Day 31: 30 days ago I started to map this thing out with just an idea and no real plan. Deciding to do this challenge now was different because I wasn’t necessarily in the best place to just push creatively, looking back, it was more that I didn’t think I was. To wrap everything up, Scott left us with a question: what is the simple emotional journey? Here’s my answer: [untitled] takes you on an emotional journey of not so chance encounters, intimate conversations, and fleeting connections between two strangers, Trey and Lachelle. Crafting their world was a familiar process on a brand new timeline. Usually, it’s just me at this point, but having different people tap in to see how things were going was an added boost I’d never thought about in the past. With today being the last day of the challenge I thought I’d break down how I think this went overall.
Act 1 - The first few weeks felt like a dead sprint. I’m used to writing 10 pages a day, even though I didn’t set a page count goal per day that’s where I was at for about a week. The setup, character intros, and initial world building all just seemed to flow quickly. It was all an idea that just grew from there.
Act 2 - I started to slow way down, not on purpose, but just because I’m never a fan of trying to force something to fit. My main goal was trying to not leave myself with a ton of plot holes to clean up, so I made sure I was on some kind of consistent path. It got tricky more than once as the story started to grow beyond what I thought I was writing. I also think that if I can convey the same story in 4 pages instead of 10, that’s a good thing. Especially with having a timeline I knew things would fall in line eventually, and they did.
Act 3 - about two and a half weeks in I realized I was farther along than I thought, but aimed to stay steady and start to wrap things up. This is where sharing the process became a part of it because naturally, I just had less to share. It was this balancing act of sharing this publicly without really giving real details away and honoring the work as I went. That leaves us with today, at the end. Which triggers the beginning of making it new again, the path is never linear, more like a spiral.
Choosing this genre was the best move I could have made. I think it can be easy for romcoms to feel surface level and superficial, but that’s a narrative I’m out to change. Comedy can absolutely have depth. Each day's work this month led to today, the victory lap. I'm holding a draft of this story I hadn't made time for before now.
Thanks for rocking with me through the process. ✌🏾☕️