jenny and Jeremy. Two cute spunky kids I stuck in there just because they were cute. Then their parents died. So my heroine and hero had to take care of them. I kept trying to get rid of those orphans, but it never worked. I’d find real nice people to take them in, but something would happen and Madison and Ben would end up with the kids again. I finally figured out there must be a reason for that and just resigned myself to keeping the kids in the story.

4. Lesson Learned - I can write fast (but not well).
In Script Frenzy, you are encouraged to write. Just write. Get rid of that internal editor and write. If you listen to the internal editor you will have a hard time getting those 20,000 words in one month. And you have to finish by midnight (local time) June 30. I finished at 10:52 pm June 30.

I found out I can write 1000 words in 20 minutes. But oh they are bad words. I would never show them to anyone. They weren’t even worth rewriting. Just toss them out. Well, mostly.

5. Lesson Learned - I can’t figure out my story ahead of time.
Can’t do it. As I wrote I kicked myself for not figuring out ahead of time who the people were and what was going to happen. I thought if I had done that, the writing would be so much better.

But I really don’t know what happens in my story until I write it. I think I would have written better if I had prepared more ahead of time. But that only works for me up to a point. Until I’m writing scenes and having people interact, I don’t know what they’ll do.

This is not good news. It is a time consuming, frustrating process. But at least now I know I can write fast and get through it.

6. Lesson Learned - Writing Fast Means Writing Very Badly, But With Some Good Stuff.
I’ve never written so badly for so long. It was painful. There was not one word I wanted to keep. It was totally flat. The characters had no personality. It rambled all over the place. There was no plot. I hated it.

I didn’t even have names for most of the characters, other than the main four. They were “wagon master” “husband” (even) “man” or “woman”.

The last day I still had half the play to go. I had 10,000 words finished, but they were all bad words. None worth keeping, even for a rewrite. Time to quit. I regretted the days I didn’t write for whatever reason (sick, visitors, and of course procrastination).

But I had gotten some characters in that story I liked. And I knew I could do major editing and figure out a decent plot for this story.

And I didn’t know how the story ended. And I wouldn’t know the ending until I wrote it. So I decided to write those 10,000 words to find out the ending. In one day. Forget anything else I had to do that day.

So here’s what I wanted to know about the end - I knew that Madison would find a way to return to 2007. But would she take Ben with her? And the children? Or would she choose to stay in 1850?

I wrote 1000 words at a time that day, then I‘d take a break then get back to the computer. I wrote anything at all, it was just filling up the page, at least that‘s what I told myself. And I did it. I finished. Actually only 14% of the people who started Script Frenzy finished. (ok, I’m bragging!)

And I didn’t know the end until I wrote it. Fortunately, I liked it. In fact, I think I’ll keep those words: “We’re all home.”

Roxy Fontaine